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Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" Preview at WWDC
hype7 writes "Apple just announced that it will kick off WWDC 2004 with a preview of the next iteration of Apple's operating system, Mac OS X, in a Steve Jobs keynote. This version of Mac OS X, 10.4, has been code named 'Tiger.' As usual, Apple is being incredibly tight lipped about what's going to be added; there hasn't even been that much speculation of new features on the rumor sites. WWDC is scheduled to begin on the 28th of June."
Apple is on a roll! From Cnet:
g =n efd.top
http://news.com.com/2100-1045_3-5205185.html?ta
If Tiger goes on sale this year, it would mark the company's fifth version of Mac OS X in five years. In the same period, Microsoft has released one major version of Windows--XP--along with various updates. Longhorn, the next major release of Windows, is not expected until the middle of 2006, at the earliest.
All I can think of is better browsing of Windows/Samba networks. That's it. Panther does everything I need it to do and quietly and competently.
This guy is way out there
They are, just not release upgrades.
Do people whine when a car company releases a new car yearly? No, they just don't buy a new car every year.
I find it odd how Microsoft is filth by releasing a new OS version every 2 - 3 years, but Apple is awesome for doing it every year.
The reason that people aren't pissed is because each new version of OSX is a lot better than the previous version. It just keeps getting better and better.
As long as the new versions are faster and offer new and innovative features I doubt that MacOS users will care too much.
I didn't buy the last one for the same reason. This time, I'll get Tiger. If you don't like buying upgrades constantly, skip a version here and there. Its perfectly acceptable to do so. I think Apple is hoping people will buy new computers every year or so to get the latest OS and hardware as well. Many of us try to support the previous version of MacOS X by compiling our software for it so people like you and I can lag a version behind occassionally.
It doesn't bug me at all. Nothing forces you to upgrade, after all. Imagine, you buy a computer with an OS, then a year later it's still the most current OS. Or imagine you buy a computer with an OS, then a year later a new version is released, but you don't upgrade. There is no difference between these two scenarios. They also break almost nothing, so if you do choose to upgrade it's a painless process, in the technical sense, if not the financial sense
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
You don't even know what they're offering in this update! How do you know if it's worth it or not? Hold your horses, buster. Wait and see if you have anything to yell about.
There will be one big feature for 10.4 that will be completely necessary for a certain segment of Apple customers: full 64-bit optimization for G5 processors.
That's worth the price alone if you own a G5.
Also, you don't know what other hardware will be announced at the expo either. A portion of their hardware could be moved over to G5 as well. I can easily see iMacs getting a slightly slower G5 processor in the next upgrade. Powerbooks will be a while off, but the rumor sites are churning per usual.
Bear in mind that nobody outside of Apple even knew about Expose until WWDC 2003. If Steve can pull another rabbit like that out of his hat, 10.4 might turn out to be worth it after all.
Apple is very kind. When I brought in my iBook for repair because of that nasty Logic Board problem, Apple serviced and delivered my computer free of charge for me. On top of that, they sent me a copy of Panther when the repairs were over. Apple must be selling their operating systems not based solely on a profit basis. I would assume that the reason Apple is charging the $130 for each "upgrade" of their operating systems (they are not upgrades but full versions only) is because they assume that the only people buying them are not upgrading, but buying from scratch. It would be interesting for Apple to set up a "n-year upgrade program" where you get every release of your particular OS for those n years. They are already doing that for their server operating systems.
What people do you know that buy a new car every year? Personally, I'm sick of this analogy. Software can be added to an existing computer - that's what computers do. To charge a large price for an upgrade that you really will need to get, is wholly wrong.
There are hundreds of software packages now that only run on 10.3 and higher. The same will be true for 10.4. There are certainly no "new roads" that my car can't drive on. And if there are, they certainly won't fully switch-over for at least 20 years (not 9 to 18 months like Apple expects).
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
It's only as bad as Windows if you think:
Windows 95 in 1995
Windows 98 in 1996
Windows Me in 1997
Windows 2k in 1998
Windows XP in 1999
Windows Longhorn in 2000
So the question is: Do we want Apple to slow down? Certainly not!
Do we want to upgrade? At our leisure.
Do we want new features? Certainly!
So what's the problem?
That people don't want to upgrade? Why is that a problem. I love every single new release. If 10.4 is underwhelming, then no, I won't be using it. Otherwise... I'll shell out for it.
GPL Deconstructed
Standard Mac Reply(tm).
"But you get more with a new version of OS/x than you do a windows service pack."
And as a relatively new mac user coming from a windows/linux background, it's true. You get the same updates as you do via windows update for security fixes, etc etc. Most windows service packs however (with the exception of the upcoming xpsp2 that is) are essencially the previous bug fixes all rolled into one.
Contrasting this, the incremental updates for MacOS (10.2, 10.3) are more than hotfixes but less than a completely new os. Generally they contain new apps, improvements in existing apps (not just performance or bug fixes either) such as the new 'find as you type', expose, ichat, etc.
That said, I'd love to see the *real* next gen apple offerings, ie: OS 11, as the "new" OSs that have come out in the os 10 line have really been evolutionary, not revolutionary, as longhorn promises to be. Of course, redmond is making a lot of promises about longhorn, and it's a "I'll believe it when I see it" situation for me.
Do I *WANT* to pay for an upgrade every year? No.
Do I *HAVE* to pay for an upgrade every year? No.
However, who on earth can blame Apple for launching new releases on a regular basis and charging for them. If they don't have enough features to justify *YOU* paying for them (it is, after all, completely subjective), then don't get it. Wait until enough releases go by that you feel justified. On the flip side, Apple is trying to make money and apparently there are enough people willing to pay for these annual releases to encourage Apple to keep doing it.
I'm not sure how many they sell each year, but if they waited every 2-3 years, that's a TON of money being left on the table that a TON of consumers are apparently more than willing to part with.
Enjoy,
Andy
You don't pay the full price for an upgrade. If you purchased an Mac withing about a year of when 10.3 was released the upgrade was like $20. And even paying for the full install OSX is still cheaper than Windows.
If open source for the masses is to succeed, this is the kind of user to appeal to.
MY SECRET DIARIES
I imagine that the release date will be at least a year from WWDC. They have been setting the release dates about 18 months apart. This is the developers conference of course they are going to pull out the next OS and preview it. Oh and two paid updates in the past 5 years each of which has been a significant advancement is worth $250 dollars.
Clearly, you're not a Mac user. Every upgrade to OS X has made my four year old machine perform better. I can still use a 400MHz machine to do web design and graphics: You can't say that about a 1GHz PC running XP! I'd much rather have to shell out $120 each year for a speed bump than $600 for a new PC.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
I won't buy this one.
Um, ok, that's great. Good for you. Have a cookie.
Why are these articles filled with people saying, "I won't buy it"? Who gives a crap? Don't buy it!
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Well, if we wanted to get all analytical about it, there could be any number of reasons.
The fact that cats are often viewed as sleek and graceful animals while still powerful.
Or the fact that they've been viewed as both gods and devils, a description which could fit both Jobs and Apple quite well.
But more likely than not, it's because he's keeping with a theme.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Everyone bitches about shelling out money for an upgrade every year. If you don't like it, don't upgrade. The difference between MS and Apple updates is Apple updates actually have new features. MS's are bugfixes, that's why they are free. Older versions of Apple's OS are still supported. If you want the new features, you would have to pay for them, just like the upgrade from win2k to XP to 2003.
In any case, if you want to save yourself the money, just do what I do and buy a new machine everytime they come out with an OS upgrade. It's just like getting $130 off the price of the machine because it comes with the new OS, and then sell your old box on ebay. As long as you do it every year, you lose almost nothing.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
And the only major improvements in 10.3 were iChat AV, FileVault, Expose, and a prettier GUI.
And, of course, about a 20 percent bump in speed.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Yes. That was the joke. Good job blowing it. And special credit to the mods for aiding and abetting.
Apple's OS releases have always been evolutionary. For that matter, you could say the same of any OS really. OS 6 to 7 was the last "revolutionary" change for apple before OS9 to OS X, and that was a switch from 68k to PPC code. Everything else has always been evolutions of the previous OS. This isn't a bad thing, consistancy is something people like. A lot of people didn't like (and still don't) OS X because it doesn't look like the old OS and doesnt' behave like it in some places. A complete revolution every year or even every 2 years would be disasterous for Apple or any other software company.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
If you're paying an annual fee for something on an 18-month update cycle, you're going to have years where you pay the full subscription price for an an idle year.
Or, the vendor is going to feel compelled to deliver something that approximates the value, and bend the development schedule out of shape to force a release, usually at the cost of quality. (Been there, done that, still have the t-shirt.)
So far, I think Apple has done a pretty good job of adding value to each release.
Apple spends loads of money paying an army of developers, designs, testers, managers, artists, support staff, etc. to develop these new releases. It costs money to run a business. Most businesses like to have income to offset the costs, and if they can, reap a profit which they can reinvest in their products. It's not like they're taking your $130 and buying golden toilet paper to wipe their asses with.
I paid $20 or 30 for the Public Beta, I got a kickass new OS to play with. I paid I don't remember how much for 10.0 and got a mediocre (but still better) version of the OS. I got the 10.1 upgrade for free at the Apple Store (score!) and finally had a truly usable version of Mac OS X. I paid $130 for 10.2 and got a kick-ass version of Mac OS X. I paid $130 for 10.3 and I've been totally wowed by it. 10.3 breathed new life into old hardware. Each time my money went towards making the next release even better.
Apple has every right to charge for their OS. Whether you agree with $130 being worth it is irrelevent. Just because you can get Free Software for free, does NOT mean ALL software should be free. Yes, it'd be nice if they had an upgrade version, but the last time they did that it was poorly devised and you could rip the CD, remove a single file from the image, and re-burn a full installer CD, which obviously cost them money.
If you want an upgrade version, make your voice heard. Go to http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback and let them know what you think.
Gabriel Ricard
I started using a mac cautiously about 3 years ago, and haven't looked back. I finally convinced my boss to get me a singleproc-G5 for the sysadmin drone work I do for a living.
I think it has something to do with getting older and gaining more non-computer related responsibilites (kids, houses, in-laws :) but the last think I want to see when I go to check why Countrywide didn't get my mortgage payment is something wrong with mmap() for 000EFx768 on DIMM B J3200. Ya know?
Yes PC fans, Apple hardware is generally more expensive. But two factors make it worth the extra dough:
1) It works. No complaints, no "my video card has a conflict with the on-board video/NIC IRQ"
2) Apple users are willing to pay a little more for quality and consistancy. The difference between a typical auto and a luxury auto.
Overall, there's nothing wrong with PC's, and Unix/Linux in general. They have their place, but for me personally having a machine that I can seamlessly pull in DV of my nephew from my camcorder and turn out a DVD-R in a few minutes? Record a quick riff that I have stuck in my head and take it to practice? All with no drivers, no kernel recompiles, or package dependancies? Priceless.
It's worth it. Anyone who is serious about to getting work done with the computer and doesn't consider working on the computer a very high priority should at least consider trying a Mac.
-brain
Steve is really testing the psychological limits of economics here.
going from 10.0 to 10.1 was pretty big, 10.1 to 10.2 was huge, but 10.2 to 10.3 wasn't as substantial.... so there is expose, access to some updated apps, big deal. Then we were faced with iLife becoming a pay for use suite, which wasn't of much use for me since I'm on a g3 without a dvdr drive, but that move took a lot of value out of the OS and placed it into new hardware purchases.
Apple is squeezing every last dollar it can- as any good company should I suppose. But I think if he keeps up this trend he is going to see adoption rates for the new OS start to fall and start to fall in line with the adoption trends in the windows market (where most people buy the new os bundled with their pc purchase).
If Steve wants to avoid that scenario he really needs to add more value. I know a lot of you zealots are saying panther was a big deal, I'm sorry but it wasn't at all- and I am pretty skeptical right now that Steve can take a stable, fully functioning OS and really add enough features to wow everyone.
I would like to see better integration between Interface Builder and XCode as well. From the last WWDC, I thought that it was going to be better than what it is. It's basically, design your GUI completely before writing code and IB will write your header files, or write it yourself, then "refresh" IB with your outlets to add connections etc. It would be really great if an outlet would be added for you when you add a new control to your interface, or if they would ask you if you want it created automatically, at which time you can remove it if you want. If they do this, they should also add the connection to the IBOutlet automatically. I would also like the Finder to refresh the desktop as soon as something is put on it, for example, through FTP or SMB.
Here, Here!
There's no compelling reason to upgrade -- as in, you are not compelled to upgrade. Apps I used to use under 10.1 work under 10.2, work under 10.3. I'd still be perfectly productive using 10.1 -- I just wouldn't be grinning quite as broadly.
I like the improvements Apple has made in its iLife suite. Along with Safari and Mail.app, they've become consumers of the vast majority of my CPU cycles. The most recent versions of iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto require 10.3 -- and the improvements are worth the price. Don't want these upgrades? Don't buy Panther.
Now I've got to start working on upgrading the hardware. I'm starting to see the limits to which one can push a G4/350...
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
Every macintosh must have a ritual reformatting. That goes all the way back to my 7100. The first thing I did was re-format it. Why? I don't know. It felt good.
In fact, Mac's need a holy infusion from the restore CD regularly. It banishes the unclean cruft.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
I'll return to the end of my previous post. Apple doesn't do a good enough job explaining the benefits behind the upgrades.
Look at my questions and reactions for what they are. Someone who actually tried to look for a benefit (in response to someone who told me there is benefit). I went and looked at the marketing material, and came back from Apple's own site convinced that there's nothing of value there.
Yes, I could have probably gone through Google, and onto Apples support site, etc. Most users won't do that, and neither did I.
It's good that Apple makes a decent product, and has a lot of strong advocates. Otherwise, they would surely fail under the marketing force of others whom have less, but talk themselves up more.
Do you still think I'm a troll (feel free to check my back posts before answering)?
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
Technically, yes, every update to OS X has provided significant performance boosts... especially for "older" hardware. However, when OS X was released it was incredibly inefficient and noticeably incomplete. Heck, hardware accelerated 2d graphics didn't show up until 10.2.
Years ago I purchased a Dual 450 g4because I wanted to get a giant performance boost from OS X. However, when OS X came out, it only slowed my system down. Even with SMP, OS X was a dog compared to crusty 'ol OS 9.
With the recent released of 10.2 and 10.3 my machine now feels as snappy in OS X as it does in OS 9.
OS X's updates aren't making you machine perform better, they are simply making it perform the way it -should- perform.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
"Long story short, I found out that in order to get Linux to work with the laptop's (proprietary) soundcard, I would have had to recompile the freaking kernel."
You found out wrong. Drivers don't have to be part of the kernel. They can also be loaded as modules. You don't have to recompile your kernel.
I am so sick and tired of reading un-informed 'insightful' posts like this.
Your complaint is that there is no pre-built binary for your sound-card. This is not a fault of Linux. It is either the fault of the distribution for not including the driver (if the source is available) or the fault of the manufacturer for not supporting Linux.
Who the hell do you think builds the drivers for Windows? Microsoft? NO. That Windows runs so much hardware is simply the result of the fact that manufacturers all support it. It has nothing to do with the technical merits of Windows and everything to do with its market share.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
You know what? I'll snap this thing up right away. It's worth the cost, just as 10.2 and 10.3 were worth the cost. (Though I suspect I'll be buying a new Powerbook about the time 10.4 is released.)
I'm of the same school as a lot of posters here -- Redhat, Windows, and Mac OS X are part of my daily life. Redhat runs my webserver/small biz, Windows is the ball-and-chain of my day job, and Mac OS X does everything else.
My development work (PHP/MySQL, Ruby, Perl, etc., all of which are part of the OS X distribution), all done on OS X before deploying to the server. My design work? Fire up Photoshop on the iBook. My writing? I just installed PHPWiki a few days ago and have been using it to organize and build the notes for the sci-fi trilogy I've had rolling around in my head for years. Family? I just custom-rolled a photo book for my father-in-law that had restored copies of all his photos (gracias, Photoshop) and it arrived in hardcover (gracias, iPhoto). Road trip? Burning off CDs like mad from iTunes, including the ones I purchased from iTMS.
I'm a Mac OS X user for life. Period. I don't have to fuck around with all the annoying shit that amounts to day-to-day life on Windows/Linux.
Like an earlier poster, I used to bitch about the price of Macs. Then I got an OS X machine. The price is worthwhile -- it's no different than a car, a house, or any other consumer purchase -- you get what you pay for. And I'll happily shell out $129 for 10.4, or a few grand for a new Powerbook with 10.4. Because I have a computer that I use to work, not a computer that I have to spend hours or days trying to keep working.
blog |
Each year we seem to buy machines in May (just in time to miss the free upgrade for the OS), get OS on a developer machine, update our in-house applications, roll out across our small office.
Yeah, it costs money, but we've gotten functionality and improvements that have made our in-house applications faster and more reliable, so I'm happy.
Also, there is no obligation to buy the upgrades, we were going to skip Panther, but then Expose was so incredible, we upgraded all our developers. Instead of building on Panther to deploy on Jaguar, we just bought a bunch of Jaguar updates.
The Jaguar Server -> Panther Server was an INCREDIBLE change, and I look forward to Tiger Server for more polish.
So it's a GOOD thing. Customers get the option of getting new features/more productive, and Apple Shareholders get to increase earnings by selling more to the same (or slightly shrinking) market.
So rather then fighting for marketshare, Apple is selling more/customer.
So all around, it's a good thing.
I'm pretty sure I had DVD playback in 10.1.5 on my trusty 600Mhz iBook.
/did/ just drop 2,200 on a dual 2Ghz G5 so I figure Apple will cut me some slack because I wanted to give my 2 year old stalwart iBook a new lease of life,
She shipped with 10.1.2 on the recovery/install discs and I'm certain I had full DVD playback from the moment I first started using her.
I have each new incarnation of OS X now - I bought a boxed version of Jaguar, and I now use the box for holding burned CDs of open source stuff and so on.
I have the "up to date" CDs for Panther since I qualified for them having bought a G5 within the upgrade window. I know I'm technically not supposed to have it installed on both the G5 and the iBook without the family licence, but I
In each incarnation 10.1 > 10.2 > 10.3 my iBook has become easier to use and much faster.
I can't say I've ever seen that trend in PCs.
I own a mac and I'm tired of system upgrades every year.
Nobody's putting a gun to your head and forcing you to upgrade your OS. My G4 running Jaguar did not magically stop functioning on October 24th when Panther was released. It's still running 10.2.8 right now, because I'm not moving to Panther until I get a rev. B G5 this summer.
I'm also tired of getting 50mb system updated in apple software update.
Again, nobody's putting a gun to your head and forcing you to click the "Install" button in Software Update, if for some reason you have a beef with Apple fixing flaws in their software and/or optimizing some things. Me, I'd rather get the bugfixes and security updates.
The only point you'll get much agreement on is that Apple should have an upgrade price for people who bought the previous version retail.
~Philly
What are you talking about? What "store" are you talking about?
This looks like more than [the CAN equivalent of] $99.99 US to me ($449 CAN for Win XP Pro full)...
XP Pro Upgrade... $299.99 canadian.
However, I did manage to find an OEM Win XP Pro (SP1) full for $133 US here... but it's OEM and you can only buy it with the purchase of hardware... plus it's only that low due to a sale that ends today.
But yeah, either way, you're right: Win XP Pro upgrade doesn't cost $199. It costs around $220.
You must like playing with fire. I still don't trust Panther in a large production environment, and that's been out for six months and has seen three fairly major service releases-- you want to buy a just-released 10.x.0 and roll it out in the space of a couple months?
One of my clients is about to move to OS X, and I'm moving them to a proven, well-tested-by-select-endusers build based on Jaguar (10.2.8) even though they're buying Panther licenses. One reason is because they live and die by Outlook, and Panther and Outlook 2001 in Classic are not best friends (and no, Entourage X is not a solution because the Exchange connectivity is shit and will be until they give it MAPI).
~Philly
I suppose I should've added in further elaboration. I do PC repair, so I see XP all day long, in various stages from freshly installed to spyware and virus-riddled. I do plenty enough with the OS to know what the differences are, and if I've overlooked some I invite you to elaborate on them for me.
Because of my job, I am given several opportunities each year to purchase legitimate OEM copies of XP Pro for as low as $7 or $8. I assure you, it's not the cost that's preventing me from upgrading. I haven't upgraded because I haven't seen anything sustantially different from 2000 to XP, and honestly, that seems to be the consensus with a lot of people. It's why XP is NT 5.1 to 2000's NT 5.0; it's a fairly minor upgrade in everything other than the marketing/OEM support sense. This is not to be confused with Apple's model, where 10.2 could legitimately have been named 11, although in fairness 10.3 would probably have been considered an "11.1". 2000 had shitty driver support when it first shipped, but that issue has long since been corrected (and doesn't count as an upgrade, IMHO, since it was mostly a case of manufacturers being pushed into improvements). Other than that, XP is very, very similar.
10.0 was awful, no doubt. It was a beta that apple chose to ship along with their computers as a sort of "demo" software. It was even referred to as "public beta". 10.1 was completely useable for me, and I installed it without any classic support on both of my macs at the time. I simply took the speed improvements as nice upgrades. But Apple took an alternate, and in my opinion, logical tack with the OS. They made sure shit was set in place before they worried about ratcheting the speed, and it has paid off quite well with the later versions. Windows is nice and fast, no doubt, but we're just now getting to the point where security exploits are in obscure services or apps, and not services that shouldn't have been on in the first place. To each his own "improvements".
OS 10.3 will install on anything G3 or up (excluding the original, weird B&W G3s sans USB) with a sufficient amount of RAM (128MB minimum) and sufficient hard drive space. In order to find non-capable hardware, you're talking about ca. 1997 powermacs, and even then it CAN be installed if you're willing to tinker with some of the installation processes. Of course at that point, you'd have had to upgrade RAM and probably HDD anyway, so it's not as though using a different install program is some out-of-the-blue expectation. At that point, I'd say you're definitely talking about legacy equipment. Of course, I'd like you to show me the ca 1997 PC (we'd be talking somewhere in the late Pentium/early PII era) that even has any business running XP, which has a minimum system requirement of 450 PII and 128MB of RAM, IIRC. I might also point out that there are plenty of pieces of PC software that are ME/2K/XP, and even more recently, 2k/XP only, so it's not as though this whole idea of "forced" upgrades is exclusive to Apple, or even remotely new in the computer world. If I want the new version of iMovie, that's using APIs that call for Quartz Extreme, then I need the OS that has Quartz Extreme. That doesn't mean that my OS 9 version of iMovie 2 doesn't work anymore, nor does it mean that my office 2001 is non-functional. Part of the reason for adding those new features is to allow developers to take advantage of them.
When I upgrade Microsoft, I feel like I'm simply getting patches and ugly window dressing. When I upgrade Apple, I feel like I'm getting tons of new features and capabilities. Bottom line, Apple is providing significant value -- I'm willing to put hard money behind that kind of corporate behavior. The complaint I have toward Microsoft is that I don't get $200 worth of value, productivity, interest, or entertainment for the price tag. In fact, the XP "experience, the licensing, and lack of new features has turned me off from using Microsoft until I absolutely have to. Apple, who seems to trust their users not to pirate, gladly gets my repeat business. And will continue to do so.
Standard Mac Reply(tm).
"But you get more with a new version of OS/x than you do a windows service pack."
You fail to highlight the fact that OS X Panther operates faster than OS X Jaguar on the very same Mac thanks to optimizations made by Apple. Can you point out exactly which later release of Windows ran faster than the prior version on exactly the same hardware as before (and without a memory upgrade)? I doubt you can. As we all know on Slashdot, when WinXP Service Pack 1 was released, it caused the computers it was installed on to slow down and broke applications.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
"Not running Windows - Priceless"
Well, actually you do have a point there...
I think, therefore I am...I think.
Hear, hear. I don't think most people have any appreciation for what Apple has managed to do with this new OS. 10.0-10.1 was still kind of a joke, but 10.2 was faster and had nearly all the necessary features for a desktop OS. 10.3 blows 10.2 out of the water for speed and features. The list of applications that I install after upgrading a computer to Panther is very short. And you don't need a G5 machine or even a G4 to run Panther because of the amazing amount of optimization that Apple has accomplished since 10.0 came out.
;)
OS X Panther is now speed-comparable to OS 9 running natively on the same hardware, to the point where I can be sitting here typing this in Firefox on what would be considered an ancient Mac, an old 350MHz blue gumdrop slot-loading iMac. I upgraded this machine from OS 9.2, and in many ways I can't tell much of a responsiveness difference between this machine and my dual-867 G4 at work. This old hardware has been revitalized and brought into the modern world with a simple OS upgrade. That, my friends, is a miracle.
(Caveat: don't try to install OS X or even boot any OS X based boot CD on a Mac this old without making absolutely certain that you've applied the latest firmware updates. We used to have two of these iMacs but one died after I booted an OS X install CD on it. Something goes wrong in the logic board or video board. Same thing happened to this one but I managed to find and apply the proper firmware update before it died. Scary, but now we have a computer that will probably still be usable 5 or even 10 years from now, with an OS that isn't stuck in AppleTalk land anymore.)
If you say OS 7/8/9 and 10.0/10.1 were all crap, I would generally agree with you. But you can't deny that OS X has definitely gotten faster and better with each release, and after using 10.3 you won't be able to deny that it is a kickass operating system for actually getting things done.
Just put me on that ever-growing list of people who still run Linux on a PC (I've even run Debian and compiled a few kernels in my time), but for my main machine I wouldn't have anything but a Mac running the latest OS X. Sometimes you just want to use a computer to do actual work. Or play. And for either of those, the new Mac rocks the house.
I'm the computer tech for an organization with 7 people and 9 computers... All new Macs, and all now running Panther. I consider myself to be one of the luckiest sysadmins in the world. The only Microsoft crap I have to deal with is Office, and that's only because OpenOffice isn't up to par on the Mac yet. (But for those who are interested in a MS Office alternative for the Mac, check out NeoOffice/J, a Java-based version of OpenOffice. It's still under heavy development but it seems to work OK. Oh, and download Firefox, IMO it looks and acts nicer than either IE/Mac or Safari.)
> Your OS might get patched to fix vulnerabilities but your applications won't; the new versions won't run on your version of the OS.
So basically what you're saying is, you don't mind paying each application vendor every time they release new versions, but it pisses you off to have to pay Apple to release new versions of the operating system? Is Apple's software somehow not worth the same as other software vendors?
I don't see how Microsoft is worlds better. There are a lot of programs now that don't run on Windows 9x (iTunes is one of them, lol). People don't bother to test their code on old OS versions because they suck. Really. In comparison to the current OS, using the last version always seems archaic and annoying. And it's the same for developers who learn new APIs and get used to them, and later can't be arsed to go rip out their cool new way of doing things and replace it with a kludge for the previous OS. It's not Apple's fault. The only things they could do would be (A) start giving the OS away for free (see "bad business idea") or (B) give the OS away for free and charge a subscription (which seems to bother most of us too) or (C) cease any development that changes APIs. OS updates would just change colors, fonts, and maybe the included applications. This sounds like a daft idea as well; there's no point in releasing an upgrade if you don't make real improvements and add new APIs as necessary.
The following is directed at everyone, not really the parent:
If you resent paying for a new version of an application or an OS, then don't ever update your apps or your OS. Apple will continue to release security updates for the old versions as long as it's sane,
Yes, if you're still running OS 8.6 and expect updates every couple weeks, you're out of your mind. Supporting every previous OS version would require constant expansion to support a few crackpots who are too cheap to ever upgrade. Tour guide: "This building is home to the System 7.5 team, who still release updates to that OS on a regular basis. Nearby is the 8.0 team, who constantly monitors 8.0 for bugs and security issues on that mid-90s OS..." But don't worry, by the time Apple quits releasing critical security updates for your OS version, I doubt anyone will be bothering to try to exploit it either, since only you and 14 other people are running it anyway, it's not a very big target. Go Google for "Atari 1200XL exploits" and let me know what you find.
As for your apps, don't upgrade them either. If you're so cheap that you can't afford $129 every two years (which is how long you can go without losing a serious amount of compatibility with new apps), then it shouldn't be too hard to not buy upgrades to other apps. If you're the type that doesn't mind being a version or two out of date, which you indicate when you refuse to upgrade your OS, you probably won't miss the app upgrades either!
Another hint, if you want your cake and to eat it as well: eBay. You can usually pick it up there for way less than retail.