On Saturday, September 21, 2002, at 10:14 AM, Rich & Michaela wrote:
> At $129 for a dot release? Not a chance. Maybe to go to 10.5. > > ..Mac is even more of a disappointment. At the same time that Apple is > pushing as hard as they ever have to get folks to switch, they are > treating their loyal installed base like crap. I think what you're seeing is a move away from Apple's apparent basic philosophy of fundamentally they just sold computers, and the OS came with the computer. In the old business model a major selling point was that Macs last a long time - but indestructable computers mean fewer customers so obselescence for Macs has traditionally been brought about by changes in the OS between technological advances, and there lay the flaw they continually subdivided their userbase. In return for brand loyalty, they were expected to maintain machines which were realistically well out of the technological window. Now Apple appears to have had a close look at the"we've-got-you-over-a-barrel-digital-fiefdom" style M$ business model where yesterdays bugs become tomorrow's paid upgrades (Apple on Jaguar: "provides significant enhancements to it's modern, Unix-based foundation" - for "enhancements" read "bug fixes" culled from open source development) and stuff like the paid advertising in the quicktime viewer (Man I _bought_ the OS - why do I have to look at ads?), combined with stepping up the process of obsolecence - since 10.0 paid upgrades have appeared with an almost clockwork six monthly cycle, coupled with the reduction of the period when new users can upgrade for free, in the past this was for the life of an OS ie you buy a computer with OS7, you get to update it for free until OS 8. But for me the total biscuit taker is the <opinion pinchofsalt="1">ridiculous</opinion> packaging of OSX server and OSX client (the difference AFAIK between the two are a handfull of carbon apps), and no documentation for the server side of, marketed as UNIX based, OSX, or rather I should say no documentation of where Apple made changes from the BSD code, and where it didn't. Inshort as an old mac hand, I like OSX but I think Apple is treating people like idiots throwing them glitzy bait to get them running to their software/hardware supplier to get the latest and greatest. Sure there are changes under the hood, but I went through 10.0 (the most advanced OS ever) which had no software or third party drivers, then 10.1 (now even more powerful) which though slow is stable but probably should have been 10.0 in the first place, so at 10.2 (Wildly Innovative), to be honest I've had enough carrot and sticking for a while, and I also feel a hell of a lot less generous towards Apple (BTW anyone know where those quicktime ads come from so I can block the DNS?). Robin
