Comments on: Snow Leopard gets richer, thinner, cheaper than Windows 7

By: Neil Anderson

Neil Anderson — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 23:51:06 +0000

Windows 7. Mac OS X. We’re still 3 steps ahead.

By: Corrado

Corrado — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:36:05 +0000

I think there is a musical group named “OS 10″. Formed by some amateur Machead. Maybe that is one reason Apple cannot use that name.

By: Ephilei

Ephilei — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:01:33 +0000

Mac OS numbers are not consistent. Going from v10.5 to 10.6 is understood as a minor, free upgrade but Apple uses these numbers as entirely new products. To them, minor, free upgrades are 10.5.x to 10.6.x+1.

And what about Quicktime? Moving from v7 to X?

Let’s be honest. Apple uses “X” because it sounds cooler than OS 17 or Quicktime 8.

By: AndrewW

AndrewW — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:00:44 +0000

“Making Microsoft guilty of price gouging on Win 7 to the very cost conscious consumers they are desperately trying to hold onto.”

Speaking from ignorance, I’m not convinced that MS [i]is[/i] price-gouging its customers. Developing and maintaining a professional quality Desktop OS is not cheap, especially with the amount of legacy cruft MS Windows needs to drag around with it.

Apple subsidises the cost of OS X with the hardware; the OS basically exists to sell the (much higher profit) hardware. MS has 10x the volume, but doesn’t have a source of subsidies, and is getting squeezed for margins in the (much larger) low end of the market. Which is why MS is continually stuck trying to up-sell its OS, whereas Apple can basically give theirs away and still derive an overall profit.

As far as I can tell, MS makes its money from tie-ins between the OS and its massively expensive server products and office suite.

By: Berend Schotanus

Berend Schotanus — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:12:35 +0000

What you didn’t mention:
Snow Leopard is (or at least appears to be) an iPhone spin-off. While Apple developed the iPhone they wanted to do roughly the same on a mobile device as was possible on a laptop and they wanted to do that with their existing code base. Even though a phone has less than a 1/10th of resources of a laptop. So they must have been obsessed by code optimization.
Now the iPhone is there it can work the other way too: efficient basic code that works on the phone can work on the desktop too. The same holds for knowledge about how to optimize code. Less code means less errors, better maintenance and better performance. Each error solved on a shared code base will improve both the phone and the desktop.
What a pity for Microsoft they never wanted to bother about technicalities and simply hired a new team to develop a new code base when a new product had to go to the market…

By: daGUY

daGUY — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:23:25 +0000

“Microsoft is notorious for picking its software version numbers out of marketing meetings rather than scheduling releases around engineering efforts as Apple has.”

Oh really? Where was iPhoto 3? What happened to QuickTime 8 and 9? What about iTunes, which jumped from version 5 to 6 in less than a month, even though its only new features were minor GUI changes and support for the latest iPod? How about iChat (the second version was called iChat AV, and the third was called iChat AV 2)?

By: kerryb

kerryb — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:34:58 +0000

I think Apple as a company is always looking for a chance to make Windows look like your fathers OS, the high waisted pants OS. The $29 price is in part a response to M$ bargain laptop ads. Making Microsoft guilty of price gouging on Win 7 to the very cost conscious consumers they are desperately trying to hold onto. I agree there are more important reasons for Apple to get wide adoption of SL for the progress of the platform and modern technologies but it is more entertaining to watch the non tech media tell Microsoft that it just “got served.”

By: beetle

beetle — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:41:45 +0000

I understand Snow Leopard not supporting PPC G5, but I still resent that there never was a patch that supported Classic underLeopard (for G4 and G5 owners of course). Loosing Classic meant that, for non-Intel owners, that Leopard was not really an upgrade.

By: VeoSotano

VeoSotano — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:27:08 +0000

I’m excited for this release… even if I can’t use it… I’m stuck with my good old PowerMac G5, at least until I save enough money to afford a new MBP.

@Brau
Most of the Mac userbase is Intel already, so it appeals to almost every Mac user. I personally think that the underlying technologies, that allow the apps to run faster and more efficient, while really making good use of all those cores and GPU’s we all seem so eager to spend money on, is feature enough to justify the upgrade.

The price is so low because they want to push the state of the art further, as fast as possible. Only when enough people have access to the new technology will developers spend attention to using them. That’s when OSX really shines, when the apps make use of the innovative technologies.

By: Ash

Ash — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 10:18:20 +0000

Interesting post – Microsoft have always tried to undermine the value of Apple’s hardware saying you can get it cheaper. Now Apple undermine the (monetary) value of the OS…. Devalue software and Apple still have hardware sales, Microsoft have nothing.