Apple to ship Snow Leopard this week

@Lindy "A software pricing war would end badly for Microsoft to be honest." If you are looking purely at software, then yes, Microsoft will always 'appear' more expensive. When you look at the whole package (hardware and software), then it's a lot less obvious. The end result would depend on what period/products you compare (no matter how independent a particular comparison is, there will almost alway be bias towards creating the scope of the comparison to create the desired result. Both Microsoft and Apple do this.

gavers What Paul did was be a little out of date. Apple DID put out a new $129 release of Mac OS X every year for several years and then switched to a every other year plan. By comparison, Microsoft has traditionally gone for a new consumer OS release every three years There is the exception of XP lasting a couple of years longer due to both the Longhorn reset and not counting XP SP2 as a point release and instead making it a free service pack. If you count Windows XP SP2 as Windows XP.1 then it's about right again. XP SP2 had major rewrites under the covers but only few end-user features (which should sound similar except for pricing to people looking at Snow Leopard)

Lindy Nope. You're igoring several factors such as whether "Mac Box Set" can be used to upgrade Leopard machines (Apple says it's specifically for Intel Macs running Tiger), whether it is cost effective to upgrade a new Leopard machine (which qualifies for a $9.95 "Up-to-date" upgrade) under that "Mac Box Set" if that does, indeed support Leopard machines. You ignored the requirement that NONE of the computers should have iWork installed and that iLife was to be upgraded only on specific machines. (you could say, who cares, it's included in the price but not everyone wants extra software) You also got the count wrong on which machines would need to be thrown out and replaced with new computers (or dumped at fire-sale prices to unsuspecting newbies and replaced) since they cannot be upgraded at all. (Not even by upgrading hardware) You said there were 5 Mac clients that could be upgraded on the "Family Pack" "Mac Box Set" license. Let's look: The new laptop she got last week qualifies for a $9.95 "up-to-date" license (and it would be a serious shame to ignore that price for a share of the $229 license but, hey, overpaying is a cost of life sometimes and Apple could use your charity, after all.) The 4 year old PowerMac running Tiger is throwaway despite being a very, very expensive high-end workstation that's still performant. Oh well. That's several thousand dollars down the drain. The G4 Mac server running Tiger is throwaway despite being a very, very expensive serve that's still performant. Oh well. Hope there's no custom server apps her business needs that were compiled for PPC. Again, several grand tossed out. Maybe she can write it off somehow. The Intel Mac server running Tiger can be upgraded for $499. The 3 year old MacBook running Tiger can be upgraded with Mac Box Set The older MacBook running Panther is throwaway. Panther was PPC only so it must be a PPC box. Oh well. That's a couple of thousand. The iMac running Tiger might be a throwaway if it is PPC or might work on Mac Box Set if it is Intel (funny how family members don't always know things like this when you ask them - welcome to real life) So, if the iMac was Intel we have 1 Server upgraded 2 Tiger machines upgraded with Mac Box Set Family Pack 1 Leopard machine upgraded with Mac Box Set Family Pack (and Apple gets to save that $9.95 upgrade) 1 Server thrown out 2 PPC client machines thrown out Total: $729 Cost per client machine: $76.33 Cost of a new server and two new client machines? Many thousands. And that's assuming that the Mac Box Set CAN be used to upgrade a Leopard box. If not, then add $9.95 to upgrade the week old box and raise the cost for the other two client machines to $114.50 each. Now, if the mystery iMac is PPC we get: 1 Server upgraded 1 Tiger machine upgraded with Mac Box Set Family Pack 1 Leopard machine upgraded with Mac Box Set Family Pack (and Apple gets to save that $9.95 upgrade discount again) 1 Server thrown out 3 PPC client machines thrown out Total: $729 Cost per client machine: $114.50 Cost of a new server and three new client machines? Many thousands - probably up around 5 figures now. And that's assuming that the Mac Box Set CAN be used to upgrade a Leopard box. If not, then add $9.95 to upgrade the week old box and raise the cost for the other remaining client machines to $169 since the Family Pack doesn't make sense for one machine At a minimum we're talking over $700 and the cost of buying several new machines including a server and a high-end workstation plus possibly the additional costs of having any custom PPC server code rewritten or at least recompiled if it was last worked on back in the PPC-only days.

And it didn't make sense in even one of those seven machines to use the $29 Mac OS X service pack pricing. (Put simply, upgrade combinations are always complex. Some companies tell you what you need to know, some just lie about how "simple" it is)

Some great new ads: http://movies.apple.com/media/us/mac/getamac/2009/apple-mvp-top_of_the_l... http://movies.apple.com/media/us/mac/getamac/2009/apple-mvp-surprise-us-... Both amusing and honest. Unlike Microsoft's dodgy ads and thievery.

SPiotr Nah. It was too much fun watching the "Apple is easy" types today in between doing real stuff. It's amazing that not a single Mac Fanboi was able to figure out a simple 7 computer upgrade for a minor service pack on their own platform. And some of them claim to actually work in this industry. That's just sad.

@galos "It's amazing that not a single Mac Fanboi was able to figure out a simple 7 computer upgrade for a minor service pack on their own platform." It's not amazing at all. I suspect that as soon as they got to the part where your "cousin" had to upgrade 7 computers ( that she had never bothered to upgrade before!) ... they probably just curled up and died. You seemed to have missed my point entirely. I think it's "amazing" (sad) that you even posed the question in the first place.

@mikegalos: outdated or not, what Paul said was factually incorrect. It implies that there is a yearly cost of $129 to stay current with Mac OS. That's not true. Notice that I didn't bring up Windows, because it is irrelevant to what Paul said. What Microsoft does, or what it costs to keep up with Windows doesn't take away from the fact that it doesn't cost $129 a year to run the most current version of Mac OS X. I still think 10.6 is overpriced. It should be a free download. If you want optical media, then $10, for a disc in a sleeve. No box needed.

"You seemed to have missed my point entirely. I think it's "amazing" (sad) that you even posed the question in the first place." You got @mikegalos in one. Sad.

Aww. Now all the Mac fans who couldn't figure out their platform service pack's "simple" upgrade licensing are switching to personal attacks to hide their embarassment. That's just so adorable!

Mike, give it up. There's nothing hard about upgrading to SL. No personal attacks from me, just a couple of points: 1. The upgrade to SL is -definitely- simpler than the upgrade to Windows 7. Yes? Paul and others have written pages and pages about the WIndows 7 upgrade, multiple articles, enormous charts. This point is clear. 2. So, in you scenario, update all the PPC machines to Leopard, update the others to SL. Throw out the PPC machines? Why? They're not orphan computers, they'll all run Leopard just fine. If, as you and others have said, SL is just a service pack, then the PPC machines can run Leopard with no loss of functionality. You can't have it both ways. 3. Products should be optimized for the majority case. The idea is to do the best job for the center of gravity of the user base. Thus the SL upgrade works well for the majority case, upgrades from Leopard. How about the Windows majority case, the upgrade from XP? Uh oh, you're off to clean install land. Again, Paul and other commentators have noted this. 4. You (and no one else here) addressed the majority case. Instead, we got a lot of noise about an obviously contrived scenario. That's just obfuscation to divert attention from the difference in the upgrade process for the majority of users on each platform. In the Mac case, it will be simple and seamless, while on the Windows side, it will be wipe your computer and pray you can get back all the stuff you had running under XP. Many people will either pay an expert for help with that XP>Win7 upgrade or just give up and buy a new computer. It's possible that 3rd party tools will make the XP>7 upgrade simple, but Microsoft has just done a bad job managing this process.

Scoobyclub... One of the things I like about Windows over Apple products IS the fact they providemore than one way to perform an action. I like options. I've never been a fan of Apple's interfaces; and I've never quite understood how they are more intuitive than a windows one. They seem much the same when you get right down to it, and any require you to learn their ways, after which it's just not that hard. It's the same reason I use KDE over Gnome on my Linux boxes. Gnome decides how the the system is going to work and you just have to live it..or open up the the configuation editor to fix it; but then that removes the "intuitive" part, right? It's not a bash of Apple, more power to people using what suits them best. I simply like Windows more. I will agree, however, with the guy who called MS's new taskbar a joke. I agree with that. It's just awful and the first thing I do on Windows 7 installs is remove it. Ugly, and truly unintuitive. Please, MS, leave the taskbar the way it was. It worked just fine. But thanks for letting me move the individual taskbar items; at least you got that right.