I can't believe Apple is going to charge another $129 for the next upgrade to the operating system. That's one-hundred and thirty more dollars that Macintosh fans have to pay out to finally get an operating system that renders video through the video card and, in my opinion, bring MacOS X to where it should have been with the release of version 10.0.
That brings the total cost of MacOS X to $260.
Steve, that just plain sucks.
If the game is price perception then Apple is winning. But if the goal is to deliver a competitive operating system to compete with Windows in value and price then they still have a ways to go.
MacOS is wonderful to use but it's just not complete. It still lags sorely behind Windows in speed. Don't give me the gigaflops story or I'll bonk you on the head. Sure the PowerPC screams past a Pentium in processor tests, we have all seen the commercials and the independent PC Lab reports, but sit in front of a PC and a Mac and just open applications, browse the web, etc., Windows will beat Mac the almost all of the time.
Mike Davis, the creator of Only Mortal (a MacOS X application) recently told me that the Macintosh is so sluggish because it's still running on old code. Apple programmers are still using Carbon instead of Cocoa. This is like the difference between FM radio and HDTV.
I miss MacOS X sometimes but the speed and performance of Windows keeps me from switching back. And there is no way I would ever shell out another hundred-plus dollars for more FM radio, I don't care how cool it looks.
Join the fray by reading through and commenting at the end.
Just thought I should share that it is only a $20 upgrade for existing OS X users. I think this is completely fair.
$20 for existing OSX users, and $100 (OK, $99.95) to use the "new" .Mac service (nee iTools) that once was free...
"That brings the total cost of MacOS X to $260"
Um.. no. The $129 price is the full price.
As the previous two comments pointed out, if you already own OS X, it's $20 for the upgrade.
Matt, I can't find anything on Apple's website that suggests existing users can upgrade for $20. I did find this tidbit from Mac Central (maccentral.com):
"Mac OS X 10.2 will cost US$129. It will be on sale Aug. 24. If you buy a Mac before then, you can get Jaguar for $19.95."
I also had trouble finding anything on the site and I think you might be right Greg. Here is what the press release said from apple.com:
"The standard Mac OS Up-To-Date upgrade package is available to all customers who purchase a new Mac system on or after July 17 that do not have Mac OS X v10.2 installed. The Mac OS X v10.2 Up-To-Date package is available for a shipping and handling fee of $19.95 (US) and includes the Mac OS X v10.2 upgrade CDs and an updated Developer Tools CD."
Gulp.
That's what I thought. So Jeremy, a complete version of MacOS X will have cost me $260 because I was an 'early adopter' who bought 10.0 the day it was released, only to find that it was slower than the line I stood in just to buy the damn thing.
Apple in all of their stock floundering greed is looking to swipe more of my money to make their Q4 bottom line look appealing to Nasdaq vultures.
Think Greed.
Greed, or realism? First off, nobody is forced to use iTools; while it's true that iDisk and Home Page were features that attracted people to the Mac (when they were introduced in 1999), these services cost money to run. $100/year for 100MB of web hosting space is about right on the money. They should have offered a cheaper tier in between, though.
While Apple has healthier margins than most PC makers, they're not *that* big; they are experiencing the effects of the economic downturn and stock meltdowns just like everyone else. Mac users must lose the Mothership mindset that merely purchasing a Mac once entitles them to a lifetime of free upgrades, tech support, and online services. If you want to jack up the price of Macs by $100-200 across the board, maybe Apple can do that, but then they lose their newfound price-competitiveness. Apple hasn't experienced massive layoffs, and still manage to hit earnings estimates. Still, they have to move from "merely profitable" to healthy year-over-year growth. The bullet must be bit and discontinuing free services is, sadly, part of the plan.
I'm a bit perplexed about your rants about the underlying hardware and the Carbon-vs-Cocoa issue. I wish you'd provide some more specific examples. I'm sure a lot was merely Carbonized in the beginning, but everything I've read seems to state that all new apps are written in Cocoa (or Java, occasionally), and Carbon exists merely for porting older OS 9 apps. I think as of OS 10.2 they've upped the Cocoa-ization quotient by quite a bit - the new multithreaded Finder being an example.
As for the CPU speed issue, I'd argue that with optimized code, a G4 will perform much better than a P4. Till now, the code *hasn't* been optimized; with better multithreading and Quartz Extreme taking a major load off the CPU, I expect 10.2 to be quite snappy. That being said, I use 10.1.5 on a 450MHz Cube and while I do encounter the spinning beach ball from time to time, overall it seems right on par with my PC (a 733MHz PIII, W2K) - not bad for 2-generations-old hardware!
As for the price point - well, some of us who got OS X with our systems are lucky to only pay $129; some will be luckier and only pay $19.99; and some will be twice-unlucky people who bought the Public Beta and now must buy 10.2 again. But that's the way of all software - why should Apple be any different than the rest of the industry? Economics is economics is economics. People's gots to get paid.
Damn AJ, do you have a Powerpoint presentation to go with your lecture? :)
And what's with these damn coupons I got with my iBook? Do they not count for anything?
BTW, Greg, I'll be in southern Cali next week.
You received coupons with your computer? Does this mean that not only are Macintosh people are smarter but they use coupons too?
We need coupons after spending the extra cash on the cool lookin' laptop. But I'm not complaining. I'm sure Mr. Jobs will not screw users like that....or would he? But what do I care, I get it cheap from my employer and/or educator UNC.
"I use 10.1.5 on a 450MHz Cube and while I do encounter the spinning beach ball from time to time, overall it seems right on par with my PC (a 733MHz PIII, W2K) - not bad for 2-generations-old hardware! "
How many generations old is a 733 PIII? I know my computer is old and I built it up chaep with only a 1 Ghz Chip (i hear mac will break 1 Ghz soon am i correct?) ;)
(opps didn't mean to send yet)
but it handles MS XP fine.
Are macs still neccesary for design? I understand that in the past if you wanted photoshop, quark etc you needed a mac. That is not true anymore. Is a mac really more intuitive than a pc? I know they are pretty but my computer sits under my desk so it hardly matters. What is the advantage to using a mac?
How do I upgrade my Atari 400?
Hey, sorry for the loooong post.
woods-fehr, there are plenty of advantages to using a Mac. My PIII is my work PC and for most things, it is indeed fine and dandy - I spend 90% of my time in Adobe applications which are near-identical cross-platform (InDesign, Photoshop, etc.).
I'm not dissing W2K; it's been exceptionally stable compared to earlier versions of NT. But the differences are in the details, which make a world of difference to productivity.
I'm not going to list them all...follow these links and read for yourself!
webmastermac.com
and
why mac
are good starts. (The latter page has an archived copy of the "75 Reasons" PDF, good for a read.) Some of the info compares OS 9 to Windows 95, but many of the UI criticisms are still valid. Some OS 9 behaviours which are returning in OS 10.2 but were missing from 10.0 and 10.1.
I'm not saying OS X is perfect...but it seems more cleanly architected and usable, more forgiving, and more useful overall. YMMV.
I've been using the most recent build of Jaguar a bit and will, unhappily, be shelling out the $129. Unhappily because I agree that OS X is only now getting to where it should have been when released and I feel that I've been buying betas for the last year and a half.
That said, Jaguar is truly fast and has features that I want (read, rendezvous, iSync.)
I think Apple has begun it's Jobs/iMac delayed slide into irrelevance. There problem now is poor adoption of OS X and they should be making sure that the early adopters are happy. If they did that, their bottom line would be secure for quite awhile. Unfortunately, this seems like a short term fix to boost revenues, and has pissed off just the people they should be working hard to make happy.
Not good. Then again, after playing around with XP for awhile I can say that I'm not anxious to switch to it, whether the apps that I use for web design run on it or not.
Hey Mitch. Just throw it away and get a Commodore 128. It is much, much faster than the Atari 400.
AJ,
Apples UI and product design is by far the best in the industry, but it's also by far the most impractical.
1. AppleScript -- how may Mac users actually use this? I really don't know, but if it's only a minority of Mac users is it really relevant to compare this against XP?
2. Incredible multitasking -- The last time I checked XP never had a problem with multi-tasking. Processor speed and memory play an important role in multitasking so this should also be taken into consideration. I've seen a Mac crap out on just opening Photoshop. Apps that are open right now as I write this: 2 IE browser windoes, Outlook, Excel, Word, Lotus Notes, ActiveSync, and about 3 other apps running in the background in my systray.
3. Flawless screen refresh....hardware should be a consideration (video cards, RAM, etc).
4. 128 x 128 icons -- so? How does this improve productivity? It looks good, but that's all. The same goes for the "shrinking" of apps into the Dock. Who R E A L L Y cares?
5. Interface Ripoff -- He's comparing an XP chrome theme to OS X UI. The XP UI looks nothing like OS X UI.
6. Universal Keyboard shortcuts -- Use them everday in XP. Next.
7. Translucent Terminal -- C'mon...when was the last time you read an article on the web and typed at the same time. Humans don't work that way. At best you can listen to music and type (like I'm doing now) or read, but to read and type at the same time would require an extra brain.
8. Rip MP3 at no extra charge -- there are plenty of free solutions on the web that allow you to rip MP3. By the way, WMA is small and the quality is the same if not better.
9. Full drag-n-drop support -- Doing it everyday in XP.
10. No irriatating "Wizards" -- I'll give him that one.
11. No feedback as to whether an app is launching -- He wants a cute little graphic while he waits one nanosecond to launch an app? Mac users have to wait longer for their apps to load so it's understandable.
I told my wife this morning that I felt like picking a fight. I think this is the closest I'll get all day.
The Commodore 128? Cool, and I've heard that I can store recipes on it too.
There is nothing that can not be done with a Commodore 128, the pinnacle of 8-bit computing.
Your are not the only one.
Interesting. My previous post is missing.