I know that Mac OS X is cheaper than either Windows XP Professional or DEFINITELY Windows Vista or utterly definitely Windows 7. But that is if you NEVER purchase any more future CD’s from Apple. For the sake of simplicity and shortening my post, let me round up Apple’s prices for each “Service Packs” upgrades they have issued to $120.00 each. (I know that on some occasion it might have costed more, and on some other versions number it might have costed less)

Lets factor this:

Mac OS X = $120.00 THEN

Mac OS X 1.4.0 (Puma) = was a free CD to cover mac’s original problems with Mac OS X Original Version THEN

Mac OS X 2.0.0 (Jaguar) = $120.00 THEN

Mac OS X 3.0.0 = $120.00 THEN

Mac OS X 4.0.0 = $120.00 THEN

Mac OS X 5.0.0 = $120.00 THEN

Mac OS X 6.0.0 = $120.00

So, if EACH Version CD costed $120.00 then if you are a Mac user that came since the FIRST VERSION of Mac OS X, then you have paid Apple so far over $600.00 Now that is extremely more expensive that Windows Vista’s Most Advanced version (Windows Vista Enterprise or Ultimate Edition)

So apple has been charging you people an Arm and a Leg for their Operating System without you people realizing it, because they have been doing it little by little! I dont see Microsoft doing that! So I get surprised when people says that Mac OS X is cheaper than Windows operating system because in the LONG RUN its NOT!

Well, anyways I am running an Operating System which is cheaper than both Mac OS X and Microsoft and in fact, its so cheaper that its price cannot be beaten — impossible, its LINUX Fedora! With great hardware support and faster than both of these operating system, more stabler (because of Honest programmers working around the clock in improving the OPEN SOURCE codes of Linux), and FREE! No need to pay any one for any “Service Packs”

By the way, I own one Mac OS X CD, its version 1.4.0 (PUMA) which I was using back then, I refused to get the Jaguar version (2) after I learned that I had to PAY MORE FOR IT and after I learned that each consecutive version I also had to PAY for it. I took it as giving Apple a “Blank Check” that when they needed more money, all what they needed to do was release a new version number, a new “nick name” for their OS, prevent software developers from releasing software compatible with the previous version numbers and force all to shell out their hard earned cash towards this new version number, and THEN all of you people attacks Microsoft in so many ways (I know that Mac OS X cannot get viruses and Windows yes, but I would rather have Windows than Mac for the sake of price cheaper int he long run, of course with a good Antivirus Software and Firewall) when its Apple you are suppose to question regarding their “Pricing Scheme”. After I learned all this, I switched to….LINUX! No need to worry about that anymore.

Now it goes even further as basically EWS gives you the basics. You don’t get public folder access; you can’t view co-workers items, etc. You also can not work offline, by this I mean that there isn’t a seamless offline mode like Outlook where you can manage your mail, delete, create, etc. and it just syncs when you go online. While I personally could care less, I know the “just works” crowd will be upset about it.

I would also assume that since Entourage is now using EWS (dumped WebDav) the new Outlook will follow suit.

Long story short, Exchange support works if your company supports it (many do not as they don’t run Exchange 2007 or they have no need for EWS) and you have to use a VPN from outside the company (unless your company IT/IS folks are reckless) to get to it.

Exchange aside, these improvements which came in SL are great, but is it really $30 worth of upgrades? I would say yes, however I would also say that much of it were improvements slated for Leopard or even Tiger which never made it in. Hell Adobe and MS were working on 64 bit apps ages ago which they had to scrap because they had gone to another product cycle before Apple rolled it out.

I paid the $30 and I don’t feel ripped off even though many of the features were already paid for. GCS is bad ass, but as far as OpenCL goes, that is TBD as the development time might preclude many applications from taking advantage of it.

They could have made it an 10.5.x update But too many things break. It’s too big a change for a Service Pack (people are still bitching about the sp2 update).

What Apple should have done was give it away as a free Full Retail disc for people with OSX 10.5 the same they did with 10.0 to 10.1. The people on Tiger should just pay the 129$ price as they skipped a version and it’s weird that if I skip the next one will be cheaper.

Tales

Snow Leopard is a real case of Apple trying to sell ice to Eskimos.

The only new feature it provides is Exchange. That’s probably worth $30. OpenCL and Grand Central are simply not features that users care about. Developers won’t depend upon Grand Central for years because almost everything it does can be achieved through other means, and depending upon it would deny them the sizeable pre-10.6 market. OpenCL might be used because it actually provides new capabilities, but these capabilities are limited to high-speed vector computation. Since most people use their computers to store and categorise information, I think there is actually little real need for OpenCL for the vast majority of applications; I certainly don’t run any apps that could benefit from using it.

“But Apple have re-written much of the OS”, I hear you say. “So what”, say I. If Leopard were a flakey slow junker, I’d be jumping for Snow Leopard, but the thing is that Leopard is very good. It’s fast. It’s stable.

“But Apple have made the OS smaller”, I hear you say. My response is, “I don’t care”. I have a big drive (750GB). So big I’ll never fill it.

“But the re-architecting makes the OS more flexible for deployment to tablets and such”, some might say. Again, I don’t care; if I buy one of those, it will come with an OS. For my computer, right now, it makes no difference.

It gets worse though. Quicktime appears to have made a great leap sideways. More UI tweaking for the sake of it. AND installing it gets rid of Quicktime Pro (yes, you can get it back by re-installing the Quicktime 7 player, but WHY?).

So, for a person like me who doesn’t need exchange support, why would I fork over my hard earned to Apple for this OS update? The UI tweaks are marginal at best, developers will keep writing 10.5 compatible software for years, and the Quicktime player seems to have been marinated in a big vat of suck.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a GOOD thing that Apple have cleaned up the OS and code-base, but that’s more for their benefit than mine. I’ll wait until Snow Leopard’s successor comes out.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/virtualization/?p=1205

Apple, in its infinite wisdom, chose to implement Exchange 2007 support in Snow Leopard even though the iPhone supports both Exchange 2003 and 2007. So, my desktop system can not access the calendar even though my iPhone has no problem accessing my calendar. I find it hard to believe that they did this when Exchange 2003 still has more installations than does Exchange 2007.

Leopard never had Exchange support, so this is an entirely new feature in Snow Leopard. The only way in 10.5 was through MS Entourage, which is one of the most terrible pieces of mass-produced software every created.

There’s very few obvious features new to Snow Leopard, but I still think that “service pack” still under sells it. Grand Central, 64-bit, and all those under-the-hood goodies that are almost completely transparent to the majority of end users, but let’s not underestimate the sheer volume of little enhancements, many of them are not necessarily fixes for old bugs.

This is one thing I appreciate about Apple over Microsoft is that they have greater attention to detail and making small little tweaks and adjustments (although I hear that Windows 7 is taking this route as well). Individually, these little enhancements mean almost nothing, but many of them combined does enhance the whole user experience significantly for me. I noticed this to a degree in Leopard, and from what I’m reading it will be even greater in Snow Leopard. I rarely ever notice a difference with Windows service packs.

It certainly is not as big as an upgrade from Leopard to Tiger, or Tiger to Leopard, but it’s definitely a few steps above service pack.