Leopard vs Vista

[Winnow]

Here's an article discussing Apple's upcoming OS vs Windows Vista:

Linked because it's a long article comparing the two OS's based off of comments from Steve Job's keynote speech a the WWDC.

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/ma ... review.asp

Here's an outtake:

Apple shipped 1.33 million Macs in the quarter ending June 30, 2006. It was their best Mac quarter ever. Jobs noted that the Mac's growth rate was "dramatically faster" than the rest of the PC industry, about 16.5 percent for the Mac, compared to just 6 percent for the PC. "We're gaining market share," Jobs declared triumphantly, to cheers. Ahem. Not so fast, Steve. In the previous quarter, the Mac's growth rate was significantly lower than that of the PC (13.1 percent for the PC vs. 4 percent for the Mac). More to the point, Apple's explosion growth in 2005 did nothing to help the Mac's market share, which is still mired at 2 percent worldwide. In other words, Steve's claim is baloney: Apple hasn't really gained any appreciable market share at all--indeed, Apple has lost market share every year since Jobs took the CEO helm--but his comment is technically true: In the slice of time that is the second quarter of 2006, Apple gained--get this--about 1/10th of one percent of market share. And the WWDC crowd goes wild.

"And the WWDC crowd goes wild" lol

[Zaelath]

But by the same token, I have to admit to being a bit shocked by how childish Apple is about Vista. Say what you will about Microsoft (heck, I do), but the company is at least deferential to its customers in public, about as far from smug as is humanly possible, and it very rarely takes pointed shots at the competition. From the opening PC guy video ("Widgets, gadgets... completely different. They are their own thing. Just like Aqua. I mean, uh, Aero.") to the last moments of the keynote, Jobs and company unleashed a never-ending, tireless diatribe against Microsoft and its upcoming Windows Vista release.

Apparently this guy has never seen Windows discuss Linux servers...

[Winnow]

Following up quote, how much have Mac users paid for their OS upgrades over the past five years?

Jobs was quick to tout the progress Apple has made with its OS since 2001, when both Windows XP and the first version of OS X shipped. "What have we been doing for the last five years?" he asked. "We've been putting out releases of OS X." He claimed that Apple shipped five "major" updates to OS X, including Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, and Tiger, though I'd argue that virtually none of those were major updates at all. (Unless you count the cost. At $129 for each version, that's about $750 on Mac OS X upgrades since 2001. That kind of puts the cost of Windows in perspective.) But he counted Tiger on Intel as a sixth major release, because of the effort in porting the OS X code to a new platform (which, actually, had been in the works for a long time and wasn't the 210 day project Jobs claimed).

By that measure, Microsoft has improved Windows by a far greater degree. In the same time frame, it has shipped Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional Edition, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (and 2005 UR2), Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005, Windows XP Home and Professional N Editions, Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2, absolutely a big Windows upgrade), Windows XP Embedded, Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs, and Windows XP Starter Edition in various languages. Heck, I might be missing some versions. No, they're not all major releases (The N Editions? Eh.) But XP x64, like Tiger on Intel, was a major engineering effort. And Apple has nothing--absolutely nothing--like the Media Center and Tablet PC functionality that Microsoft has been refining now for several years. So let's put the silliness about Microsoft doing nothing for five years to rest, shall we?

But of course, Apple couldn't let Microsoft off without some silliness. "What has our competitor been doing for the past five years?" Jobs quipped to the loving laughter of the WWDC crowd. "They've been trying to ship a single release that's had many names [it's had one name, Vista, and one codename: Longhorn. --Paul].

mmm $750.00 for those Mac OS "upgrades"!

[Zaelath]

mmm $750.00 for those Mac OS "upgrades"!

Had a Mac fanboi tell me the other day that Mac has had 5 "major" OS updates in the last 5 years. What a crock.

I must say, they get a lot more and a lot better software bundled into the OS... but I think that author was right, Apple do good work, but they can't help but ruin it by exaggeration.

[Animalor]

The aggravating thing with Mac is that is that you're forsed to upgrade too.

We had a copy of 10.1 at the office when 10.3 was out and EVERYONE had dropped support for 10.1 already a meer 2 years after it was out.