Making this up as I go.
The Apple House: Your house is wonderfully decorated, beautifully crafted and very durable. AppleHousing recently started using a different kind of concrete for their foundations, supposedly to make their houses much more stable, but they still subside occasionally. Comes with a free super-hi-fi stereo that, for some reason, won't let you copy your CDs on to more than one tape at a time. The windows open in a strange way and it's sometimes very hard to find the door, but at least it looks nice. Apple Houses are very popular with media elites and artistic types, as they always come with a fairly good range of equipment, paints, easels and the like. The latest designs have nowhere to put your car.
Microsoft Home: "Welcome to your Microsoft Home(tm), incorporating Microsoft Wall(tm), Microsoft Window(tm) and Microsoft Door(tm) technology" the mat outside the door reads. The door is wonderfully colourful, with a great big "Open Here" printed in friendly letters on it. Unfortunately it doesn't always open, and sometimes it will fall off the hinges. Insode you are faced with an array of rooms including "My Media Room," "My Living Room," "My Bathroom". Each room has a prominent waste basket that literally eats anything you put in it, although you can just throw things out of the window anyway. Unfortunately the back door of the house never closes properly. Microsoft Home have tried to fix this by the application of several large planks on the inside of the door. It would have worked, were it not for the fact that the house has several such doors along the back wall, and they all open outwards anyway.
The windows tend to shatter or fall out of their frames for no reason, and sometimes an entire floor will collapse, destroying any posessions, family members and pets who happen to be on it at the time.
Buyer beware, when you purchase a Microsoft House, you are in fact puyrchasing a "single, revocable, non-transferable license" to
live in a microsoft house. If for any reason you decide to redecorate, invest in some non-micfosort furniture or take out a mortgage with another building company, your house will be knocked down. Microsoft Homes also tend to fall downon their own after a short period of time and require "reseating" in their foundations.
The Open Source House: Rest assured in the knowledge that the design of your home has been tweaked, poked and prodded by hundreds of architects and engineers, to the point that it's virtually indestructible. Depending on which OSSH seller you buy your home from your experience might vary, from a rather spiffy and nice looking Mandrake home, to the incredibly secure RedRoof. Many homes come as a flat-pack in the vein of Ikea, requiring assembly. These homes are only recommended for experience engineers. Others come fully assembled, but lack basic necesseties such as faucets, doors, window-panes and occasionally walls. Others seem to resemble Microsoft Home or the Apple House, yet are so far advanced beyond in terms of style and sheer niftiness that the comparison is... strange.
You can redecorate your house at will, completely rearranging the layout of the rooms with great ease, so long a you don't mind the risk of occasionaly rebuilding a wall or changing some of the furniture. Unfortunately, the security of the OSSH is so complete that you might occasionally find yourself unable to look out of the windows, or indeed leave the house. Occasionally, making changes in the basement (oddly referred to as the "root" of the house by the engineers) will cause the house to fall over, requiring a complete reconstruction or attendance by a neightbour who happens to know how the house works.
IBM Home #2:
Originally designed with some help from Microsoft Homes, the IBM home#2 was meant to be the next generation of designer homes for work and family. Home#2's are not built anymore, although they still send out structural engineers to look after any that are still standing.
Sun's The Solaris:
Solaris homes are powered by something a lot like electricity, only different, called the "Sparc". Solaris designs range from the large appartments to small condos and even garden sheds, but mainly they are used as appartments for hundreds of people.
If software companies made houses...
