LOLZ. Because I haven't heard that one a thousand times.
I did a comparison between the prices of upgrades between OS X an XP->Vista->7
If you had bought a PC or a Mac and somehow managed to hold on to it since 2001, then these are the numbers.
Each dot release, plus the initial version of OS X was rolled out at 129.99. If we include Snow Leopard at $29, then if you remained current, you would have paid $809.
XP Pro Retail was $299, Vista Ultimate Upgrade was $219, and 7 Upgrade will also be $219. That makes $737.
In that wildly hypothetical situation, you paid $70 (10%) more owning OS X than you did the current flavour of Windows.
To make it more realistic, say you upgraded your hardware once. That would knock out one purchase of the operating system directly. OS X - $679, Windows - $519. The difference is marked.
If you upgraded twice which is more likely, then I would suspect another $130 knocked off OS X, but unlikely that you could save yourself another upgrade under Windows. OS X $549, Windows $519.
The point to be made is that Microsoft in a relative sense isn't really gouging their customers. It looks pretty even to me.
Except when you consider what you get for $500, the value of Vista really doesn't add up. Paying out cash for frustration. Not good value. Paying out cash for Tiger, Leopard, worth it I would say.
Upgrading to Vista and Leopard were both very poor experiences for me.
Vista's problems mostly stemmed from driver support. My motherboard manufacturer made bold claims about Vista support on their website but their drivers kept bluescreening my gaming PC. It took a motherboard swap to solve the problem. Generally since SP1, Vista hasn't been that bad though. On a modern machine, its performance is actually a lot better than XP. Vista's reputation is lagging years behind reality. Vista is not another Windows ME.
But mac fanboys shouldn't gloat. After upgrading to Leopard/iLife '09, I also had lots of problems. Mail lost all of my mail after the upgrade and it took a while to research how to get it all back. iPhoto also crashed every time it started and I had to move all of my photos out of it before it would stop crashing. The upgrade was a major headache.
There's a lot Microsoft could learn from Apple though. They really should offer a family pack and Windows 7 should be 64-bit only. It may affect the netbook market in the short term but the pain now is worth the long-term advantages.
Why do these articles keep comparing pricing between OSX and Windows. Why would someone owning a Mac even consider the two?
"Hmm, I could upgrade to snow leopard... or I could put Windows 7 on my Mac, decisions decisions"
If you have a Mac, I doubt you are debating which OS to put on it. If you have a PC, well price doesn't matter because you would have to buy a Mac anyways. So WHO CARES!
Well, it does. As long as Autodesk is Windows only
Bootcamp gives the best of both worlds. But I prefer Apple's workflow (OSX, iLife, iWork).
Most Macs in 2010 running 4GB RAM while most PC users are stuck with 32bit OS's is going to make MS a laughing stock.
While a 32-bit OS was certainly the way to go for most XP and Vista users when they came out due to rampant driver issues, that isn?t so much the case now for Vista or Seven. I have had no 64-bit driver issues for quite some time in my testing, though I rarely have had need to hook up a printer or scanner, but from what I?ve read on that front it finally has been taken care of. The only machines that really will still require 32-bit OS are the Atom-based netbooks, but most notebook and desktops in 2010 should have 64-bit capable processors, sufficient driver and hopefully get the 64-bit Seven installed.
But mac fanboys shouldn't gloat. After upgrading to Leopard/iLife '09, I also had lots of problems. Mail lost all of my mail after the upgrade and it took a while to research how to get it all back. iPhoto also crashed every time it started and I had to move all of my photos out of it before it would stop crashing. The upgrade was a major headache.
The Leopard launch was certainly one of the more calamitous releases. Even the Betas saw some major changes and were widely unstable right up until the final release. I don?t know what was going on at Apple, but it wasn?t pretty.
With Snow Leopard, the last two Betas have been pretty solid (though still not GM quality) that I?ve made the move to SL as my working machine.I am using a unibody MB with the Nvidia 9400M GPU so I still don?t yet have the option for a 64-bit kernel, but I can say that in comparative benchmarkings between SL and Leopard on the same HW that the tests show about a 10% increase at this point. I don?t think you?ll have to worry about the 10.6 release being an issue.
It's circumstantial, just about every poll online is over 60% in favor of matte screens instead of glossy.
If your alienating over 60% of your market, your losing repeat business.
It's just that Apple doesn't see it because their numbers are clouded by so many new 'to computer' users right now.
But if enough newbies get burned by annoying glossy screens, they might not come back to buy again unless Apple offers a solution to the glare and reflection problem.
Hopefully they are working on it.
I am afraid that most people who prefer glossy over matte don't really bother voting in such polls, at least that's the case for me. On top of that, I seriously doubt this ratio reflect the true targeting market for Apple. Do you believe average Joe browse through these forums as often as you do?
Windows 7 Pricing has NOTHING to do with Apple. The only reason this is posted that I can see is for MS hating.
Always a fun pastime. I see nothing wrong with it and they certainly deserve it.
MS has the financial and creative (may be stretching it here) wherewithal to create a compelling user experience, and they simply don't care. It comes down to attitude. They have only themselves to blame for rolling out uninspiring, mediocre products year after year and then becoming the butt of everyone's jokes. They're a corporate/enterprise software vendor masquerading as a home/consumer vendor. At best, Windows is DirectX with some faint semblance of an OS wrapped around it. And fewer and fewer people are fooled wth the passage of time.
The Leopard launch was certainly one of the more calamitous releases. Even the Betas saw some major changes and were widely unstable right up until the final release. I don?t know what was going on at Apple, but it wasn?t pretty.
With Snow Leopard, the last two Betas have been pretty solid (though still not GM quality) that I?ve made the move to SL as my working machine.I am using a unibody MB with the Nvidia 9400M GPU so I still don?t yet have the option for a 64-bit kernel, but I can say that in comparative benchmarkings between SL and Leopard on the same HW that the tests show about a 10% increase at this point. I don?t think you?ll have to worry about the 10.6 release being an issue.
How come you don't have a 64-bit kernel? The unibody MB alu with 9400M supports a 64-bit kernel right????
Edit: From AppleInsider.... So.... they should support 64-bit kernel in the final Snow Leopard build for at least all Intel Macs released since the start of 2008, right? Anyways, not a huge deal, Leopard already supports 4GB of RAM and more... And my current MacBook chipset supports 6GB RAM
Build notes leaked on the web of a prerelease version of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard indicate that the software only supports enabling its new 64-bit kernel on certain machines, including the Xserve, Mac Pro, and MacBook Pro, but this does not mean Snow Leopard's kernel will be limited to 32-bit operation on consumer machines.
Instead, it means that the early developer build of Snow Leopard does not yet supply 64-bit kernel extensions for some of the critical components of the MacBook and other consumer machines. When released to developers around spring and to end users a few months later, Snow Leopard will support using a 64-bit kernel on all Intel Macs with 64-bit CPU, such as the Core 2 Duo.
A 64-bit kernel requires all of its extensions to also be 64-bit. Kernel extensions or KEXTs include drivers for audio hardware, graphics adapters, networking, certain printing components, and other devices on the logic board or attached as peripherals. Until Apple delivers 64-bit versions of the nearly 300 extensions it ships with Mac OS X (not all of which will need to be supported on 64-bit Macs; many are legacy), it is limiting official 64-bit kernel support to a subset of Macs in prerelease builds of the new operating system.
How about "nearly everything" that doesn't have to do with games. And even in that department Apple is opening up new frontiers with its App Store.
And MS is still overcharging (even on the upgrade) for their warmed-over version of Vista.
Microsoft dropped the ball even when it came to games. There really should be no need for a third party company like Valve to provide the digital store and multiplayer back-end for PC games.
Not that I'm complaining, Valve's Steam solution is brilliant and the top reason to install Windows. Steam existed way before Apple's app store. Apple is merely treading in Valve's footprints when it comes to games.
I disagree that Microsoft are overcharging at $49.99 though. That's a great price and should attract a lot of Windows XP users. Don't forget that Apple are charging $10 for yearly iPod touch updates. Against that backdrop, Windows 7 is a bargain.
Except that you're forgetting one little thing that changes the calculations.
MS has been late on every release they made going back to the later DOS releases.
Do you think MS wanted to go 5 years between XP and Vista? No, they didn't. Vista was about 3 years late. XP itself was over a year late. 2000 was 2 years late, and I won't bother going back any more.
And you would never know if Apple missed a deadline because they never publish them
Quote:
If MS had been within 6 months of their release dates over the years, Windows 7 would have come out in 2001, and we would have be on the third release since then.
It's not that MS doesn't want to gauge their customers, but that they have so many problems writing their OS's that they can't do business as they want to.
At the very least, there would be one more release between 2001 and now for them.
That would change their numbers completely.
But it the real world it doesn't. In the real world, the reality is that XP and Vista and now 7, have (and I suppose will) been released in approximately the same time frames as all the dot releases of OS X to Snow Leopard. And the cost of that is the sum total of what I am arguing.
But let's go back to your imaginary world for a second. You're also supposing that Microsoft would have charged the same prices for products two years apart? Is that a realistic assumption?
Quote:
In addition, you made another mistake. 10.1 was a FREE release. Given that, Apple's numbers, including 10.6, would be $674, still lower than MS's costing, even without figuring in their incompetence.
I appreciate your point, and thanks for the correction. But if Leopard wasn't an incompetent release.... even knowing exactly what hardware combinations Apple was deploying to? But incompetence is not and never was my point. Cold hard cash, my friend. Staying current with OS X has been comparable in cost to doing the same with Windows.
In the real world, the reality is that XP and Vista and now 7, have (and I suppose will) been released in approximately the same time frames as all the dot releases of OS X to Snow Leopard.
There were far more releases of OS X within those "time frames." Unless you meant something else.
And what's with the attitude?
Just asking 'what part of "approximately" did you miss'? Whether you read 'attitude' in that is entirely up to you but it's not emanating from this side of the keyboard. Trust me.
The 'point' I made is that keeping current with either operating system has been comparatively the same in dollar terms. I am not sure you read my first post in this thread as I thought that point was reasonably clear.
Thus, any assertion that Microsoft have been gouging their customers in reality is far removed from the truth.
I am not making a qualitative assessment about either operating system. Cold, hard, cash is all I'm talking about. After all, the article does make slanted references to cost, does it not?
Thus, any assertion that Microsoft have been gouging their customers in reality is far removed from the truth.
Alright, fair enough.
I was making a qualitative statement a well. As in, as a Mac user, I wouldn't even take it for free. But from a purely dollars-and-cents perspective, I'd agree, it's a fair price for an operating system.
Although Apple's releases are all full operating systems. Panther+Tiger+Leopard does not equal one Windows release.
XP was old and grey long before Vista was released. And Vista wasn't much of an achievement.
In fact:
Windows XP October 2001 - It was a functional OS (then again, they all are.) But it was a dog. Absolutely horrible, spaghetti-code. Required boatloads of 3rd party apps to keep from grinding to a halt and falling over. And it looked like a dog's breakfast, and performed the same way. Saying it was MS' finest achievement really isn't saying much. It played games real good, tho!
(Visited an Apple Store in April '06, and walked out of there astonished that I'd actually been using XP for so long when something like Tiger existed.)
Vista January 2007 - Not much needs to be said here. No point in flogging a dead horse. Everyone would rather forget about this one.
Windows 7 October 2009 - Not out yet. Average Joe will render the verdict after the first 6 months of use.
Windows users have been getting the shaft since 2001.
Comments
LOLZ. Because I haven't heard that one a thousand times.
I did a comparison between the prices of upgrades between OS X an XP->Vista->7
If you had bought a PC or a Mac and somehow managed to hold on to it since 2001, then these are the numbers.
Each dot release, plus the initial version of OS X was rolled out at 129.99. If we include Snow Leopard at $29, then if you remained current, you would have paid $809.
XP Pro Retail was $299, Vista Ultimate Upgrade was $219, and 7 Upgrade will also be $219. That makes $737.
In that wildly hypothetical situation, you paid $70 (10%) more owning OS X than you did the current flavour of Windows.
To make it more realistic, say you upgraded your hardware once. That would knock out one purchase of the operating system directly. OS X - $679, Windows - $519. The difference is marked.
If you upgraded twice which is more likely, then I would suspect another $130 knocked off OS X, but unlikely that you could save yourself another upgrade under Windows. OS X $549, Windows $519.
The point to be made is that Microsoft in a relative sense isn't really gouging their customers. It looks pretty even to me.
Except when you consider what you get for $500, the value of Vista really doesn't add up. Paying out cash for frustration. Not good value. Paying out cash for Tiger, Leopard, worth it I would say.
Vista's problems mostly stemmed from driver support. My motherboard manufacturer made bold claims about Vista support on their website but their drivers kept bluescreening my gaming PC. It took a motherboard swap to solve the problem. Generally since SP1, Vista hasn't been that bad though. On a modern machine, its performance is actually a lot better than XP. Vista's reputation is lagging years behind reality. Vista is not another Windows ME.
But mac fanboys shouldn't gloat. After upgrading to Leopard/iLife '09, I also had lots of problems. Mail lost all of my mail after the upgrade and it took a while to research how to get it all back. iPhoto also crashed every time it started and I had to move all of my photos out of it before it would stop crashing. The upgrade was a major headache.
There's a lot Microsoft could learn from Apple though. They really should offer a family pack and Windows 7 should be 64-bit only. It may affect the netbook market in the short term but the pain now is worth the long-term advantages.
Why do these articles keep comparing pricing between OSX and Windows. Why would someone owning a Mac even consider the two?
"Hmm, I could upgrade to snow leopard... or I could put Windows 7 on my Mac, decisions decisions"
If you have a Mac, I doubt you are debating which OS to put on it. If you have a PC, well price doesn't matter because you would have to buy a Mac anyways. So WHO CARES!
Well, it does. As long as Autodesk is Windows only
Bootcamp gives the best of both worlds. But I prefer Apple's workflow (OSX, iLife, iWork).
Most Macs in 2010 running 4GB RAM while most PC users are stuck with 32bit OS's is going to make MS a laughing stock.
While a 32-bit OS was certainly the way to go for most XP and Vista users when they came out due to rampant driver issues, that isn?t so much the case now for Vista or Seven. I have had no 64-bit driver issues for quite some time in my testing, though I rarely have had need to hook up a printer or scanner, but from what I?ve read on that front it finally has been taken care of. The only machines that really will still require 32-bit OS are the Atom-based netbooks, but most notebook and desktops in 2010 should have 64-bit capable processors, sufficient driver and hopefully get the 64-bit Seven installed.
But mac fanboys shouldn't gloat. After upgrading to Leopard/iLife '09, I also had lots of problems. Mail lost all of my mail after the upgrade and it took a while to research how to get it all back. iPhoto also crashed every time it started and I had to move all of my photos out of it before it would stop crashing. The upgrade was a major headache.
The Leopard launch was certainly one of the more calamitous releases. Even the Betas saw some major changes and were widely unstable right up until the final release. I don?t know what was going on at Apple, but it wasn?t pretty.
With Snow Leopard, the last two Betas have been pretty solid (though still not GM quality) that I?ve made the move to SL as my working machine.I am using a unibody MB with the Nvidia 9400M GPU so I still don?t yet have the option for a 64-bit kernel, but I can say that in comparative benchmarkings between SL and Leopard on the same HW that the tests show about a 10% increase at this point. I don?t think you?ll have to worry about the 10.6 release being an issue.
That glossy screens are killing repeat business?
It's circumstantial, just about every poll online is over 60% in favor of matte screens instead of glossy.
If your alienating over 60% of your market, your losing repeat business.
It's just that Apple doesn't see it because their numbers are clouded by so many new 'to computer' users right now.
But if enough newbies get burned by annoying glossy screens, they might not come back to buy again unless Apple offers a solution to the glare and reflection problem.
Hopefully they are working on it.
I am afraid that most people who prefer glossy over matte don't really bother voting in such polls, at least that's the case for me. On top of that, I seriously doubt this ratio reflect the true targeting market for Apple. Do you believe average Joe browse through these forums as often as you do?
heres a hint for the slow. That was called "sarcasm" a strange concept that you obviously do not grasp.
Thre was no sarcasm in that. It sounded like more bellyaching.
Windows 7 Pricing has NOTHING to do with Apple. The only reason this is posted that I can see is for MS hating.
Always a fun pastime. I see nothing wrong with it and they certainly deserve it.
MS has the financial and creative (may be stretching it here) wherewithal to create a compelling user experience, and they simply don't care. It comes down to attitude. They have only themselves to blame for rolling out uninspiring, mediocre products year after year and then becoming the butt of everyone's jokes. They're a corporate/enterprise software vendor masquerading as a home/consumer vendor. At best, Windows is DirectX with some faint semblance of an OS wrapped around it. And fewer and fewer people are fooled wth the passage of time.
The Leopard launch was certainly one of the more calamitous releases. Even the Betas saw some major changes and were widely unstable right up until the final release. I don?t know what was going on at Apple, but it wasn?t pretty.
With Snow Leopard, the last two Betas have been pretty solid (though still not GM quality) that I?ve made the move to SL as my working machine.I am using a unibody MB with the Nvidia 9400M GPU so I still don?t yet have the option for a 64-bit kernel, but I can say that in comparative benchmarkings between SL and Leopard on the same HW that the tests show about a 10% increase at this point. I don?t think you?ll have to worry about the 10.6 release being an issue.
How come you don't have a 64-bit kernel? The unibody MB alu with 9400M supports a 64-bit kernel right????
Build notes leaked on the web of a prerelease version of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard indicate that the software only supports enabling its new 64-bit kernel on certain machines, including the Xserve, Mac Pro, and MacBook Pro, but this does not mean Snow Leopard's kernel will be limited to 32-bit operation on consumer machines.
Instead, it means that the early developer build of Snow Leopard does not yet supply 64-bit kernel extensions for some of the critical components of the MacBook and other consumer machines. When released to developers around spring and to end users a few months later, Snow Leopard will support using a 64-bit kernel on all Intel Macs with 64-bit CPU, such as the Core 2 Duo.
A 64-bit kernel requires all of its extensions to also be 64-bit. Kernel extensions or KEXTs include drivers for audio hardware, graphics adapters, networking, certain printing components, and other devices on the logic board or attached as peripherals. Until Apple delivers 64-bit versions of the nearly 300 extensions it ships with Mac OS X (not all of which will need to be supported on 64-bit Macs; many are legacy), it is limiting official 64-bit kernel support to a subset of Macs in prerelease builds of the new operating system.
There's a lot Microsoft could learn from Apple though.
How about "nearly everything" that doesn't have to do with games. And even in that department Apple is opening up new frontiers with its App Store.
And MS is still overcharging (even on the upgrade) for their warmed-over version of Vista.
How come you don't have a 64-bit kernel? The unibody MB alu with 9400M supports a 64-bit kernel right????
i don't understand ?
How about "nearly everything" that doesn't have to do with games. And even in that department Apple is opening up new frontiers with its App Store.
And MS is still overcharging (even on the upgrade) for their warmed-over version of Vista.
Microsoft dropped the ball even when it came to games. There really should be no need for a third party company like Valve to provide the digital store and multiplayer back-end for PC games.
Not that I'm complaining, Valve's Steam solution is brilliant and the top reason to install Windows. Steam existed way before Apple's app store. Apple is merely treading in Valve's footprints when it comes to games.
I disagree that Microsoft are overcharging at $49.99 though. That's a great price and should attract a lot of Windows XP users. Don't forget that Apple are charging $10 for yearly iPod touch updates. Against that backdrop, Windows 7 is a bargain.
Because shopping is mostly a emotional experience and glossy sells well to newbies.
It's killing their repeat business though, guess they haven't figured that out yet.
Dude , you have beaten the f ing glossy thing to death. We get it . ok . MAC TRIPPER HATES GLOSSY
Lets move on.
Except that you're forgetting one little thing that changes the calculations.
MS has been late on every release they made going back to the later DOS releases.
Do you think MS wanted to go 5 years between XP and Vista? No, they didn't. Vista was about 3 years late. XP itself was over a year late. 2000 was 2 years late, and I won't bother going back any more.
And you would never know if Apple missed a deadline because they never publish them
If MS had been within 6 months of their release dates over the years, Windows 7 would have come out in 2001, and we would have be on the third release since then.
It's not that MS doesn't want to gauge their customers, but that they have so many problems writing their OS's that they can't do business as they want to.
At the very least, there would be one more release between 2001 and now for them.
That would change their numbers completely.
But it the real world it doesn't. In the real world, the reality is that XP and Vista and now 7, have (and I suppose will) been released in approximately the same time frames as all the dot releases of OS X to Snow Leopard. And the cost of that is the sum total of what I am arguing.
But let's go back to your imaginary world for a second. You're also supposing that Microsoft would have charged the same prices for products two years apart? Is that a realistic assumption?
In addition, you made another mistake. 10.1 was a FREE release. Given that, Apple's numbers, including 10.6, would be $674, still lower than MS's costing, even without figuring in their incompetence.
I appreciate your point, and thanks for the correction. But if Leopard wasn't an incompetent release.... even knowing exactly what hardware combinations Apple was deploying to? But incompetence is not and never was my point. Cold hard cash, my friend. Staying current with OS X has been comparable in cost to doing the same with Windows.
In the real world, the reality is that XP and Vista and now 7, have (and I suppose will) been released in approximately the same time frames as all the dot releases of OS X to Snow Leopard.
No. They haven't.
Unless you mean "announced" time frames?
Version\t Codename\t Release Date\t
Public Beta\tKodiak\t\t September 13, 2000\t
10.0\t Cheetah\t\t March 24, 2001\t
10.1\t Puma\t\t September 25, 2001\t
10.2\t Jaguar\t\t August 23, 2002\t
10.3\t Panther\t\t October 24, 2003\t
10.4\t Tiger\t June 28, 2004\t
10.5\t Leopard\t October 26, 2007\t
10.6\t Snow Leopard September 2009 (planned)
Windows XP October 2001
Vista January 2007
Windows 7 October 2009 (planned)
what part of 'approximately' did you miss?
I'm not even sure of your original meaning.
There were far more releases of OS X within those "time frames." Unless you meant something else.
And what's with the attitude?
I'm not even sure of your original meaning.
There were far more releases of OS X within those "time frames." Unless you meant something else.
And what's with the attitude?
Just asking 'what part of "approximately" did you miss'? Whether you read 'attitude' in that is entirely up to you but it's not emanating from this side of the keyboard. Trust me.
The 'point' I made is that keeping current with either operating system has been comparatively the same in dollar terms. I am not sure you read my first post in this thread as I thought that point was reasonably clear.
Thus, any assertion that Microsoft have been gouging their customers in reality is far removed from the truth.
I am not making a qualitative assessment about either operating system. Cold, hard, cash is all I'm talking about. After all, the article does make slanted references to cost, does it not?
Thus, any assertion that Microsoft have been gouging their customers in reality is far removed from the truth.
Alright, fair enough.
I was making a qualitative statement a well. As in, as a Mac user, I wouldn't even take it for free. But from a purely dollars-and-cents perspective, I'd agree, it's a fair price for an operating system.
Although Apple's releases are all full operating systems. Panther+Tiger+Leopard does not equal one Windows release.
XP was old and grey long before Vista was released. And Vista wasn't much of an achievement.
In fact:
Windows XP October 2001 - It was a functional OS (then again, they all are.) But it was a dog. Absolutely horrible, spaghetti-code. Required boatloads of 3rd party apps to keep from grinding to a halt and falling over. And it looked like a dog's breakfast, and performed the same way. Saying it was MS' finest achievement really isn't saying much. It played games real good, tho!
(Visited an Apple Store in April '06, and walked out of there astonished that I'd actually been using XP for so long when something like Tiger existed.)
Vista January 2007 - Not much needs to be said here. No point in flogging a dead horse. Everyone would rather forget about this one.
Windows 7 October 2009 - Not out yet. Average Joe will render the verdict after the first 6 months of use.
Windows users have been getting the shaft since 2001.