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Apple, hero - Microsoft, ZERO

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Apple is far better than the terrible Microsoft with its feeble attempt of Vista. Bill Gates is a phoney and a cheat.
By releasing its operating system more often and at a slightly higher cost, Apple Computer is better able to maximize its profitability in the OS field compared with its rival, Microsoft.
Since 2001, Apple, of Cupertino, Calif., has released a new version of its operating system about once a year. These new versions cost users either $129 for the full version or $107 for an upgrade.
Microsoft, on the other hand, averages a little more than two years between releases of its Windows operating system. The average cost to users for a full upgrade is $114 or $48 for an upgrade.
The result, is that Apple is better able to maximize its profits compared with Microsoft by getting its product to the marketplace much faster and charging slightly more in order to take advantage of its users' enthusiasm for the company's products.
Apple users are willing to pay each year for the latest OS upgrade and the company is better able to use its marketing savvy to entice its customers with new features, such as iChat or Spotlight search technology.
Apple 4 da future!!!!!!!!!!!!

24 replies

by charliespencer

MS releases a new OS for around $144 every two and gets slammed for it. Apple releases once a year for $130 ($260 every two years by kev07's numbers) and gets praised for it.

Remind me why the anti-MS zealots complain about MS making too much money instead of turning their ideological guns on Apple.

by kev07

I used both Mac and Windows, and there is nothing in Vista as useful and innovative as was demonstrated for Leopard. Vista has lot of "eye candy" but nothing particularly fascinating and useful in its new features. I'll take Leopard in a heartbeat.

by charliespencer

If you want to talk about features, I have no experience with Leopard and can't make a comparison. But go back and reread your first post. It's all about maximizing shareholder return and not a word about features. My confusion results from your praise of Apple's profitability when Bill Gates gets abused when he tries to earn a buck. I hope you can understand my confusion.

by tednyhan

Apple is a jumped up piece of shit! Popular only among fools and hippies who hate msft. The iPod gave some credibility but its OS X and workststions are cumbersome, slow and a basically a loAD OF CRAP.
That won't please Steve Jobs, who tried to get Torvalds working on the next-generation Mac operating system back in 1997, not long after taking over at Apple.

And it's particularly ironic given that one of MacOS X's selling points is that it's based on Unix. The OS' core, dubbed Darwin, is derived from BSD.

However, Torvalds' comments may not sting anyone who's using MacOS X. For all its touted "unprecedented stability and performance" (to quote the software's packaging) borne on its "industrial strength" Unix roots, many users have found it far from stable or fast. That's not expected until the summer when Apple rolls out MacOS X 10.1, codenamed Puma. Its absolute shit!!

Arguments that it's only 1.0 software and 1.0 software's never perfect, while true, don't hold much water given how often Apple and its users (including this one) have slammed Microsoft for taking same line.

Apple deserves some brickbats for its MacOS X 10.0 release, which arguably hasn't delivered what the company promised, but Torvalds does sound like he's getting his own back after the numerous articles published in the press and around the Web suggesting that MacOS X will be the OS that brings Unix into the mainstream. To date, Linux has failed to do that.

Certainly that seems the basis for Jobs' approach to Torvalds back in 1997: to help make Unix mainstream. Torvalds criticises Jobs for assuming he'd rather do that with Apple than with Linux, though there's no reason why he couldn't do both. Did Jobs try and persuade Linus to leave Linux alone, we wonder? It's not hard to imagine Jobs, back in 1997, saying come on, Linus, it's time to leave your hobby behind and join a real, shipping OS.

If so, with hindsight, they have proved foolish words: Linux arguably has more users than Apple does. That said, it's questionable, pace Eazel, whether it will ever move out beyond its techie and server
ad of crap. Apple's software is inherently a shambles

by kev07

It can't be much fun to be a vendor of a mainstream desktop operating system.
On any given day, one might face reports of a new security vulnerability. One might be accused of harboring, or even authoring, spyware. One might hear complaints that one's pace of innovation had slowed, with more time elapsing between less dramatic updates to one's crown-jewel operating system.
When Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs the week of Aug. 7 showed features of the forthcoming OS X 10.5, code-named (and most likely also to be trade-named) Leopard, he showed no sign of lowering the strength of the reality distortion field that he's famous for generating around his product and technology announcements.
This leaves Apple very much in the game, having defied many rounds of predictions over the past 20 years that its demise was imminent. Apple is certainly setting the pace in security, usability and visual attractiveness of the desktop and mobile computing experience; it is also continuing to set the bar high for industrial design and aesthetic appeal in hardware.
To claim, though, that Leopard represents "Vista 2.0" is excessive. It invites, moreover, consideration of just how much more Apple is now playing and will in the future be playing on Microsoft's home turf, and of how hard Apple's prospective road may therefore be.

by tednyhan

A company which makes good products makes good money. Get it? otherwise kev07 is talking complete bull. i wonder if he even knows what leopard bloody well is( a heap of dirt is the answer)

by kev07

Please help me!!!!!

A self-professed kerryman is talking to me about computers, what is the world coming to.

by charliespencer

A company that markets its product better, doesn't lock its software to a particular brand of hardware, and has software that runs on its competitor's OS makes a LOT more money. Possibly not as much per customer, but they're sure making it up on the volume.

McDonald's serves a lousy burger, but they clear more profits than Ruth's Chris.

by jamesrl

You could easily argue that there is some evidence that Ruth's Chris makes a better return on investment for its shareholders than MacDonalds, or more revenue per employee, or any number of other measures.

But in the computer industry size does matter. I owned my first Mac in 1986, and loved them for a long time. But in order to succeed there has to be a critical mass of loyal Mac owners to not only make Appple protiftable, but also third parties who want to write software for the platform as well.

Ironically, I'd say that two apps that made the Mac great were Microsoft Word and Excel. When MS Word came out on the Mac, it was a great leap over its DOS based function keyed cousin. And people paid hundreds of dollars for it, despite the fact that MacWrite was free at the time with the system.

Any OS vendor needs third parties to write software for their systems, even MS. And third parties are attracted to large markets.

Take the example I gave in another thread. At one point, many games makers created their games on Macs, but ported them to Windows and only sold them on Windows. (There are some exceptions). Why would they do that? They perceived the costs of supporting another platform would not be born out by sales on that platform, given the size of the potential market.

James

by tslevin15

Ted you seem to be full of yourself and know nothing. However i find your racist comments funny so keep up the work!

by zen37

Kev and Ted are nothing more than brand name racists.

Just as i won't listen to a Microsoft weenie, who sees Billy in his cereal every morning, i won't listen to an Apple one, who sees Stevey in his either. Especially when they both base their "facts" on money (which is business and not technology) or recycled FUD that usually have no basis for anything and is pointless.

Please Kev and Ted, take your petty bickering somewhere else, will you?

by gentlerf

They almost sound like a Catholic and a Protestant in Northern Ireland. More of emotion and little of reason to their arguments. A very sad thing to see for folks who allege themselves to technically savvy. I do Mac repair for a local computer shop and often find insights in Windows the manager hadn't realized were there. I don't tout Apple Uber Alles or chant the MS mantra, I just happen to think an OS which meets my needs is found in Cupertino instead of Redmond. I agree with the brand name racist bit too.

I suspect they are together in a pub somewhere laughing at the heated replies for either direction.

by biosphereopts

"Brand name racists"? Wow, thats a new one on me. Sounds like a good subject for a sociology class.

VELVEETA SHELLS & CHEESE UBER ALLES!!

by tednyhan

That's exactly it, msft is great because its big enough. But its good too- windows aero is fab, the new peer-peer technology will revolutionise home networking and will be invaluable to businesses, internal search and organization will be unparalleled by any other OS including that heap of crap leopard!
Add- on new features like the new DVD- maker are very enjoyable. In a more serious note the new NET framework is a wonderful improvemnt on XP API and applications should be drafted with ease from now on. XP was susceptible to malware and buffer overflows, not Vista. Vista is almost impenetrable security- wise except against hardened hackers

by kpak44wh

There over, it's not the 90's anymore. I am an avid Apple
user, but I like Microsoft products too. Steve Jobs and Bill
Gates are not that much different. They're both good
salesmen, that's it. microsoft has come off as a villian
lately.
People it's just a business, not a holy war. I want to talk
about IT issues, not about who's got the best operating
system, or about which Windows version is the best,
unless it
will help me in my workplace. Oh some one just said that
Windows Vista was unpentrable. Yeah, right! Until
Microsoft goes to unix or linux kernel in it's operating it
will never be hard to hack into. There too many doors to
get in through, and that's the truth.

by gentlerf

You are right about it not being the 90's. I agree with it being just a business. Vista does have its cracks as does MacOS X. Which has more, I don't care. I happen to like OS X for what it allows me to do, not what frustrations it causes me which happen to be fewer than many Windows users I know even in the apartment building I happen to live in.

by tednyhan

Whats this bull that william.sternbach is spouting about vista's and XP's bad task- managing!! He said c.p.u usage REGULARLY reaches 100%( and him supposedly only on Excel!), which is patently ridiculous!! I very rarely see it climb above 4% unless I am running a powerful application on both XP and vista beta. Kev you and your anti- microsoft posse should just boycott msft and enter the world of bloody incompatibility. Vista's overhead is small but what is there provides efficiency in the running of programs

by tslevin15

Apple's struggle to compete with Microsoft-driven PC's may seem like inside baseball for businessmen but it actually provides a key insight for understanding the world of technology around us. Among the most famous quotes in business history is Ralph Waldo Emerson's: "If a man make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door." In fact, there are better mousetraps than this one, the ultrasonic pest repeller, for example, yet, this remains the standard. Similarly, the Apple Macintosh may be the better mousetrap in computing, yet, the world has beaten a path to the IBM PC and Microsoft.The question is: Why? Well, one useful answer is an idea known as path dependency, i.e., once enough people follow a particular path in technology, that path becomes the standard one on which future technology and products depend. Consider keyboard technology.

Using the same text and equally skilled typists, it was demonstrated back on the silent film in the 1930's that you could type 165 words a minute with the keyboard on the right versus 131 on the left, and which is the one we all use? The apparently slower, older one on the left. The Dvorak System on the right claims to demand less of a left hand, less row to row finger hopping, no irksome pinky stretches. The arrangement of the letters seems to be more efficient but almost no one uses it

by yobtaf

You must really love to push people's buttons.

Not that I don't agree with every thing you wrote. In fact,
I'll add a tidbit. Bill Gate made the brilliant statement last
week that in five years everyone will be running all their
TV programing from their computers. Where has Bill been
for the last few years or where does he think we've been.
Maybe nobody told him about Tivo, DVRs or the new
Apple TV.

The only smart thing he did in the last decade was the
XBOX and he got that idea from SONY.

No sir, you're just looking for trouble or maybe that's what
you want.

Let the flame wars begin!

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