The bulk of the "hardcore design and broadcast" businesses will still be running a mixture of PPC with 10.4.x and PPC/Intel with 10.5.x
I agree the adoption of Snow Leopard will be slow in these markets. Whatever new Mac Pros they get will probably be downgraded to 10.5.x to fit in with their main installed base of 10.4.x/ 10.5.x PPC/Intel Mac Pros.
Smaller and more nimble studios (say in the 5 to 30 employee range) will adopt Snow Leopard as they get new Macs through 2010... Probably trickling in from the admin/ business/ project management side, with the production Macs going Snow Leopard probably only 2nd half of 2010 starting with those Macs doing "simpler" or more "straight forward" Photoshop/ CS4/ Final Cut/ Aperture work.
It will take a good 6 months for good stable support for Snow Leopard from 3rd party manufacturers IMO of that real expensive broadcast hardware eg. Blackmagic, AJA, audio interfaces and upwards in price and spec. Also all that RAID hardware drivers will take a while to be real good and stable on Snow Leopard... Since there are a lot more diverse RAID setups now since Apple stopped making their XRaid for most markets.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Trajectory
Likely they still are. I worked in several large ad/marketing firms in NYC and they all had very slow adoption rates of new Mac hardware and software because of the cost of replacing hundreds of computers + software. One firm I worked at, with dozens of offices around the world, was still using OS9 three years after OSX was released, and their hardware was older. They had an in-house policy of upgrading hardware every 6-7 years if it was deemed necessary.
Smaller shops may adopt newer technology faster, but, I doubt they are replacing 300+ Macs like the companies where I worked. The only time you see people upgrading every 3-4 years is mostly for personal use or small businesses. But given the current economic climate, many people will likely put off those costs until next year or later once things hopefully turn around.
Also, most of these companies won't immediately upgrade to Snow Leopard anyway until the bugs have been worked out and is proven to be very stable.
I'm curious. With what Mac are they planning on replacing the G5's?
Mac Pros - they're pretty much all G5 Power Macs, apart from a handful of G5 iMacs which are used for image review/catalog.
The freedom to upgrade came because our publishing database/cms software has finally been upgraded from a classic app to a web-based solution, which also allows them to finally upgrade from Panther..
It also allows them to normalise the software on each machine to the same level as there was a complete mixture of different versions of quark, photoshop, illustrator, acrobat, etc etc.
As to the previous comment about keeping old hardware running because once it's it's past it's infant mortality rate it'll be fine doesn't wash - new G5 parts are not easy to find (at least in the UK..), and most of that is ebay level spare parts, and you end up cannibalising to keep things going. IT doesn't like that, so once hardware is out of manufacturer backed warranty/extended warranty periods, they replace with new hardware.
As I said before, the last legacy software hurdle has now been removed, so we can now upgrade with no issue.
The team using the macs are really looking forward to the extra speed the intel platform will deliver, and it'll make support a darned site easier with everyone using the same kit.
The rest of the company are using Dells running XP, with a few odd Vista machines floating about, and yes, some things are stuck in limbo because some of the the other systems which are business critical will not run on Vista/Windows 7, hell, the web-based reservations system doesn't work properly on anything but IE6/7..
But, the software is in the process of being updated, and once it is, everything will get upgraded as per the macs have been - or we start the process of looking at other software which *is* compatible.
It makes me wonder sometimes if there is ever any review here. And this is not the first time.
If I really have a good proof and a good lead, would I broadcast it with such crappy photos? For an online site that considers itself an expert in technology, has it ever asked how easy it is to photoshop? Look at the artistic renditions of the iTablet or whatever you want to call it, they are so beautiful, so real but the artists never presented them as such.
And the images provided are not even good ones. And you accepted them as proofs?
But forget the photos as proofs. Do you really think Apple would release it first in Japan and with a mini at that?
Come on, do you even think critically? If you did, would you even publish this? The more tragic part is a similar lack of critical thinking among some readers here -- accepting articles like this as real news?
I understand that there are days when you do not have enough articles to justify the site; but you have some readers who seem to take the time to write more critically and thoughtfully. Why not invite them, and perhaps pay them to write -- to increase the number of credible contents and perhaps the quality of contents?
You really think all those design and audio/visual shops using PPC computers will just throw them away to use Snow Leopard because it only costs $29?? LOL!
Snow Leopard was designed to take advantage of Intel chips... there is no benefit to PowerPC Macs and so no reason to upgrade them. And you're absolutely correct in thinking that no one will throw away their PPC computers just to upgrade... PPC was far superior to Intel... too bad IBM was lame in keeping up with Intel.
On a side note, This is one of the ways MS trips up trying to satisfy all the 'legacy' crap hardware/software produced in the past. I applaud Apple for doing this.
I have 2 original Apple intel's (laptop & iMac) with no signs of slowing down going into their 4th year. Thats pretty good value. I almost wish they would break so I can justify getting the new iMac and an MBA!
I agree! My iMac is still going strong after 3.5 years. I've been using the "beta" version of Snow Leopard for a month now and it works flawlessly... and i bet it will continue to work fine for a few more years. Waiting for the next generation before I upgrade, hopefully it's a quad-core machine.
I agree that one reason why I like OS X is that they aren?t supporting nearly as much legacy code as Windows does. However, most businesses need that legacy support and MS? Windows business oriented OS means that they they have to support legacy HW and code. Apple will never be able to get a substantial foothold in the business sector as long as they are quick to drop legacy support and don?t allow 3rd-party PC makers to license their OS. It?s obvious that we have our Mac preference and I wish that all the Carbon was removed from Snow Leopard (which it hasn?t) but we also need to realize that these different business models both suit their customer?s needs.
PS: Why did you reply to yourself?
Snow Leopard still has Rosetta as a voluntary install... Although Windows still supports crap as far back as Windows ME, they have dropped support for 98 and their hardware support only goes back a few years. Even though Snow Leopard only supports Intel Macs, it runs much better on older Intel hardware than Windows Vista can ever possibly dream of.
When you start using dollars signs for a discussion, can you provide us the calculation and not do a marketing/sales director gloss over, without providing the actual meat.
Pet pev of mine, when I had to listen to my marketing/sales director try to bluff arguments with me.
What are the actual numbers?
If I tell you that the sun is significantly larger than the moon do you need actual numbers for a logic discussion about this fact to be true? The actual numbers for every value are irrelevant as it?s clear that it?s a waste of resources to support so few old Macs.
Snow Leopard still has Rosetta as a voluntary install... Although Windows still supports crap as far back as Windows ME, they have dropped support for 98 and their hardware support only goes back a few years. Even though Snow Leopard only supports Intel Macs, it runs much better on older Intel hardware than Windows Vista can ever possibly dream of.
Those are very different things. Rosetta allow for legacy apps to be supported on the modern OS by using an app for emulation. MS is maintaining more native support for legacy apps with legacy OS underpinnings. In MS defense, legacy apps will run natively, but since the HW has increased so much since the PPC days and Rosetta is well done one is not likely to see much, if any slow down.
Waiting for the next generation before I upgrade, hopefully it's a quad-core machine.
Hopefully there will be plenty of GCD optimized apps and better development of GCD in 10.7 to really make use of multiple cores. I have yet to see any testing that shows that multiple cores at slower clock speeds to the equivalent price point of the dual core at faster clock speeds is better using Snow Leopard for every day tasks.
You actually think the majority of design and AV shops are still using PPC machines. Likely not. And even those that are will be just fine running Leopard until the machines break down.
You might be surprised by the hardware some people in the business cling to. I have a friend who's been a pro photographer for over 30 years and in addition to the Intel Macs and PPC PowerMac G5s he has, he still has two Powermac 9600s running Mac OS 8.6 and Photoshop 4 IN PRODUCTION. What amazes me is that the old SCSI drives in those machines seem to be bulletproof. I can't see modern SATA drives ever lasting 13 years.
Next month when SL is released, how many legacy Macs will be rendered inoperable? If they worked before SL, they'll work just the same after.
It must be pointed out, as well, that one of the goals of SL is to develop an efficient. leaner code aimed at optimizing Intel-based Macs. Not cluttering up SL to accommodate legacy systems is consistent with that goal.
No one is going to trash a functioning pre-Intel Mac the day SL comes to market and as such, what's the problem?
Besides, if you were to compare the potential gain Apple would get from motivating some to update their hardware with the small boost to SL sales possible if this software also worked on legacy systems, clearly Apple gains more from the former than the latter.
It should likewise be noted that the cost of purchasing a basic Mac today is significantly lower than it once was. It cost me 10 times more to buy a G4 Tower a few years ago than it costs now to buy a Mini that will run circles around that old hardware. Considering hard drives only last a few years, it makes a lot more sense to buy a whole new computer, including the latest and greatest software, than it does to continue to prop up a system that clearly is going to require maintenance in the near future. If Apple continues on with the Mini that machine will get progressively faster. If speed isn't a significant consideration, then what do you want SL for? If speed is important, then you're likely to want to upgrade equipment to gain even more. If it isn't why care about SL?
First, businesses do not normally jump on an update right away anyway. When money is involved, they want to make sure the update is stable. Second, I suspect most big shops start to update their computers every two three years. So, they probably have a mixture of both Power PC and Intel machines.
Moreover, the speed increase gives serious shops an incentive to upgrade their machines if they have not already. So, Apple may lose some update sales, but it will gain some new Mac sales. Win win anyway you cut it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Trajectory
You really think all those design and audio/visual shops using PPC computers will just throw them away to use Snow Leopard because it only costs $29?? LOL!
You might be surprised by the hardware some people in the business cling to. I have a friend who's been a pro photographer for over 30 years and in addition to the Intel Macs and PPC PowerMac G5s he has, he still has two Powermac 9600s running Mac OS 8.6 and Photoshop 4 IN PRODUCTION. What amazes me is that the old SCSI drives in those machines seem to be bulletproof. I can't see modern SATA drives ever lasting 13 years.
Do those computers use plug-ins not available for newer systems, or would a new system not improve productivity?
SCSI drives are generally more expensive. They're supposed to be very well designed and well built, fewer shortcuts taken that would be done on IDE/ATA to keep the price down.
The equivalent of SATA then is some form of IDE/ATA. I've had maybe 1 in 10 to 1 in 20 consumer hard drives fail before it's retired, but haven't yet had a SCSI drive fail yet that I recall.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Carmissimo
Next month when SL is released, how many legacy Macs will be rendered inoperable? If they worked before SL, they'll work just the same after.
It must be pointed out, as well, that one of the goals of SL is to develop an efficient. leaner code aimed at optimizing Intel-based Macs. Not cluttering up SL to accommodate legacy systems is consistent with that goal.
No one is going to trash a functioning pre-Intel Mac the day SL comes to market and as such, what's the problem?
I agree, I think people are making too big of a deal about the older systems. Consumers owning older systems might not be so prone to pay money to update the software anyway. Pro users are going to follow their needs, but pro users don't account for as big of a percentage of Mac users as they used to, so it makes little sense to suggest that G5 users are going to hurt Snow Leopard adoption by a large margin. If a PowerMac G5 still does what you need, that's great, it may well still work just fine for many years.
That will, unfortunately, dramatically slow down the adoption of Snow Leopard and any software designed to run only with SL.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Everyone Else In This Increasingly Silly Thread
blah blah blah blah....
First of all, Mr. T, that was a phenomenal example of accidental trolling you just pulled. Kudos.
Now, lets suppose that Trajectory is right, and that SL adoption is significantly slower than it could be if PPC were also supported. How is that a significantly bad thing? Acknowledging potential problems like some high end programs requiring SL for the Grand Central Dispatch features (though I really kind of doubt that there is anything in SL that will make a program not backward compatible with 10.5), we should keep in mind that software adoption issues don't really affect Apple that much.
Microsoft has to be very concerned about adoption of its products for two big reasons: First, it puts all its eggs in one basket, and makes HUGE updates all at once (and that usually happens only once every 5-10 years), introducing a ton of new features and new technology en masse; Second, Microsoft's business is dependent on software sales revenue.
Apple, on the other hand, has been very good about feeding updates gradually, putting out a new OS version every year or two (someone else surely knows the correct span, so I'll just be vague here). And most importantly, Apple's profits come from hardware sales, not software sales. So if Apple sold not a single copy of Snow Leopard, it really wouldn't hurt them any (except for all the SL disks lying around in their warehouse... Lisa time maybe?). New Macs would continue to come with SL, and Apple would move on to 10.7, 10.8, etc, etc. This non-reliance on OS sales is reflected in the fact that Apple really doesn't have any copy protection on the OS, aside from consumer loyalty and individual integrity.
So, my question to Mr. T is this: What potential harm, if any, do you see in a slow adoption rate, versus a fast adoption rate? (that's a serious question, please answer it).
Comments
Funny how the disk label is in english while the installer is in some sort of Chinese.
You do know that Japanese uses a lot of Chinese characters but not vice-versa, right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji
The bulk of the "hardcore design and broadcast" businesses will still be running a mixture of PPC with 10.4.x and PPC/Intel with 10.5.x
I agree the adoption of Snow Leopard will be slow in these markets. Whatever new Mac Pros they get will probably be downgraded to 10.5.x to fit in with their main installed base of 10.4.x/ 10.5.x PPC/Intel Mac Pros.
Smaller and more nimble studios (say in the 5 to 30 employee range) will adopt Snow Leopard as they get new Macs through 2010... Probably trickling in from the admin/ business/ project management side, with the production Macs going Snow Leopard probably only 2nd half of 2010 starting with those Macs doing "simpler" or more "straight forward" Photoshop/ CS4/ Final Cut/ Aperture work.
It will take a good 6 months for good stable support for Snow Leopard from 3rd party manufacturers IMO of that real expensive broadcast hardware eg. Blackmagic, AJA, audio interfaces and upwards in price and spec. Also all that RAID hardware drivers will take a while to be real good and stable on Snow Leopard... Since there are a lot more diverse RAID setups now since Apple stopped making their XRaid for most markets.
Likely they still are. I worked in several large ad/marketing firms in NYC and they all had very slow adoption rates of new Mac hardware and software because of the cost of replacing hundreds of computers + software. One firm I worked at, with dozens of offices around the world, was still using OS9 three years after OSX was released, and their hardware was older. They had an in-house policy of upgrading hardware every 6-7 years if it was deemed necessary.
Smaller shops may adopt newer technology faster, but, I doubt they are replacing 300+ Macs like the companies where I worked. The only time you see people upgrading every 3-4 years is mostly for personal use or small businesses. But given the current economic climate, many people will likely put off those costs until next year or later once things hopefully turn around.
Also, most of these companies won't immediately upgrade to Snow Leopard anyway until the bugs have been worked out and is proven to be very stable.
You can now order the standalone version or is that an error?
I'm curious. With what Mac are they planning on replacing the G5's?
Mac Pros - they're pretty much all G5 Power Macs, apart from a handful of G5 iMacs which are used for image review/catalog.
The freedom to upgrade came because our publishing database/cms software has finally been upgraded from a classic app to a web-based solution, which also allows them to finally upgrade from Panther..
It also allows them to normalise the software on each machine to the same level as there was a complete mixture of different versions of quark, photoshop, illustrator, acrobat, etc etc.
As to the previous comment about keeping old hardware running because once it's it's past it's infant mortality rate it'll be fine doesn't wash - new G5 parts are not easy to find (at least in the UK..), and most of that is ebay level spare parts, and you end up cannibalising to keep things going. IT doesn't like that, so once hardware is out of manufacturer backed warranty/extended warranty periods, they replace with new hardware.
As I said before, the last legacy software hurdle has now been removed, so we can now upgrade with no issue.
The team using the macs are really looking forward to the extra speed the intel platform will deliver, and it'll make support a darned site easier with everyone using the same kit.
The rest of the company are using Dells running XP, with a few odd Vista machines floating about, and yes, some things are stuck in limbo because some of the the other systems which are business critical will not run on Vista/Windows 7, hell, the web-based reservations system doesn't work properly on anything but IE6/7..
But, the software is in the process of being updated, and once it is, everything will get upgraded as per the macs have been - or we start the process of looking at other software which *is* compatible.
If I really have a good proof and a good lead, would I broadcast it with such crappy photos? For an online site that considers itself an expert in technology, has it ever asked how easy it is to photoshop? Look at the artistic renditions of the iTablet or whatever you want to call it, they are so beautiful, so real but the artists never presented them as such.
And the images provided are not even good ones. And you accepted them as proofs?
But forget the photos as proofs. Do you really think Apple would release it first in Japan and with a mini at that?
Come on, do you even think critically? If you did, would you even publish this? The more tragic part is a similar lack of critical thinking among some readers here -- accepting articles like this as real news?
I understand that there are days when you do not have enough articles to justify the site; but you have some readers who seem to take the time to write more critically and thoughtfully. Why not invite them, and perhaps pay them to write -- to increase the number of credible contents and perhaps the quality of contents?
Notice the mispelling of Time Capsule as Time "Cupsule" in this screenshot: FWIW:
That appears to be a post on a Japanese forum. Everyone misspells things from time to time.
That will, unfortunately, dramatically slow down the adoption of Snow Leopard and any software designed to run only with SL.
Um, yeah. I can sell you a clue for low, low price of $29.99.
You really think all those design and audio/visual shops using PPC computers will just throw them away to use Snow Leopard because it only costs $29?? LOL!
Snow Leopard was designed to take advantage of Intel chips... there is no benefit to PowerPC Macs and so no reason to upgrade them. And you're absolutely correct in thinking that no one will throw away their PPC computers just to upgrade... PPC was far superior to Intel... too bad IBM was lame in keeping up with Intel.
Your company's approach is smart!
On a side note, This is one of the ways MS trips up trying to satisfy all the 'legacy' crap hardware/software produced in the past. I applaud Apple for doing this.
I have 2 original Apple intel's (laptop & iMac) with no signs of slowing down going into their 4th year. Thats pretty good value. I almost wish they would break so I can justify getting the new iMac and an MBA!
I agree! My iMac is still going strong after 3.5 years. I've been using the "beta" version of Snow Leopard for a month now and it works flawlessly... and i bet it will continue to work fine for a few more years. Waiting for the next generation before I upgrade, hopefully it's a quad-core machine.
I agree that one reason why I like OS X is that they aren?t supporting nearly as much legacy code as Windows does. However, most businesses need that legacy support and MS? Windows business oriented OS means that they they have to support legacy HW and code. Apple will never be able to get a substantial foothold in the business sector as long as they are quick to drop legacy support and don?t allow 3rd-party PC makers to license their OS. It?s obvious that we have our Mac preference and I wish that all the Carbon was removed from Snow Leopard (which it hasn?t) but we also need to realize that these different business models both suit their customer?s needs.
PS: Why did you reply to yourself?
Snow Leopard still has Rosetta as a voluntary install... Although Windows still supports crap as far back as Windows ME, they have dropped support for 98 and their hardware support only goes back a few years. Even though Snow Leopard only supports Intel Macs, it runs much better on older Intel hardware than Windows Vista can ever possibly dream of.
When you start using dollars signs for a discussion, can you provide us the calculation and not do a marketing/sales director gloss over, without providing the actual meat.
Pet pev of mine, when I had to listen to my marketing/sales director try to bluff arguments with me.
What are the actual numbers?
If I tell you that the sun is significantly larger than the moon do you need actual numbers for a logic discussion about this fact to be true? The actual numbers for every value are irrelevant as it?s clear that it?s a waste of resources to support so few old Macs.
Snow Leopard still has Rosetta as a voluntary install... Although Windows still supports crap as far back as Windows ME, they have dropped support for 98 and their hardware support only goes back a few years. Even though Snow Leopard only supports Intel Macs, it runs much better on older Intel hardware than Windows Vista can ever possibly dream of.
Those are very different things. Rosetta allow for legacy apps to be supported on the modern OS by using an app for emulation. MS is maintaining more native support for legacy apps with legacy OS underpinnings. In MS defense, legacy apps will run natively, but since the HW has increased so much since the PPC days and Rosetta is well done one is not likely to see much, if any slow down.
Waiting for the next generation before I upgrade, hopefully it's a quad-core machine.
Hopefully there will be plenty of GCD optimized apps and better development of GCD in 10.7 to really make use of multiple cores. I have yet to see any testing that shows that multiple cores at slower clock speeds to the equivalent price point of the dual core at faster clock speeds is better using Snow Leopard for every day tasks.
You actually think the majority of design and AV shops are still using PPC machines. Likely not. And even those that are will be just fine running Leopard until the machines break down.
You might be surprised by the hardware some people in the business cling to. I have a friend who's been a pro photographer for over 30 years and in addition to the Intel Macs and PPC PowerMac G5s he has, he still has two Powermac 9600s running Mac OS 8.6 and Photoshop 4 IN PRODUCTION. What amazes me is that the old SCSI drives in those machines seem to be bulletproof. I can't see modern SATA drives ever lasting 13 years.
It must be pointed out, as well, that one of the goals of SL is to develop an efficient. leaner code aimed at optimizing Intel-based Macs. Not cluttering up SL to accommodate legacy systems is consistent with that goal.
No one is going to trash a functioning pre-Intel Mac the day SL comes to market and as such, what's the problem?
Besides, if you were to compare the potential gain Apple would get from motivating some to update their hardware with the small boost to SL sales possible if this software also worked on legacy systems, clearly Apple gains more from the former than the latter.
It should likewise be noted that the cost of purchasing a basic Mac today is significantly lower than it once was. It cost me 10 times more to buy a G4 Tower a few years ago than it costs now to buy a Mini that will run circles around that old hardware. Considering hard drives only last a few years, it makes a lot more sense to buy a whole new computer, including the latest and greatest software, than it does to continue to prop up a system that clearly is going to require maintenance in the near future. If Apple continues on with the Mini that machine will get progressively faster. If speed isn't a significant consideration, then what do you want SL for? If speed is important, then you're likely to want to upgrade equipment to gain even more. If it isn't why care about SL?
Moreover, the speed increase gives serious shops an incentive to upgrade their machines if they have not already. So, Apple may lose some update sales, but it will gain some new Mac sales. Win win anyway you cut it.
You really think all those design and audio/visual shops using PPC computers will just throw them away to use Snow Leopard because it only costs $29?? LOL!
You might be surprised by the hardware some people in the business cling to. I have a friend who's been a pro photographer for over 30 years and in addition to the Intel Macs and PPC PowerMac G5s he has, he still has two Powermac 9600s running Mac OS 8.6 and Photoshop 4 IN PRODUCTION. What amazes me is that the old SCSI drives in those machines seem to be bulletproof. I can't see modern SATA drives ever lasting 13 years.
Do those computers use plug-ins not available for newer systems, or would a new system not improve productivity?
SCSI drives are generally more expensive. They're supposed to be very well designed and well built, fewer shortcuts taken that would be done on IDE/ATA to keep the price down.
The equivalent of SATA then is some form of IDE/ATA. I've had maybe 1 in 10 to 1 in 20 consumer hard drives fail before it's retired, but haven't yet had a SCSI drive fail yet that I recall.
Next month when SL is released, how many legacy Macs will be rendered inoperable? If they worked before SL, they'll work just the same after.
It must be pointed out, as well, that one of the goals of SL is to develop an efficient. leaner code aimed at optimizing Intel-based Macs. Not cluttering up SL to accommodate legacy systems is consistent with that goal.
No one is going to trash a functioning pre-Intel Mac the day SL comes to market and as such, what's the problem?
I agree, I think people are making too big of a deal about the older systems. Consumers owning older systems might not be so prone to pay money to update the software anyway. Pro users are going to follow their needs, but pro users don't account for as big of a percentage of Mac users as they used to, so it makes little sense to suggest that G5 users are going to hurt Snow Leopard adoption by a large margin. If a PowerMac G5 still does what you need, that's great, it may well still work just fine for many years.
That will, unfortunately, dramatically slow down the adoption of Snow Leopard and any software designed to run only with SL.
blah blah blah blah....
First of all, Mr. T, that was a phenomenal example of accidental trolling you just pulled.
Now, lets suppose that Trajectory is right, and that SL adoption is significantly slower than it could be if PPC were also supported. How is that a significantly bad thing? Acknowledging potential problems like some high end programs requiring SL for the Grand Central Dispatch features (though I really kind of doubt that there is anything in SL that will make a program not backward compatible with 10.5), we should keep in mind that software adoption issues don't really affect Apple that much.
Microsoft has to be very concerned about adoption of its products for two big reasons: First, it puts all its eggs in one basket, and makes HUGE updates all at once (and that usually happens only once every 5-10 years), introducing a ton of new features and new technology en masse; Second, Microsoft's business is dependent on software sales revenue.
Apple, on the other hand, has been very good about feeding updates gradually, putting out a new OS version every year or two (someone else surely knows the correct span, so I'll just be vague here). And most importantly, Apple's profits come from hardware sales, not software sales. So if Apple sold not a single copy of Snow Leopard, it really wouldn't hurt them any (except for all the SL disks lying around in their warehouse... Lisa time maybe?). New Macs would continue to come with SL, and Apple would move on to 10.7, 10.8, etc, etc. This non-reliance on OS sales is reflected in the fact that Apple really doesn't have any copy protection on the OS, aside from consumer loyalty and individual integrity.
So, my question to Mr. T is this: What potential harm, if any, do you see in a slow adoption rate, versus a fast adoption rate? (that's a serious question, please answer it).
C