On Orbitz, Mac Users Offered Pricier Hotels First

An anonymous reader writes "Travel site Orbitz found out that Mac users tend to select pricier rooms and swanky hotels. So, from now on, they will show more expensive hotel options to Mac users than to PC users. This is why, although I am a Mac user, my Firefox agent string says 'Windows XP' :)" The (paywalled) WSJ report on which Reuter's summary is based carries Orbitz' s softer explanation, which is that the results by platform are an experiment based mostly on presentation and search-result ordering rather than actually naming higher prices based on OS: "[T]he company isn't showing the same room to different users at different prices. They also pointed out that users can opt to rank results by price."

Comments

Re:Well, duh

[BronsCon]

Uhmm... My office is Mac-centric but I'm a Linux guy, so I installed Linux on a $400 Toshiba laptop, then installed Win7 and OSX into VMs on that. My boss used to laugh at me every time my OSX VM would take a crap (about once a month because I never restart it and it sometimes doesn't like to wake from suspend), until I told him to make note of every time how MacBook Pro took a dump and let's compare numbers. He has issues with his $1200 "superior product" roughly 5x as often as I do. I see similar stats on the various different generation iMacs in the office, as well; that's why I switched to using my own machine, it just works. Now, I hope you like Grape, and don't worry, Mr. Jones^H^H^Hbs made this Flavor Aid himself, so you know it's safe to drink.

I'd also like to point out that my $400 laptop boots faster (Linux -> login -> start the OSX VM) than any MacBook Pro or iMac in this office, and half of them are mid-2011 models.

Everyone's welcome to their own opinion, but we don't get to choose which facts exist. The above statements are fact. Sorry.