Vista = $$$

[Fat Tone]

Yeah, but that's totally justified in the UK version because there are so many Z's to change to S's and so many U's to add

[schmosef]

Oh whatever... it's not like this stuff is cheap to develop.

Apple charges an arm and a leg for their OS but it's not as obvious because they bury the cost of the software in with the cost of a Mac.

[Sasq]

yup, $129USD or so for an upgrade, or $199 for a family pack of 5 licenses

[schmosef]

Uh yeah, and the true cost of that upgrade is buried in the sky high price of apple hardware, like memory and hdd upgrades, etc.

Also, haven't there been several "upgrades" to the mac OS that apple has charged for since october 2001 (when xp was released)?

[Dr Mordrid]

Early post of Maximum PC's Feb. 2007 article "10 Reasons Not to Upgrade to Windows VISTA"

http://www.olddogvt.net/downloads/VISTA-10-Reasons.htm

Summary;

1. Vista Requires a Fairly Powerful Machine
2. Application Incompatibilities
3. Vista is Crazy Expensive
4. No Hardware Audio: no DirectSound 3D
5. Vista Doesn’t Work with a Lot of Bleeding-Edge Hardware: kiss that joystick-port-based Thrustmaster flight stick goodbye
6. Vista Doesn’t Work Well with Some Games
7. Vista Includes Consumer-Unfriendly DRM: READ THIS ONE
8. Poor Driver Support
9. Vista is Kind of Annoying
10. You Can Wait

[schmosef]

yeah i agree with all of this.

vista is so new and so much has changed that it's going to need a good shakedown period for things to settle and for microsoft to tweak it.

my guess is that there will be some major service packs released by the end of the year and that will significantly improve the overall experience.

and about drm. it sucks. bill gates is on record saying that it sucks. in an interview he openly recommended against buying drm music because he said it was a waste of money. he said that no one likes the drm based business model and that he expects something new will eventually be worked out (hopefully sooner than later) that will make everyone (content producers, publishers, and consumers) happy.

[Jessterw]

Uh yeah, and the true cost of that upgrade is buried in the sky high price of apple hardware, like memory and hdd upgrades, etc.

Also, haven't there been several "upgrades" to the mac OS that apple has charged for since october 2001 (when xp was released)?

The argument that Apple hardware is more expensive than not is a dead horse. It's certainly true that upgrading base configurations during the purchasing process can add an extra level of cost, but the same can be said for most any PC vendor, nevermind that those upgrades can almost always be had at a cheaper price if one is willing to do a self-install.

Just because Apple doesn't sell lower-price or "value" level PCs doesn't mean that what they do sell is anymore expensive than similar systems from other vendors.

There have been 5 releases of OS X thus far, with 10.0 having been released in 2001 (as a beta in 2000, with OS X Server 1.0 released in 1999). Initially there was a new release every year until Tiger (10.4) which was released (2005) almost 2 years after the previous. Leopard (10.5) is set to be released this year sometime.

Apple doesn't offer upgrade prices for OS X, which was a major gripe with the yearly releases, but has become acceptable to most on a every-other-year style release schedule. There's no buried cost of the OS in the hardware given Apple doesn't lose money on sales of OS X itself. You could, however, say that the iLife suite of applications is rolled into the cost of the hardware, but I imagine even that would be disingenuous.

and about drm. it sucks. bill gates is on record saying that it sucks. in an interview he openly recommended against buying drm music because he said it was a waste of money. he said that no one likes the drm based business model and that he expects something new will eventually be worked out (hopefully sooner than later) that will make everyone (content producers, publishers, and consumers) happy.

A bit hypocritical given Microsoft's history and what looks to be their future with DRM. Of course, he has to answer to stock holders and MS does have to compete in the marketplace as it is now.


Other than that, I agree that Vista is going to a wait and see release that could end up surprising the industry in the long run. Really depends on what MS does with it after it's released.

[schmosef]

Sorry JW but I'm a computer reseller and Apple prices just don't compute. Going from a 60GB hard drive to a 160GB hard drive on a Mac Mini costs $300CAD! A brand new 160GB Seagate or WD SATA hard drive costs $70CAD at wholesale (and I'm sure Apple is paying less than that). There's just no way to compare that to prices from Dell, etc.

Face it, they are burying costs. It's not the end of the world. It's just business. That's how it works.

So according to you they've released 4 retail versions of their OS in the time since Microsoft released XP? Is it safe to assume they all cost $129USD? If so, that's $516. Seems in line with what Microsoft is charging.

I'm not making moral distinctions here. I'm just saying that business is business. Making excellent software isn't cheap. If Apple had their way we'd all be paying several times more for everything too! If you want a cheap OS go get Linux.

[Sasq]

Face it, they are burying costs. It's not the end of the world. It's just business. That's how it works.

So according to you they've released 4 retail versions of their OS in the time since Microsoft released XP? Is it safe to assume they all cost $129USD? If so, that's $516. Seems in line with what Microsoft is charging.

unless you have more then one mac...
Like I do, like jw has...

[Jessterw]

Sigh, somehow just lost my reply.

To sum it up, I wasn't arguing that Apple doesn't charge a premium for their hardware or upgrades to that hardware. However, to say that the cost Apple charges for upgrades is to cover the OS is silly given they more than cover it with new system purchases (base configurations have it factored in) and with sales of the OS separately.

There's likely to be a price increase with the release of Leopard (10.5), which would be to cover the costs associated with its development.

I should note that 10.1 was a free upgrade for users of 10.0, but then that initial release was pure garbage That said, relating the total cost for all of the upgrades to OS X to the upper-level pricing for Vista is just silly. You would have to assume that everyone running OS X upgraded to each version (many didn't) and that the sum worth of all those upgrades is equal to the massive upgrade that Vista is (which may or may not be true).

Just for reference, I took a look at upgrade prices on Apple and Dell's US sites and their prices are rather similar. For an upgrade from 1GB of memory (667MHz) to 2GB, Apple charges $299 while Dell charges $220. For an upgrade from a 250GB HD to a 500GB one, Apple charges $199 while Dell charges $310.

Apple definitely makes a nice bit off of memory upgrades over Dell, that's for sure, but not something anyone's ever claimed otherwise. Otherwise, you most certainly can compare prices between Apple and Dell.

And Dan's right, unless you're pirating copies or otherwise circumventing the licensing systems MS has in place, it's far cheaper to upgrade multiple installs of OS X than it is Windows (well XP Home is a smidge cheaper, but umm yeah).

[schmosef]

stop running to defend your precious kool aid vendor.

i'm not attacking apple. just the opposite. for the record i was a mac person for many years. i've worked on everything from a Mac 512k up to the quadra line. and while i don't have any experience with the PPC macs i am going to be buying a mini when a core 2 duo model comes out so i'll be rejoining the legion of mac heads pretty soon.

i'm just saying that retail hardware and software isn't cheap. that's all. there is a lot of labour involved and employees gotta get paid. apple's business model allows them to bury costs in a way that microsoft's doesn't. that's all. i'm not making a moral distinction.

[schmosef]

i don't think that they fully recoup their costs in individual sales of their OS. i think they charge what the market will bear. it's for that reason that they don't become a software only vendor.

[Jessterw]

Pfft. I used Windows for years as well as varieties of *nix. My choice of Macs and OS X as a computing platform is purely based on the fact that it works for me. I don't sip the kool-aid from any vendor. Don't mistake my replies as blind allegiance to Apple - that's insulting at best.

No one is accusing you of attacking Apple and I have no clue what morals has to do with any of this. I'm simply saying that the cost of OS X is not buried in the cost of upgrades via Apple. That cost is built-into the cost of the base configurations for new Macs and in the price Apple charges for OS X itself. By releasing an OS as often as they have there hasn't been a need to charge more to recuperate costs.

Again, I'm not denying that Apple buries costs, just not for OS X in the manner in which you've insinuated.

[schmosef]

For an upgrade from a 250GB HD to a 500GB one, Apple charges $199 while Dell charges $310.

I think you were looking at an option from Dell that included some data recovery thingy.

I'm looking at apple.ca and an imac that comes with a 250GB HD has a $250CAD option to upgrade it to 500GB. On Dell.ca I found a model that comes with a base 250GB HD and they want $200CAD to upgrade it to 500GB. A Seagate 500GB SATA drive costs $260CAD wholesale.

[Jessterw]

No, it was a 250GB HD to a 500GB HD, both 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s. There were no data recovery options.

The problem you're seeing is that Apple and Dell are American companies that have different pricing structures for their foreign markets. At least that would be my guess.

*shrug*