nytimes.com— RETAIL is supposed to be hard. Apple has made it seem ridiculously easy. And yet it must be harder than it appears, or why hasn?t the Windows side of the personal computer business figured it out?
May 26, 2007View in Crawl 4
Yeah, I guess that's the tradeoff between accessibility and having monkeys sell your product.Incidentally, London Drugs is a fantastic place to shop for Macs, or any computer for that matter, and they're on damn near every street corner in Vancouver. The price are good and the sales staff actually know their stuff and are reputable members of society (unlike the jackasses at Future Shop). Unfortunately, they're not found outside of BC and Alberta.
"I'm not sure I understand. How is OS X only sold as an upgrade? My "upgrade" copies of Tiger will boot and install onto a completely unformatted drive. The install doesn't ask for a previous version in order to complete the install. How is this like an upgrade version of Windows? What on earth do you mean selling a "full version" of OS X would be silly. There's only one version, and it IS a "full version"!"I don't agree that Tiger equals the upgrade version of Vista Ultimate, but technically when you buy Tiger it is an upgrade version. Every Mac comes with the Mac OS. Mac OS can only be installed on Macs (legally). Therefore, every copy of Mac OS sold is being sold to upgrade a computer running an earlier copy of Mac OS. So the only license of Mac OS X Apple does sell is an upgrade license.The reason Tiger does not equal an upgrade license of Vista is simple though. With Macs, Mac OS X comes with the machine for free. With PC's, you have to pay extra for Windows (even if the cost is built in to the price of the machine). So the cost in software to run Mac OS X Tiger is just $129, no matter what Mac you have. The cost in software to run Vista is whatever you paid for Windows to begin with (at full price), plus the Vista upgrade cost, which in the end, is going to end up costing the same price as the full version of Vista.
@flag564:"Apple's hardware and OS does extremely poorly compared to PC makers and Microsoft. Without the iPod, they wouldn't even be a remote player. Apple may make a profit on their machines, but who wouldn't when you control the whole machine from start to finish."And this is where you ignored everything I said. Apple does not do "poorly" when compared to PC makers. Being the #5 manufacturer, it does quite well, pulling down about 1/3 the sales of the either Dell or HP, something that Sony, Toshiba, Acer, Gateway and others aren't able to do. By your logic, they must be failures too, right?The OS manufacturer is not the PC manufacturer, and you can't seem to divide the two in your mind. "Windows" isn't a brand of computer, it's an operating system. The OS is but one component of the computer, much as the USB controller, DVD manufacturer, whathaveyou. Your poorly veiled attempts to polarize things in (again) *APPLE TOPIC STORIES*, is sad. You are as much a troll as you deny yourself being, and whether you like it or not Apple is a successful company doing great business. If they weren't, they'd have been out of business a long time ago, and certainly wouldn't have the market cap and investors they have. Face it flag, it's not 1993 anymore. Get over it and move on."Apple may make a profit on their machines, but who wouldn't when you control the whole machine from start to finish."Microsoft does the same with the Xbox, and that division still has yet to make a profit.
skidooer,If I have a Mac and I remove the hard drive or the hard drive fails, after putting in a new hard drive, what will that machine do? Nothing. I take ANY OS X disk, insert it into the optical drive and install. No serial numbers, no previous system needs to be there to verify that I have a legal copy of OS X. It isn't an upgrade, it's simply an install.Now if I have an upgrade disk for Windows and I try to install it on a blank drive, what happens?
Macs are wonderful once you get your hands on one and the people at apple knew this. I think also that in recent years no one had a reason to buy a mac so having that hands on touch in person made the difference in alot of ways. Otherwise its just another computer on the internet thats a little different.seeing is believing when it comes to macs I guess.
by opusaz on 5/27/07 + 1 digg I was in Best Buy yesterday. They had one sad looking MacBook on a shelf surrounded by PC laptops. The MacBook looked old, used, tired. It wasn't. It just appeared that way in its surroundings. Interestingly enough, the PC laptops looked normal. It was as though the Mac needed a cool environment or it wouldn't come to life.------------------------------You can thank the ingorant staff for that.
"Apple has made it seem ridiculously easy. And yet it must be harder than it appears, or why hasn ’t the Windows side of the personal computer business figured it out?"Funny that, I always thought it was Windows that were on 90+ % of the machines on the market, and Apple is at about 3-5% depending what figures you read........Seem that Windows has retail figured out a bit better than Apple if you ask me.
udahlenMay 27, 2007
Most people do not understand computers. That's why they buy Windows, whick makes them understand even less.
Closed AccountMay 27, 2007
Yeah, I guess that's the tradeoff between accessibility and having monkeys sell your product.Incidentally, London Drugs is a fantastic place to shop for Macs, or any computer for that matter, and they're on damn near every street corner in Vancouver. The price are good and the sales staff actually know their stuff and are reputable members of society (unlike the jackasses at Future Shop). Unfortunately, they're not found outside of BC and Alberta.
colincornabyMay 27, 2007
"I'm not sure I understand. How is OS X only sold as an upgrade? My "upgrade" copies of Tiger will boot and install onto a completely unformatted drive. The install doesn't ask for a previous version in order to complete the install. How is this like an upgrade version of Windows? What on earth do you mean selling a "full version" of OS X would be silly. There's only one version, and it IS a "full version"!"I don't agree that Tiger equals the upgrade version of Vista Ultimate, but technically when you buy Tiger it is an upgrade version. Every Mac comes with the Mac OS. Mac OS can only be installed on Macs (legally). Therefore, every copy of Mac OS sold is being sold to upgrade a computer running an earlier copy of Mac OS. So the only license of Mac OS X Apple does sell is an upgrade license.The reason Tiger does not equal an upgrade license of Vista is simple though. With Macs, Mac OS X comes with the machine for free. With PC's, you have to pay extra for Windows (even if the cost is built in to the price of the machine). So the cost in software to run Mac OS X Tiger is just $129, no matter what Mac you have. The cost in software to run Vista is whatever you paid for Windows to begin with (at full price), plus the Vista upgrade cost, which in the end, is going to end up costing the same price as the full version of Vista.
zang74May 28, 2007
mmmmmmmmmmmmmm, chipotle. ;)
zang74May 28, 2007
@flag564:"Apple's hardware and OS does extremely poorly compared to PC makers and Microsoft. Without the iPod, they wouldn't even be a remote player. Apple may make a profit on their machines, but who wouldn't when you control the whole machine from start to finish."And this is where you ignored everything I said. Apple does not do "poorly" when compared to PC makers. Being the #5 manufacturer, it does quite well, pulling down about 1/3 the sales of the either Dell or HP, something that Sony, Toshiba, Acer, Gateway and others aren't able to do. By your logic, they must be failures too, right?The OS manufacturer is not the PC manufacturer, and you can't seem to divide the two in your mind. "Windows" isn't a brand of computer, it's an operating system. The OS is but one component of the computer, much as the USB controller, DVD manufacturer, whathaveyou. Your poorly veiled attempts to polarize things in (again) *APPLE TOPIC STORIES*, is sad. You are as much a troll as you deny yourself being, and whether you like it or not Apple is a successful company doing great business. If they weren't, they'd have been out of business a long time ago, and certainly wouldn't have the market cap and investors they have. Face it flag, it's not 1993 anymore. Get over it and move on."Apple may make a profit on their machines, but who wouldn't when you control the whole machine from start to finish."Microsoft does the same with the Xbox, and that division still has yet to make a profit.
macparrotMay 28, 2007
skidooer,If I have a Mac and I remove the hard drive or the hard drive fails, after putting in a new hard drive, what will that machine do? Nothing. I take ANY OS X disk, insert it into the optical drive and install. No serial numbers, no previous system needs to be there to verify that I have a legal copy of OS X. It isn't an upgrade, it's simply an install.Now if I have an upgrade disk for Windows and I try to install it on a blank drive, what happens?
nousplacidusMay 28, 2007
Macs are wonderful once you get your hands on one and the people at apple knew this. I think also that in recent years no one had a reason to buy a mac so having that hands on touch in person made the difference in alot of ways. Otherwise its just another computer on the internet thats a little different.seeing is believing when it comes to macs I guess.
syafthegeekMay 28, 2007
Apple have made it simple for customers. Don't other retailers should do the same?
Closed AccountMay 29, 2007
by opusaz on 5/27/07 + 1 digg I was in Best Buy yesterday. They had one sad looking MacBook on a shelf surrounded by PC laptops. The MacBook looked old, used, tired. It wasn't. It just appeared that way in its surroundings. Interestingly enough, the PC laptops looked normal. It was as though the Mac needed a cool environment or it wouldn't come to life.------------------------------You can thank the ingorant staff for that.
collywollyMay 29, 2007
"Apple has made it seem ridiculously easy. And yet it must be harder than it appears, or why hasn ’t the Windows side of the personal computer business figured it out?"Funny that, I always thought it was Windows that were on 90+ % of the machines on the market, and Apple is at about 3-5% depending what figures you read........Seem that Windows has retail figured out a bit better than Apple if you ask me.