You Can Now Run Beta Versions of OS X—For Free

redletterdave (2493036) writes "Apple on Tuesday announced the OS X Beta Seed Program, which allows anyone to download and install pre-release Mac software for the sake of testing and submitting feedback before the public launch. Until Tuesday, Apple charged users $99 a year to test out new OS X software—doing so required a paid-up developer account. (Testing new iPhone software still requires a separate developer account for another $99 a year.) Now, much the same way new OS X software is now totally free to download, it's also free to try out. All you need is an Apple ID to sign up."

Comments

Apple...Free

[Anonymous Coward]

It's over... apple is finished..

Re:Apple...Free

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this more free than the OSX you get with your mac?
Unless OSX can suddenly be installed on non-apple pc's.

Re:Apple...Free

[Noah Haders]

it's free in that you don't need to have a developer account to download the betas. Although I doubt anybody purchased the developer account just to be able to access the betas... Does anybody know what the next release will be called? Yosemite?

Re:Apple...Free

[MisterSquid]

It's over... apple is finished..

The summary has one detail wrong.

Yes, developers who do pay a yearly fee have been able to download betas of OS X. Additionally, users identified by various means were invited by Apple to be a beta testers and those invited testers paid nothing to be download, test, and evaluate OS X betas.

I know this because I have been one of those invited testers since 2008.

Re:Apple...Free

[lucm]

those invited testers paid nothing to be download, test, and evaluate OS X betas.

You mean: those invited testers WERE paid nothing to download, test, and evaluate OS X betas.

Typically when a client wants me to test his product I'm getting paid. But I value my time and expertise (so do my clients), so YMMV.

Re:Apple...Free

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless there's a surfing spot at Yosmite that I'm not aware of, I doubt it.

Re:Apple...Free

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this more free than the OSX you get with your mac?

What Mac?

Unless OSX can suddenly be installed on non-apple pc's.

Exactly.

Mac OS has usually been somewhat non-Mac compatible.

In the 1990s it was super-easy with "classic" Mac OS: just get an Amiga and run Shapeshifter (or some competing product, don't remember its name). You could be the only kid on the block with a 68060 Mac.

With Mac OS X on PPC, there were a a few dark years. (Digression: Fortunately, this was the one period during which Apple actually made pretty decent hardware, so having to buy a Mac wasn't so bad. In the early/mid 1990s you had to be pretty nutty religious to tolerate Mac hardware (anyone else remember the "road apple" Performas?), and nowdays Macs are ok though substandard compared to other machines of the same price -- yet still quite tolerable if you don't think about what you spent on it. But from 1998 to around 2003 Macs were downright competitively good machines. So back when it was hard to run Mac OS on non-Macs, you didn't really need to.)

But all that went away when they ported to x86. Nowdays you can run it under virtualization, or if you're willing to limit your hardware choices a bit, you can build a "Hackintosh."

Re:Apple...Free

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Brit I was embarrassed to have spent the first 25 years of my life pronouncing that "yo-see-might". I never even made the association with Yosemite Sam. Now I feel like I can't mock Americans for all their weird pronunciations.

Re:Apple...Free

[geminidomino]

But all that went away when they ported to x86. Nowdays you can run it under virtualization, or if you're willing to limit your hardware choices a bit, you can build a "Hackintosh."

Last time I tried, it still limited your hardware, as it apparently only worked on intel chips (or was it boards?). Admittedly, It hasn't come back around to it on the "bored weekend" ringbuffer yet.

Re:Apple...Free

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple certainly pays people in house to test it's software too, but yours is an interesting stance. I suppose you don't vote either. After all, if the country really valued your input they'd compensate you for time spent evaluating candidates, just like you would be for time spent interviewing potential employees. Nevermind that you could benefit from influencing the result of the election (in an abstract sense).

The Beta concept should likewise be a win-win for all those involved, even without money changing hands. Developers have some self interest in doing testing of new OS versions because they want their software to continue to work as expected. By running the new OS ahead of general release, they can do development on their software to provide an update simultaneous or even ahead of the OS release which takes advantage of new features and adapts to changed APIs. It's also entirely likely with a large software project like an OS that the in house testers missed some bugs, even serious ones. If a developer runs into one of these, it's likely to affect the software they're working on so everyone wants to see it fixed as soon as possible.

Of course there are some weirdo users who like to be on the cutting edge too, and have access to new features before anyone else. Myself, I'm usually about one release behind, because it already fits my needs and I don't like going through the hassle of upgrading (and fixing things that break).

Re:Apple...Free

[jcr]

Apple Computer: on the brink of oblivion since 1975!

-jcr

Re:Apple...Free

[Plumpaquatsch]

those invited testers paid nothing to be download, test, and evaluate OS X betas.

You mean: those invited testers WERE paid nothing to download, test, and evaluate OS X betas.

Typically when a client wants me to test his product I'm getting paid. But I value my time and expertise (so do my clients), so YMMV.

Wait, what? Google owes me money for using their betas?

Re:Apple...Free

[Anonymous Coward]

The English language was a bastard from day one, seeing as it's just an amalgam of words from other languages with incorrect pronunciations. That's why I always have to laugh when some limey gets on my case for not pronouncing something in the still wrong British way.

Just think about the pronunciation for the word "fillet". The American way is more true to the original French word.

Re:Apple...Free

[lucm]

No. Google engineers call their products "beta" so users can't complain too loudly about bugs. That's like those people who spend hours cleaning their house before guests arrive and then say "please don't pay attention to the mess".

Then again, most of those Google products are free. Apple products, on the other hand, are not free, far from it; so it's amusing to see someone gloating about beta-testing overpriced products that look like KDE circa 2002 on their own time while the company is shoveling billions in offshore bank accounts.

Re:Apple...Free

[lucm]

I suppose you don't vote either. After all, if the country really valued your input they'd compensate you for time spent evaluating candidates, just like you would be for time spent interviewing potential employees. Nevermind that you could benefit from influencing the result of the election (in an abstract sense).

Of course I vote. And voting does influence the result of an election (to some extent). One gets to choose if government policy will be influenced by the agro/financial/insurance lobbies or by the energy/military lobbies. The good thing is that lobbyists are good at marketing, so instead of being shipped to a foreign country to take over their oil and destroy their infrastructure so American companies can get juicy reconstruction contracts, one is "fighting the war on terror", and instead of being asked to pay more taxes to finance a program that forces expensive insurance down the throat of small business owners, one is "contributing to an universal healthcare program".

That my friend is called Freedom, and if you disagree with it the FBI will kick down your door at night and drag your ass to a secret jail, and if you ever get the chance to call someone while in jail the discussion will be recorded by the NSA and later wikileaked by russian spies and crossdressers.

Re:Apple...Free

[Guy Harris]

Unless there's a surfing spot at Yosmite that I'm not aware of, I doubt it.

Who at Apple said that the new naming convention is "California surfing sites" rather than "California locations"? We only have one data point so far, and that's insufficient to conclude that the locations will all be surfing sites (or named after dogs or located in San Mateo or Santa Clara county or...).

Re:Apple...Free

[babyrat]

we get it - you don't like Apple.

The OP wasn't gloating - he was correcting an error in the summary.

You can go back to your secluded shack in the woods now.

Re:Apple...Free

[lucm]

When you say "we", who do you mean? Did you get elected as a spokesperson for all the idiots waiting in line at the Apple store when the company releases the same product over and over again, or are you just too insecure to make comments as an individual? Or is it both?

As for the secluded shack in the woods: I can't go back there, I sold it to a bunch of Apple fanbois who are convinced that the civilized world died with Steve Jobs. The market price for this kind of sack skyrocketed when the iPhone 5C was released.

Re:Apple...Free

[kmoser]

This is totally gonna drive Linux out of business.

WANT!

[Anonymous Coward]

If I had a second Mac, I would be all over this. Unfortunately, my machine is my main work machine so I can't risk installing an OS that is in beta. Still, this is incredibly cool and will hopefully make their release OS software even more stable (more eyes catching problems while in beta and all that).

Re:WANT!

[rvw]

If I had a second Mac, I would be all over this. Unfortunately, my machine is my main work machine so I can't risk installing an OS that is in beta. Still, this is incredibly cool and will hopefully make their release OS software even more stable (more eyes catching problems while in beta and all that).

You can use another partition for the beta.

Re:WANT!

[Anonymous Coward]

my machine is my main work machine so I can't risk installing an OS that is in beta.

Install it on an external drive (preferably an SSD).

Re:WANT!

[psergiu]

But it will also work (albeit slowly) on a USB stick or even SD card.

Re:WANT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Try VMware fusion.

Re:WANT!

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe run it as a VM ? Parallels or vmware on an OS X host, QEMU/KVM on linux ?

Re:WANT!

[Entropius]

Until running cat on a large text file doesn't crash the terminal (blowing up all open terminals) and the built-in PDF viewer doesn't hang the OS for ~1s sometimes when scrolling through a static PDF (provoking the spinny color thing of doom), I'll stick to KDE or Cinnamon.

Re:WANT!

[93 Escort Wagon]

You can use another partition for the beta.

Does that work for Slashdot as well?

Re:WANT!

[BasilBrush]

Until running cat on a large text file doesn't crash the terminal (blowing up all open terminals)

How big?

built-in PDF viewer doesn't hang the OS for ~1s sometimes when scrolling through a static PDF (provoking the spinny color thing of doom)

Haven't noticed that either. Is that another huge file thing?

Re:WANT!

[ganjadude]

dual boot?

Re:WANT!

[Penguinisto]

You can use another partition for the beta.

VMWare also supports OSX now (at least vSphere/ESX does), so if you have Workstation/Fusion, it may well work as-is...

Re:WANT!

[lucm]

You can use another partition for the beta.

Does that work for Slashdot as well?

Booo

Re:WANT!

[spire3661]

Firewire would be ideal.

Re:WANT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Good news! Neither of those things happen or have ever happened in any version of Mac OS X ever.

Re:WANT!

[guruevi]

You may have a hard drive or hard drive data consistency issue... that is practically the only reason OS X UI hangs, the kernel scheduler makes sure of that.

Re:WANT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah maybe it will be better... now go back to Tom's Hardware and ask about how to install a virtual machine. Get off our lawn.

Re:WANT!

[botfap]

yep one does, terminal issue is a regular one for power users dealing with large datasets in a console with GNU userspace tools (used to get this every day from 10.4-10.9), windows 7/8.1 isn't any better when using cygwin and doesn't have any native tools for that kind of data processing so OS X trumps it there.

Re:WANT!

[the_B0fh]

You can run it in parallels, vmware fusion or virtualbox.

Re:WANT!

[Anonymous Coward]

It was trivially easy to install Mavericks under Fusion 6 on my 10.8.5 system.

Re:WANT!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not working right now on Parallels according to numerous reports in the dev forum.

Re:WANT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Pumping lots of data through cat doesn't seem like power user behaviour to me. I don't know what size files you're talking about, but I often process log files in the 1-2GB range without problems. I don't use cat on them though - that's just stupid. Python, sed, grep, awk - no crashes.

However, for some cat stupidity:
[blackhole]:~> cat test.script >> test.script
^C
[blackhole]:~> ls -lh test.script
-rw-r--r-- 1 joe staff 6.3G 24 Apr 20:51 test.script
[blackhole]:~> cat test.script | grep balls
[blackhole]:~>

No crashes... 6GB is perhaps not particularly big, depending on what you're talking about, but I only have so much space on my SSD. I'm not keen to use it all up on something like this. So what's an example of a large dataset and tools that cause Terminal to wig out?

Toot little too late

[botfap]

Where is Apple's future? It seems to be slowly eating itself

Re:Toot little too late

[gnasher719]

Where is Apple's future? It seems to be slowly eating itself

Since we are talking about MacOS X here - the last estimate was that Apple makes 45% of all profits in the desktop + laptop hardware market, so I'd say they are slowly eating everyone else :-)

Re:Toot little too late

[botfap]

please explain how the hard profit percentage has anything to do with the eating everyone else? apart from that your figure of 45% is nonsense unless its from before 2004 (earliest I could find figures for), I've just gone and looked through apples own figures for divisional profit and they are not even close to your 45% figure apart from iphones and iphones are rapidly losing worldwide market share.

Re:Toot little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you say that?

Re:Toot little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

herpa derp a google fanboys

Re:Toot little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is Apple's future? It seems to be slowly eating itself

Since we are talking about MacOS X here - the last estimate was that Apple makes 45% of all profits in the desktop + laptop hardware market, so I'd say they are slowly eating everyone else :-)

What I find amazing is how many Apple users brag about the extreme profit margin Apple is extracting from them, as if that is something positive for consumers. You can see it most frequently in iPhone vs Android discussions after Android very clearly passed iPhone in market share. Then the argument became "but Apple has much higher profit". Yes, they do, and it is coming out of your wallet, why are you happy about that?

Re:Toot little too late

[Sockatume]

The relevant article is below. By only producing "luxury" computers, Apple has the benefit of making an enormous amount of money from a relatively small but very spendy user base. That's only going to continue as PC manufacturers continue to compete on price at the expense of profit margins and product quality.

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/20...

Re:Toot little too late

[botfap]

no google, we swapped OS X 10.6 -10.9 for ubuntu. its taking a little adaptation but of the 9 previous OS X web team devs, 6 of them are happier on ubuntu, 2 want to go back to OS X becuase they dont want to learn something new (the people scared of change) and the final guy is a Windows guy who hated OS X anyway and wants to use windows. only OS X machine we are leaving is a 27" iris pro haswell imac which is a lovely machine ruined by a toy operating system in 10.9.

Re:Toot little too late

[gnasher719]

apart from that your figure of 45% is nonsense

Published on theregister.com. Estimated profits 45% Apple, 13% Dell, 7% Lenovo, the rest - very little. Consider this: In the USA, Apple sells about 90% of all laptops over $1,000. Not "45% of Apple's profit". "45% of all profits made from selling laptop and desktop hardware". By the way, the market share of iPhones in the phone market has been growing every year, but that would be too boring to report. It's just that feature phones are more and more replaced by cheap smart phones. You think Apple cares if millions in China buy the cheapest smartphone they can find?

Re:Toot little too late

[Sockatume]

The brag factor is that Apple will probably be in business long after the last of their competitors have been sold off to Chinese conglomerates. I don't go in for that sort of petty side-taking and I don't have the kind of salary to be a Mac owner anyway but you can see how that works.

Re:Toot little too late

[botfap]

wanna try again? you seem to think apple is a computer company

Re:Toot little too late

[botfap]

hahaha you are basing your figures on "The Register's" ESTIMATED figures, wow that is funny, try some real data, apple publishes its own figures, what do they say?

Re:Toot little too late

[Sockatume]

The Register is re-reporting Asymco's figures, which are just taken from public accounting information.

Re:Toot little too late

[BasilBrush]

The story in smartphones is even better for Apple. There they take 62% of the entire industry's profits.

http://bgr.com/2014/03/18/appl...

Re:Toot little too late

[BasilBrush]

Apple's earning releases show their own profits, but not those of the other companies in the industry, so unless they happen to have made a comment in the notes, they are not likely to answer this question. Which is why you need an industry analyst, such as the one The Register has quoted.

Re:Toot little too late

[BasilBrush]

Look at your own quote of the preceeding conversation. The profit margin answer is to the question "Where is Apple's future? It seems to be slowly eating itself". It's proof that Apple's business model is working very well for them, and they aren't going to go out of business anywhere in the foreseeable future.

Re:Toot little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has excellent corporate BYOD support on all their devices.

Re:Toot little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, if only i had mod points. I am with you 100% on this and have often wondered why they "brag" about apple's profits which they pay for as some sort of badge of honour?

Re:Toot little too late

[Karlt1]

You can see it most frequently in iPhone vs Android discussions after Android very clearly passed iPhone in market share. Then the argument became "but Apple has much higher profit". Yes, they do, and it is coming out of your wallet, why are you happy about that?

The typical user in the US pays the same amount for a high end iPhone as they do for a high-end Android - $200. The carrier pays Apple a larger subsidy for the iPhone. Why should the end-user care how much of a subsidy that the carrier has to pay?

Re:Toot little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

The brag factor is that Apple will probably be in business long after the last of their competitors have been sold off to Chinese conglomerates. I don't go in for that sort of petty side-taking and I don't have the kind of salary to be a Mac owner anyway but you can see how that works.

It would be interesting if there were any studies done on the longevity of companies with unusually high profit margins compared to companies with more industry normal profit margins. It wouldn't surprise me if the super-high-profit margin strategy also could be more fragile long term. Music industry during the CD decades would be one example, but you would of course need more examples and analysis of factors to draw any conclusions.

Re:Toot little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Probably because the carrier passes these costs on to the customer?

Re:Toot little too late

[ganjadude]

because if they were not paying apple as much the cost of our phone bills could be cheeper. Think about it, why should I a dumb phone user (not really) have to pay more for my bill to subsidize the iPhone?? (yeah, i know thats wishful thinking verizon would simply pocket the profits)

Re:Toot little too late

[gnasher719]

wanna try again? you seem to think apple is a computer company

Let me think. Article headline: "You Can Now Run Beta Versions of OS X-For Free". OS X (or more properly MacOS X) is Apple's computer operating system. The whole article is about computers. So clearly your initial post must have been about how well Apple is doing or not doing in the computer market. Unless you are an imbecile with the attention span of a gnat who cannot read a simple headline.

We are discussing computers here. We are not discussing what percentage of Apple's profits and revenue come from computer. We are discussing how big the computer selling part of Apple is in the computer market. Somewhere else we could be discussing how big Apple is in the ever shrinking market for portable music players (hint: Amazon doesn't sell any new music players with more than 32 GB capacity that are not made by Apple). We could discuss what percentage of set top boxes are made by Apple in yet another place. But here we are discussing computers.

Re:Toot little too late

[Blaskowicz]

As usual we have figure for branded PCs, so the small computers shops and raw parts are left out. I'm saying "as usual" because I remember such studies where the Ipod had a huge ass market share well over 50% ; except the no-brand players were collectively dominating the market and were not accounted for.

Re:Toot little too late

[UnknowingFool]

please explain how the hard profit percentage has anything to do with the eating everyone else? apart from that your figure of 45% is nonsense unless its from before 2004 (earliest I could find figures for),

Apple has never released profit for divisions as far as I can tell. Doing so would give too much advantage to competitors. Apple does release overall profit.

I've just gone and looked through apples own figures for divisional profit and they are not even close to your 45% figure

That would be impossible as Apple does not release divisional profit numbers.

apart from iphones and iphones are rapidly losing worldwide market share.

Last time I checked profit and market share are not the same thing. A company can be wildly profitable and have a small market share.

Re:Toot little too late

[jbolden]

That's not true. It was true in 2012 but not in 2013 or 2014. The carriers have been trying to prevent the formation of an Apple monopoly in the USA and pushed Android subsidies up to Apple levels. Apple is currently negotiating for yet another increase for the iPhone 6 so this may happen 4Q2014 but for about 18 mo it wasn't the case.

Re:Toot little too late

[jbolden]

If you were a dumb phone user you aren't paying the subsidy. The dumb plans don't include the smartphone subsidy cost.

Re:Toot little too late

[Karlt1]

That's not true. It was true in 2012 but not in 2013 or 2014. The carriers have been trying to prevent the formation of an Apple monopoly in the USA and pushed Android subsidies up to Apple levels. Apple is currently negotiating for yet another increase for the iPhone 6 so this may happen 4Q2014 but for about 18 mo it wasn't the case.

Why would carriers push other manufacturers subsidies up that would cause then to spend more money.? If anything, carriers are trying two things to spend less on subsidies:

1. Encourage contract customers to buy cheaper Android phones so they could spend less on subsidies.

http://www.phonearena.com/news...

2. Move away from a subsidy model and offer 0% financing on the phone so that the customer pays for the phone and plan separately.

http://online.wsj.com/news/art...

Now moving away from subsidies could hurt Apple, but would a consumer really balk at paying $25/month for an iPhone over paying $18/month for a high-end Android?

Re:Toot little too late

[immaterial]

Out of curiosity, what is it that makes you think 10.9 is a "toy operating system"? The only significant regression between 10.6 and 10.9 IIRC is Spaces is now one-dimensional, but TotalSpaces does a good job of fixing that.

Re:Toot little too late

[ceoyoyo]

Because I'm an Apple shareholder. ;)

Re:Toot little too late

[botfap]

"The only significant regression between 10.6 and 10.9 IIRC is Spaces is now one-dimensional, but TotalSpaces does a good job of fixing that."

wow, just wow, im blown away by the complete lack of knowledge

Re:Toot little too late

[immaterial]

A powerful rebuttal, full of information to answer my question. I assume you're posting from 10.9 now, and one of the regressions is lack of support for the shift key. Can't imagine how terrible it must be to work in such an environment!

(Shame on me for expecting an intelligent answer from a troll.)

Re:Toot little too late

[ganjadude]

It all gets rolled into it though, they have to be shifting the burden of buying all those phones somewhere, you dont think only iphone users are paying for their subsidized iphones do you?

Re:Toot little too late

[the_B0fh]

You understand there's a difference between profit and revenue which is independent of market share, right?

There's been a lot of articles about Apple taking 3/4 of all the profits in the mobile phones market.

You also understand that the growth in the mobile phone market are on the cheap phones side - low to very low profit margins on those, right? Or in some cases, negative profits (ie, loses)

Re:Toot little too late

[the_B0fh]

What I find amazing is how many Apple users brag about the extreme profit margin Apple is extracting from them, as if that is something positive for consumers. You can see it most frequently in iPhone vs Android discussions after Android very clearly passed iPhone in market share. Then the argument became "but Apple has much higher profit". Yes, they do, and it is coming out of your wallet, why are you happy about that?

What is the difference between buying an unlocked iPhone 5S for $650 and an unlocked Galaxy S5 for $650?

Just because Apple sells more of them, so they should reduce the price, and therefore reduce what they can invest into new products?

Re:Toot little too late

[jbolden]

No they aren't. There is a $40 / mo per smartphone fee and $17 of that goes towards subsidies. dumb phone users don't pay the smartphone subsidy fee.

Re:Toot little too late

[Uberbah]

What I find amazing is how many Apple users brag about the extreme profit margin Apple is extracting from them, as if that is something positive for consumers.

What I find amazing is how Fandroids like to complain about Apple's margins at the same time they're paying the exact same prices for their Android phones.

Re:Toot little too late

[jbolden]

Why would carriers push other manufacturers subsidies up that would cause then to spend more money.?

For the same reason they introduce subsidies in the first place.

1) The quality of the handset has a huge impact on the level of custom enjoyment of their cellular solution and thus their usage.
2) Customers however are cheap with handsets.
3) Customers are willing to pay more in monthly fees

So it makes sense for carriers to essentially lend customers money for the handsets as part of their monthly fees to get their total spend up. For every $1 in handset subsidies they get $3 in revenue which means $2 in revenue for the carrier related business.

Encourage contract customers to buy cheaper Android phones so they could spend less on subsidies.

That article was during 2012. During that year the subsidies on Android were $250-300 while the iPhone subsidy was $420. Of course Verizon wanted customers to buy an expensive dataplan and then kick back $8 / mo extra. But despite stores being mildly pro-Android 70% of their contract base still went iPhone when they could.

Move away from a subsidy model and offer 0% financing on the phone so that the customer pays for the phone and plan separately.

Note the May 2012 date. They went the other way. They increased subsidies. The article was wrong.

Re:Toot little too late

[Plumpaquatsch]

wanna try again? you seem to think apple is a computer company

There's only a hand-full of companies selling more computers world-wide. And all of them combined don't make as much money doing so as Apple.

Re:Toot little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

What I find amazing is how many Apple users brag about the extreme profit margin Apple is extracting from them, as if that is something positive for consumers.

What I find amazing is how Fandroids like to complain about Apple's margins at the same time they're paying the exact same prices for their Android phones.

It is kind of funny you should jump on the "Fandroid" attack, as I'm a WP user myself (the AC you replied to). And I haven't been complaining about Apple's margins, they are free to do as they like and do it because they can, I just find it puzzling that their customers are cheering for being charged not just higher but extremely high margins. That is different.

Re:Toot little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

What I find amazing is how many Apple users brag about the extreme profit margin Apple is extracting from them, as if that is something positive for consumers. You can see it most frequently in iPhone vs Android discussions after Android very clearly passed iPhone in market share. Then the argument became "but Apple has much higher profit". Yes, they do, and it is coming out of your wallet, why are you happy about that?

What is the difference between buying an unlocked iPhone 5S for $650 and an unlocked Galaxy S5 for $650?

Just because Apple sells more of them, so they should reduce the price, and therefore reduce what they can invest into new products?

When comparing prices you should choose an Android phone with the same screen size as the iPhone, makes a huge difference. And there is nothing in the sales volume of Galaxys vs iPhones that give any volume price advantage of that kind. And Samsung supplies many of their parts, do you think Apple get a better price than their own phone unit?

The fact is that Apple operates with an extremely high profit margin, much higher than any competitor, also across their other products like Macbooks. This is what Apple charges on top of the real hardware cost that are not magically much lower than main competitors when comparing equal hardware. And they can do it, because people value the brand, the design, the experience -- and all that is fair to value. Apple is by far not the most extreme example of that compared to other designer/luxury items. I can easily understand people concluding "yes, I'm willing to pay for this". What I can't understand is customers actively cheering for a very high profit margin being placed on top of the product they want to buy (except for those with "yes, hit me harder" leanings ;). Apple products could be 25% cheaper with exact same quality and exact same product development investment an Apple still be a very profitable company.

Re:Toot little too late

[Uberbah]

It is kind of funny you should jump on the "Fandroid" attack, as I'm a WP user myself

Ah, so the proper term was Hateboi, not Fandroid. Sorry, my mistake.

I just find it puzzling that their customers are cheering for being charged not just higher but extremely high margins. That is different.

And I still find it puzzling when people complain about Apple's margins while paying the same prices for Android and Windows phones.

Re:Toot little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

It is kind of funny you should jump on the "Fandroid" attack, as I'm a WP user myself

Ah, so the proper term was Hateboi, not Fandroid. Sorry, my mistake.

Yes, if you dare to question anything Apple you must be either a Fandroid or a Hateboy. No other choices exists, so lets reduce it all to ad hominem. I understand where you are coming from.

Re:Toot little too late

[Uberbah]

Yes, if you dare to question anything Apple

Drinking Hatorade isn't questioning.

I understand where you are coming from.

I understand you want to throw stones at Apple for charging the same price as Windows and Android phones.

so lets reduce it all to ad hominem

Factual descriptions aren't ad hominems. Have you tried Hatoradics Anonymous?

beta tester now?

[blindbat]

I feel like I've been running betas since Lion.

Re:beta tester now?

[botfap]

OS X 10.6.8 The last properly stable version, unfortunately apple wont secure this OS anymore so our IT dept is slowly transitioning us to Ubuntu which is actually a lot lot better than we had feared. Its still not OS X but then neither is 10.8, its a fisher price toy interface to an OS.

Re:beta tester now?

[Anonymous Coward]

So far Apple hasn't missed a security patch 10.6. It wasn't vulnerable to any of the recent SSL flaws like the newer OSes.

Re:beta tester now?

[Moridineas]

Zing!

(still running Snow Leopard on my laptop and happy about it!)

Re:beta tester now?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I feel like I've been running betas since Lion."

Is it a gay lion?

crocodile teeth penis shaft

Re:beta tester now?

[BasilBrush]

What's not stable about Mavericks? (10.9)

Re:beta tester now?

[Anonymous Coward]

You realise that that article is entirely based on the fact that 10.6.8 didn't receive a patch for goto fail... A bug that never affected 10.6.8 in the first place.

Re:beta tester now?

[93 Escort Wagon]

I'm quite happy with Mavericks, myself.

I wasn't all that happy with Lion, to the point that I rolled back to 10.6.8 Snow Leopard. Mountain Lion was useable.

Re:beta tester now?

[umafuckit]

I've seen some weirdness with Mavericks on some machines. On my 2011 13" Air, Mavericks is fine. On my ~2009 (don't recall the exact year) Mini it's really, really, slow. I even wiped the HDD and did a re-install. It behaved at a reasonable speed for a week or two and now it's back to horrible slowness. I also have a colleague who has two more or less identical 2013 Macbook Pros. One has Mavericks and one has Lion. He claims the machine running Mavericks is very obviously slower than that running Lion. This is despite the extra RAM on the Mavericks machine.

Re:beta tester now?

[BasilBrush]

For sure it's more memory hungry. I'm considering upgrading my 4GB to 8GB.

Re:beta tester now?

[SDF-7]

Well, for the last month I've had my Mini which just sits there as an iTunes server run out of memory. Never happened before.

Trying to watch a bit with Activity Monitor, the kernel_task balloons up over 4Gb, Finder shows as non-responsive, the File Cache is only around 1Gb -- and "Compressed" is huge. Free memory the last time I caught it was about 16Mb out of 16Gb.

Given its role, I expect the File Cache to grow -- but either it isn't or Activity Monitor isn't reporting it as such, as it only shows a few Gb in normal operation and doesn't show at all when the problem state is hit. And even if it did eat all the RAM for caching -- if it can't shrink it down without hanging all the user processes then that's certainly a bug.

Otherwise, my assumption is that something is leaking in the kernel over time so the system can't find it to clean it up, everything else gets shrunk/compressed as it can and the reclamation hogs the processor in the worst case. Again, haven't seen this before Mavericks and based on some support threads, I don't think I'm alone.

Re:beta tester now?

[XxtraLarGe]

I wasn't all that happy with Lion, to the point that I rolled back to 10.6.8 Snow Leopard. Mountain Lion was useable.

I completely skipped over Lion, and only had Mountain Lion because it came on the new iMac I got via AppleCare when my old iMac died. I've since upgraded to Mavericks on both the iMac and my MacBook pro, and it's been pretty solid. In fact, my iMac now runs better since upgrading, which isn't what I was expecting. I bought an old MacBook for my mom which I will be loading with Snow Leopard, which should be good enough for her.

Re:beta tester now?

[immaterial]

IIRC this tends to be caused by misbehaving kernel extensions (old ones that are not compatible with ML). Blackberry sync driver, logmein driver, sometimes HP's shitty printer drivers, etc. Check /System/Library/Extensions/ for old cruft.

Re:beta tester now?

[immaterial]

I disagree - memory compression has made Mavericks run much better at 4GB than either of the Lions in my anecdotal experience.

To the GP umafuckit, check the hard drive in that mini carefully; in my experience strange OS X slowness is often a sign of a dying hard drive (I've seen this probably a dozen times on various clients' computers). OS X is annoyingly sensitive to hard drive issues.

Re:beta tester now?

[blindbat]

The hard drive is likely bad as you say, especially if it is the original from 2009.

I recommend to use Smart Utility (free trial--will be all you need to verify)

http://www.volitans-software.com/smart_utility.php

Re:beta tester now?

[the_B0fh]

Reading the rest of his comments, he obviously has a hardon for Apple.

Re:beta tester now?

[Darinbob]

Crashes once or twice a week for me now that I've updated to it. I honestly wish I could downgrade. Most times it crashes after waking up from sleep, other times I have to forcibly hold power key until it reboots (I with it had some equivalent to ctrl-alt-del). Maybe it's a hardware problem but it's suspicious that it happened at the same time as the upgrade.

Re:beta tester now?

[umafuckit]

I shall check that out and see how it goes.

Re:beta tester now?

[immaterial]

As for the two MacBook Pros (I assume you meant one is running Mountain Lion, because no 2013 machine will run Lion), is your colleague accessing files over a network (seems likely)? Mavericks now defaults to SMB2 where possible instead of AFP, and in my personal experience I've found it to be a good deal slower - I make sure to connect to my NAS via AFP. Perhaps that could be the root of your colleague's issues ("slow" is vague so this is mostly a shot in the dark).

Re:beta tester now?

[umafuckit]

He just told me that "everything was slower" I suppose it could be running Mountain Lion, yes. All I know is that he's bitched about Mavericks a lot and he's not computer illiterate.

Re:beta tester now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice to try out for fun.. but I have several thousand $ of irreplaceable PPC software, that never got upgraded for intel, or if it did, it's not free (such as Photoshop). I'm not spending several grand for the chance to upgrade to a free OS! Staying on Snow Leopard. OK, I don't have the latest updates especially on Safari, but frankly, the only one that I do get still the latest version has become a pile of rubbish.. Chrome used to be a great browser. Don't know what happened to it. Java doesn't work right on it, Quicktime crashes every time, page errors, etc. So used to it though, I've been using Chrome since it first became available for OSX. No more. Rather use an older version of Safari. When I can no longer securely log into banks or paypal etc, on 10.6.8, I'll use my Lion or Mavericks partition, but i despise all the tweaks to block access by even Admin users in 10.8 and up.

PC Release !!

[Anonymous Coward]

cmon Apple, you know you want to.

Re:PC Release !!

[rvw]

cmon Apple, you know you want to.

That would mean world domination!

Re:PC Release !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically it is as long as you have compatible hardware.

http://www.hackintosh.com/

Re:PC Release !!

[WillAdams]

And can puzzle out all the magic combinations to make it work --- thus far I've managed to get my ThinkPad X61 Tablet:

  - booting OS X 10.6.8
  - sleeping on demand and waking when the lid is opened
  - keyboard and Trackpoint work

The one thing which isn't working is getting the Wacom stylus to work using TabletMagic (I have one of the stupid hybrid models which also has rudimentary touch input) --- I can see it as WACF008, and I've even got it allowing itself to be activated, but it won't allow the pen input to work.

Re:PC Release !!

[BasilBrush]

Why would they want to release their free-of-charge OS onto other PCs, when the money that's used to develop OSX comes from selling Macs?

Besides, licensing MacOS for other computers was one of the mistakes Apple was making in the years before Jobs came back. When they were heading towards bankruptcy. They won't be repeating that mistake.

These days you can't even say that Apple should follow Microsoft's model, as Windows is on it's way out.

Free labour !

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey what a great chance for me to provide free labour to a multi national corporation. In exchange for ? Er....

Gee I can't wait to sign up :)

Re:Free labour !

[captjc]

Hey what a great chance for me to provide free labour to a multi national corporation. In exchange for ? Er....

In exchange for free bleeding edge software. Software that may contain new awesome features but may also contain game-breaking bugs. It is a gamble and a trade-off that some of us are more than willing to make.

Re:iShould have read

[Anonymous Coward]

iWould.

Good luck

[namgge]

Good luck with this Apple, but in my experience the bug reports and feedback you'll get from Joe Public will be next to worthless. Don't waste your time on them; concentrate on what paid-up developers are telling you about your betas and fix the issues they identify first, please.

Re:Good luck

[Anonymous Coward]

They likely will, this is probably more for collecting larger volumes of the automated usage data and automated crash reports.

Re:Good luck

[Bogtha]

in my experience the bug reports and feedback you'll get from Joe Public will be next to worthless

Bug reports and feedback aren't the only valuable things that can come out of this. If an application crashes for a significant number of users at a particular point, it makes it easier to prioritise. It also makes it easier to detect problems that occur with real-world data and system rather than test data.

Re:Good luck

[ganjadude]

agreed. Allowing joe schmoe to beta test even if they dont provide "useful" information are still providing information on how joe schmoe uses his computer. The more a company knows how its users use their product, the better they can make them

Re:Good luck

[SethJohnson]

Apple doesn't care about the 'bug reports'... They're looking at kernel dumps and other crash reports automatically submitted by the users' computers. From there, they can reach out to third-party developers with suggestions on how they can update their software to work on the next OS release.

This is more to help third-party developers than to help Apple developers. In the closed beta, it's common for many third-party apps to fall through the cracks if they don't have a large enough user-base to have some participants in the closed beta.

Re:Good luck

[orgelspieler]

It's OK. Apple never listens to their users anyway. We apparently don't know what's best for ourselves.

Re:Good luck

[maccodemonkey]

Crashes (with user permission) send up stack traces to Apple, and they can watch the general crash trend numbers on an app by app basis as well.

It's actually a great step forward. Devs tend to be more particular with our apps than users. Hopefully this gives Apple more data the next time they break a game or something.

New OS X is free*

[damn_registrars]

As best I can tell, OS X is free to download only if you already have OS X. I don't see any way that someone who doesn't already have a very recent version of OS X can download it for free.

Re:New OS X is free*

[psergiu]

But you already got the old OS X for free when you bought your mac. So the new one is double-free :)

Oh, you want to install-it onto a uncool PC ? You dirty, double crossing, good for nothing, two timing software pirate hacker ...

Re:New OS X is free*

[damn_registrars]

Oh, you want to install-it onto a uncool PC ? You dirty, double crossing, good for nothing, two timing software pirate hacker ...

I am one of those who would be willing to purchase an OS X license to install on a non-Apple PC. Yet they don't even give the option to do so. I have heard the explanation that they don't want to be on the hook for support on the matter, and I'm fine with that - just let us buy a license with no support and be done with it.

Re:New OS X is free*

[Bill_the_Engineer]

If you own an Apple computer capable of running OS X then you have all that is required.

Re:New OS X is free*

[Anonymous Coward]

I think his point was more along the lines that its not "free" as in Linux is free.

The OSX Beta program is free as in "you are already locked into our ecosystem and so please test this for us for free".

Re:New OS X is free*

[EvanED]

To be fair, Hackintoshes show that there's no technical reason why OS X would be useful on computers other than a Mac. It's valid to point out that the licencing restrictions on OS X are still in play.

Re:New OS X is free*

[Yebyen]

It doesn't really work that way. There are implied warranties of merchant-ability and fitness for a particular purpose that cannot be disclaimed in some jurisdictions. (So just don't sell to those jurisdictions... ehh, doesn't really work either.)

I bought a bike at Walmart for $200 yesterday. Middle of the road price for a Walmart bike. I had someone take it down and look at it for me before I left, he acknowledged that whoever put it together must have been a total idiot because the seat was loose. He adjusted it...

Next thing I know, I'm in the local bike shop looking at $600-1300 bikes while I wait and paying $10 for an adjustment because the seat is still loose, the front brake is rubbing, and the rear brake doesn't stop, dealing with some guy who doesn't want to deal with me because I paid 1) not enough, to 2) someone else, for 3) probably a decent bike if it wasn't put together by total idiots.

It's easier for Apple if they just don't sell macs at Walmart, then. Right... should have gone with a car analogy.

Re:New OS X is free*

[Bing Tsher E]

The guy doesn't want to deal with you because you're still only out $210. And you might tell your friends how much money you spent for an essentially useful bike. Dude wants your $600 and wants your friend's $600 too.

Re:New OS X is free*

[gnasher719]

I am one of those who would be willing to purchase an OS X license to install on a non-Apple PC. Yet they don't even give the option to do so. I have heard the explanation that they don't want to be on the hook for support on the matter, and I'm fine with that - just let us buy a license with no support and be done with it.

I've heard that explanation as well, and it is pure speculation and most likely wrong. The reason why Apple doesn't sell licenses for MacOS X is that MacOS X is basically used as advertisements for the sale of Apple hardware, and that's where the profit is. They don't even care about getting money from upgrades anymore (10.9 was a free upgrade). If you think about buying a Mac today, you know that you will get at least two or three OS updates for free, which costs Apple nothing but increases the value of the Mac compared to a PC.

Re:New OS X is free*

[Anonymous Coward]

There are several Macs that can run OSX out of the box, that cannot run modern OSX, examples are G4, G5, and Intel Mac with a either a 32 bit CPU or 32 bit EFI on the system (MacPro 1.1)

Re:New OS X is free*

[damn_registrars]

I bought a bike at Walmart for $200 yesterday. Middle of the road price for a Walmart bike. I had someone take it down and look at it for me before I left, he acknowledged that whoever put it together must have been a total idiot because the seat was loose. He adjusted it...

Next thing I know, I'm in the local bike shop looking at $600-1300 bikes while I wait and paying $10 for an adjustment because the seat is still loose, the front brake is rubbing, and the rear brake doesn't stop, dealing with some guy who doesn't want to deal with me because I paid 1) not enough, to 2) someone else, for 3) probably a decent bike if it wasn't put together by total idiots.

I used to work in a bike shop likely not too different from the one you describe. I can tell you, there is a huge difference between the components on the BSO (bike-shaped object) that you purchased at WalMart and the bikes you had in front of you at the bike shop. There is a reason why the WalMart bike was $200 and the ones at the shop were more, and it has to do with the quality of every component on the bike. This isn't a comparison between VW and Audi, this is a comparison between Porsche and a cheap skateboard. The components on the BSO are all Chinese made and lack not only the mechanical precision but also the ability to make adjustments that the better bike shop quality components have. I have seen BSOs from WalMart and others come in with brakes that could not be safely adjusted because they were of such poor manufacture.

And that isn't even getting to the frames. The BSOs are almost without exception made to only one size per model, which is seldom an appropriate size for the buyer (particularly an adult buyer). The frames themselves are poorly made as well of inferior alloys - both in terms of weight and durability - when compared to even the least expensive bike you can get at a bike shop.

Seriously, no adult should ever buy a bike for themselves at a big box (Target, WalMart, KMart, Toys R Us) retailer. If you wanted to stick to a $200 budget you would have been vastly better served by searching your local craigslist where you could have easily purchased a quality bike, in the correct size for you, for that amount of money. You could have checked ebay as well and come out better there, too.

If you just purchased that BSO yesterday my advice to you is go return it tonight and find a bike elsewhere. You won't get your bike shop fees back but you'll still be way better off.

Re:New OS X is free*

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying that if you don't own an Apple computer capable of running the new OS X then you don't have what is required?

Reading comprehension fail.

Re:New OS X is free*

[nine-times]

It's not really "free". The cost of OSX and the associated apps (e.g. Pages, iPhoto) is rolled into the price of the original laptop/desktop purchase. Apple is now providing free *upgrades* to the bundled software.

Re:New OS X is free*

[damn_registrars]

If you think about buying a Mac today, you know that you will get at least two or three OS updates for free, which costs Apple nothing but increases the value of the Mac compared to a PC.

I'm one of those who does not run windows on his PCs - and hence gets my OS and updates for free anyways - so this logic doesn't really apply to me. Indeed, it might matter to some other buyers although I'm not sure how many people are able to keep their computers running long enough for such an update actually exist - for example most Vista users managed to render their system completely unable at least once before 7 came out. I'm not sure that OS X, in the hands of an average user, is really that much better in terms of longevity.

Re:New OS X is free*

[UnknowingFool]

I am one of those who would be willing to purchase an OS X license to install on a non-Apple PC. Yet they don't even give the option to do so.

If you want to install OS X on a Hackintosh, you still can. This does not change that aspect at all.

Re:New OS X is free*

[spire3661]

There is no LEGAL licensing restriction that prohibits you from building a Hackintosh. Trying to sell hackintoshes is another matter.

Re:New OS X is free*

[spire3661]

You need an AppleID too.

Re:New OS X is free*

[UnknowingFool]

I've heard that explanation as well, and it is pure speculation and most likely wrong.

Oh really? Do you know how many variations of video cards you get with nVidia and AMD alone? When I had a PC, I can tell you that an updated driver from either of them had a chance of making your video unusable to the point where you had to roll back to a previous driver. Add in drivers for Ethernet, sound, etc and and it's not pure speculation. It's fact. Apple has invested a great deal in customer support. Can you imagine the sheer number of appointments they would have to deal with for hardware problems that they had nothing to do with/ability to fix?

Re:New OS X is free*

[UnknowingFool]

All of these Macs are at least 5 years old. Some of them are 10 years old. Seriously you can't run the latest Linux on these machines either without major customizations.

Re:New OS X is free*

[Anonymous Coward]

GPP:

If you own an Apple computer capable of running OS X then you have all that is required.

Do you see the word "new", or "recent". By the wording of the statement, if it came with Puma or even Cheetah, it will run.

Re:New OS X is free*

[damn_registrars]

I am one of those who would be willing to purchase an OS X license to install on a non-Apple PC. Yet they don't even give the option to do so.

If you want to install OS X on a Hackintosh, you still can. This does not change that aspect at all.

Two things here:

One, as best I can tell I still cannot purchase a license for OS X to install on a hackintosh. Hence any installation as such is violation of the terms (and likely of copyright as well) for OS X.

Two, the notion of being able to get OS X "for free" does not adequately describe the situation. it is only "free" for people who have already paid for it by purchasing an apple computer.

Re:New OS X is free*

[UnknowingFool]

One, as best I can tell I still cannot purchase a license for OS X to install on a hackintosh. Hence any installation as such is violation of the terms (and likely of copyright as well) for OS X.

If you are willing to do without support, what does that matter?

Two, the notion of being able to get OS X "for free" does not adequately describe the situation. it is only "free" for people who have already paid for it by purchasing an apple computer.

And you got free OS updates when you buy a Dell, HP, Lenovo PCs? Other than OEM PCs bought in an interim period right before the release of a new OS, you had to pay for an update except for Window 8. If you built your own PCs, you didn't even get the OS free with the hardware.

Re:New OS X is free*

[Jmc23]

The only thing you've seemed to prove is that you need to learn about bikes. He doesn't want to deal with you because it's like bringing a micro-serrated blade to a knife sharpener.

Re:New OS X is free*

[UnknowingFool]

It's rather implied. Can you run Windows 8 on an 386/486/Pentium I?

Re:New OS X is free*

[jbolden]

I'm going to agree with damn_registrars. Unless you are really young there is no such thing as a decent new bike for $200. The decent parts cost way more than that. You would be far better off going with a used bike and getting it cleaned up for that money.

Re:New OS X is free*

[jbolden]

If I hadn't posted already I would have moded you up. Very well said and completely true.

Re:New OS X is free*

[damn_registrars]

One, as best I can tell I still cannot purchase a license for OS X to install on a hackintosh. Hence any installation as such is violation of the terms (and likely of copyright as well) for OS X.

If you are willing to do without support, what does that matter?

Because I am not opposed to paying for good software. I am perfectly willing to pay for software if it works well, but they won't sell it to me. I haven't pirated software in well over a decade and don't plan to do it again. Hell, I don't even care about whether or not I can get support from them, I just want a legitimate license.

Two, the notion of being able to get OS X "for free" does not adequately describe the situation. it is only "free" for people who have already paid for it by purchasing an apple computer.

And you got free OS updates when you buy a Dell, HP, Lenovo PCs?

That is not without precedent, actually, Lenovo in particular has more than once in recent memory offered free windows updates to customers who purchased within a certain time window of a new version. They have also offered free "downgrades" for people who want to run older versions.

If you built your own PCs, you didn't even get the OS free with the hardware.

Well, that depends on what OS you want to run. I mostly run Linux which is, of course, free for most distros. That said, if you want to run windows you can go and purchase a legitimate license for whatever version you want. I can't do that with Mac OS X.

Re:New OS X is free*

[jbolden]

I'm not sure that OS X, in the hands of an average user, is really that much better in terms of longevity.

We have pretty good data and the answer is absolutely yes it is. The overwhelming majority of OSX users never need to do a full OS reinstall. They move config from computer to computer. I'm not an average user but haven't done a clean install on my main system since OS 10.1.

Re:New OS X is free*

[UnknowingFool]

Because I am not opposed to paying for good software. I am perfectly willing to pay for software if it works well, but they won't sell it to me. I haven't pirated software in well over a decade and don't plan to do it again. Hell, I don't even care about whether or not I can get support from them, I just want a legitimate license.

Again you can get OS X for a Hackintosh. Buy a copy on ebay. It's not a pirated copy. Apple places no validation on their OS but OS X will only recognize certain hardware. Any Hackintosh site will tell you which boards/chips/etc can be used.

That is not without precedent, actually, Lenovo in particular has more than once in recent memory offered free windows updates to customers who purchased within a certain time window of a new version. They have also offered free "downgrades" for people who want to run older versions.

Outside this period which I already mentioned, you don't get Windows update for free. You pay a lower price for updates vs full retail but you still pay.

That said, if you want to run windows you can go and purchase a legitimate license for whatever version you want. I can't do that with Mac OS X.

But it's not free. And you can still purchase OS X. Today.

Re:New OS X is free*

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree with you for the most part except for this:

The components on the BSO are all Chinese made and lack not only the mechanical precision but also the ability to make adjustments that the better bike shop quality components have.

My Bike shop bike (~$650) also contains "made in China" parts. Probably higher quality, but still made there.
Granted it is FAR higher quality then the cheap "daily rider" i use (wanted a cheap bike in case it is stolen as i leave it in a public train station all day).

Re:New OS X is free*

[Yebyen]

This all makes sense, but doesn't change the fact that I can probably buy and return three $200 bikes in a week and eventually find one I like, having still spent only $200 plus my time and gas taking trips to and from Walmart.

The $695 bikes at the bike shop are the low end of what they offer. I am sure that as a fat person who needs a bike and suffers from chronic bike theft/hit by car syndrome, I am almost as likely to just sit down wrong on a $700 item from a heap of one of those quality parts at the Real Bike Shop and break it due to my own overweight, or see my investment go down the toilet because it's stolen or destroyed and un-insured (I don't have to pay for theft or breakage insurance on a $200 bike either).

Or maybe I see it driving away on the front of an RTS bus as I step onto the curb and walk away with my bike still on the front of it.

I've lost four bikes or more in ten years. There are all kinds of ways this can happen, and if any of them cost $695 or $1295, I would have been pissed. Some were used/hand-me-down, some were won in contests, all were much cheaper than $695, and I am fairly sure that given all that, I still haven't spent $695 on bikes in ten years. I'm not going cross-country.

So if I come into your bike shop for an adjustment, please do spare me the "you're gonna spend $600 on that piece of crap before you're done with it." There are other bike shops, unfortunately there are not any in my town so they can probably afford to have this attitude, as I'm either here paying you $10 per adjustment, or I'm back in Walmart, and I gladly pay some money not to have to go back to Walmart.

Re:New OS X is free*

[Yebyen]

You know I wonder sometimes why they don't just sell you the hex wrench for the $50 if they're too busy to look at something? I gladly pay $10 to have a professional make an adjustment, but when he breaks something that was already working fine without fixing what was wrong in the first place, and his cow-orker tells you "you got a bonus, free second adjustment" "This is why I tell him, don't do anything you're not being paid for"

If I do need to buy the wrench, I can tell you after that noise I'll be buying it at Walmart.

Re:New OS X is free*

[damn_registrars]

This all makes sense, but doesn't change the fact that I can probably buy and return three $200 bikes in a week and eventually find one I like, having still spent only $200 plus my time and gas taking trips to and from Walmart.

Even if we assume that you are siphoning gas from your neighbor for free and your time is worthless, you still end up with a poorly made BSO from WalMart that won't fit you.

The $695 bikes at the bike shop are the low end of what they offer.

That part I cannot explain for you. Bike shops usually carry bikes starting at $250, and sometimes less. You may want to try another shop or ask if there are any less expensive models that they could order for you. If you could even get one from them for $300 it would be well worth the difference just in the fact that you would have a properly fitting bike with quality components. Add to that the fact that most bike shops give free adjustments for at least a year on new bikes that they sell, and you could come out way ahead on that alone.

I am sure that as a fat person who needs a bike and suffers from chronic bike theft

Ever hear of a bike lock? There are lots of options. They work well when you know how to use them.

hit by car syndrome

If you are getting hit by lots of cars you may want to reevaluate whether this is a wise choice at all for you. It would seem either you live someplace with epically bad drivers, or you are not riding well.

break it due to my own overweight

I can assure you that a bike shop bike would handle an overweight person better than a BSO from WalMart. The frame materials are vastly better in terms of structure. On top of that you would distribute your weight far better on a bike that is the correct size for you.

I still haven't spent $695 on bikes in ten years. I'm not going cross-country.

And I would wager not one of them have fit you correctly. I would also wager not one of them had components that did not require frequent adjustment.

In other words, you got what you paid for. You paid for garbage, and received garbage.

and I gladly pay some money not to have to go back to Walmart.

Then try asking the guys at the bike shop what they can get you for less than the $695 number you have quoted several times in your post. Have you actually spoken to a sales person there? I can assure you that the local shops where I live regularly stock nice bikes for $300 or less, so I'm sure your local shop can get one, too.

Or if you really have convinced yourself that they are so out to get you, bring your BSO back to WalMart and buy something from craigslist instead. You can turn your $200 into a real bike that way.

Re:New OS X is free*

[damn_registrars]

Again you can get OS X for a Hackintosh. Buy a copy on ebay. It's not a pirated copy.

How can I be sure that it is not a pirated copy? If Apple won't sell it to me, it is awfully hard to establish how it came to be. It could be a copy that was previously used on another computer - but even if I take the seller's word that they aren't using it anymore on their own computer it still isn't coming from Apple.

By comparison any other OS I can think of that I would want to run on a modern PC I can either download for free (most Linux / BSD distros) or purchase from the vendor (Windows, some Linux distros). Apple refuses to do either. I'm offering money to them and they are refusing it.

And you can still purchase OS X. Today.

Well, that is dependent on how much you trust second hand sellers of OS X. What I cannot do is purchase it from Apple.

Re:New OS X is free*

[damn_registrars]

My Bike shop bike (~$650) also contains "made in China" parts. Probably higher quality, but still made there.

As with many things, there is a vast spectrum of quality when it comes to Chinese made bicycle parts. Some are quite good, and others are utter garbage. The former are on lower priced bikes in the bike shops (high end bikes still get Japanese or European parts) while the latter go to BSOs destined for big box retailers.

This applies to virtually every thing you can imagine using on a bike, from tubes and tires to shifters and derailuers, to brakes and frames.

Re:New OS X is free*

[Yebyen]

You hit the main reason why I go to Walmart for the bike in the first place. I don't want to spend $600 at all. And Walmart won't even let me. Their highest priced bike was $349. They want me to take one off the shelf and ride it up to the checkout aisle with no salesperson involved, but I know better, they have some idiot come in and assemble bikes for a few hours every other weekend and he doesn't care how many steps he skips or if the pedals both fall off while I'm riding down the side of a busy highway. I'm going to find someone who looks like he knows what he's doing, and they're going to look at it for a minute before I go out of the store.

Then that person and I will have a rapport when I have to come back for some reason, because we both know I shouldn't have to spend $75 first thing for a tune-up at a Real Bike Shop, no matter how cheap the damn thing was wherever I bought it. The person at the Walmart checkout didn't even offer me the $20 warranty for three years, and I wouldn't have bought it, because I know above all else, I don't want to spend any more time in Walmart than I absolutely have to. In my mind at that moment, if it's a choice between spending $20 at Walmart and having to come back to Walmart for service, or spending $45 on the street to get it fixed once, with a chance of spending $45 again twice before the warranty would have expired, I'm still not going back to Walmart.

It's much easier to have this conversation with a person like you, who obviously can see where I'm coming from, while at the same time we both know I'm only going to get a shit sandwich no matter what it is that I am shopping for at Walmart anyway, so get ready to take a big nasty bite, amiright?

Re:New OS X is free*

[Yebyen]

Each of these things happened once, with the exception of theft.

Ever lived with a dirtbag on welfare and unemployment with no car? They love to borrow bikes, and they won't leave you alone until you let them. You can choose between either not owning a bike, or agreeing to lend the bike for a few hours at a time. They'll try everything. Of course when it's eventually stolen and it is their fault, they will tell you it's not their fault and there's no point in arguing as they can't pay for it anyway. I've had bikes stolen from inside my house, parked in the living room. I thought it was stupid to lock a bike in my own living room, but as I learned years ago, it's not.

I've had bikes that were locked to my front porch stolen because they figured out they could break the porch, and the lock wasn't actually through both the tire and the frame. I've even had a crappy old bike stolen by someone who must have either been carrying heavy cable cutters in their backpack, or loaded it onto a flatbed truck. This was in the middle of the damn winter while it was properly locked to a bike rack outside my office window. Who the fuck steals a bike on January 28th? In contrast I've only been hit by a car once, and only left a bike on the front of a bus once. Both times were my own stupid mistakes I will not likely repeat. Bike thieves on the other hand are absolutely everywhere, and resourceful.

I have invested now in a U-lock with additional heavy cable, and if this bike is ever stolen I will probably step up and get a Pee-Wee Herman style lock assembly for the next one. I've bought cheap bikes for long enough to know how they are, and I'm still waiting for one to actually hard-fail and cost more than $70 or $90 to fix, once or twice, before somebody eventually gets around to stealing it, usually right along with the lock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I will keep Craigslist in mind, I realize that all I have right now is a Bike Shaped Object, but I got to choose from at least 50 bike-shaped-objects, and I didn't have to drive around town in order to do it. You really must have worked in a bike shop, if you can honestly tell me that what I'm riding now doesn't fit me, even without ever seeing it once, or me on it.

Re:New OS X is free*

[damn_registrars]

Who the fuck steals a bike on January 28th?

How long was your bike sitting there? Are you sure it wasn't impounded? Many places have winter bike rack / bike parking restrictions. You mention a flat bed truck, it may be that the rack was taken away for the winter, with everything attached to it.

but I got to choose from at least 50 bike-shaped-objects, and I didn't have to drive around town in order to do it

And none of them fit you, had even marginally decent components, or were assembled by competent people. You got what you paid for. You are only fooling yourself if you think you'll do better with a different BSO from WalMart.

you can honestly tell me that what I'm riding now doesn't fit me, even without ever seeing it once, or me on it.

WalMart BSOs are one-size-fits-none, without exception. They are most often sized for people who are 4'11" with unusual length femurs and very short arms. There is no such thing as a WalMart BSO that correctly fits a fully grown adult. None has ever been made, and none ever will.

Look at it this way. WalMart sees no incentive in actually stocking BSOs of different sizes. It would be additional inventory to carry and it would require them teaching their employees how to address different sizes (even if they never teach them how to fit a customer, they still would need to know how to identify the size of a BSO). They just buy whatever bizarre BSO size their terrible manufacturers are making that month and send it out. They also know that the vast majority of their customers will treat the cheap BSOs like garbage and replace them when lost/stolen/destroyed, which perpetuates the business model.

Re:New OS X is free*

[UnknowingFool]

How can I be sure that it is not a pirated copy?

Sigh. How about looking at it? How about checking to see if it is still sealed? OS X Lion came on USB sticks and not discs. While it isn't impossible to counterfeit these sticks, there's simply not enough incentive to do so.

If Apple won't sell it to me, it is awfully hard to establish how it came to be.

And you've never heard of anyone selling an unopened box of Windows? Or an unopened box of any software.

It could be a copy that was previously used on another computer - but even if I take the seller's word that they aren't using it anymore on their own computer it still isn't coming from Apple.

Again if you don't want used software that's your problem. It isn't a pirated copy and the only person that might care is Apple. And they don't.

Well, that is dependent on how much you trust second hand sellers of OS X. What I cannot do is purchase it from Apple.

What I'm hearing from you is that you're not really serious in your complaint. You want to put as many obstacles in your complaint so that no one could ever resolve it. Next thing you won't install it unless Steve Jobs himself gives you the copy.

Here is what a reasonable person would do: Buy OS X Lion still sealed new in the box. There is no step 2.

Re:New OS X is free*

[vux984]

The $695 bikes at the bike shop are the low end of what they offer.

That's a mystery; particular to your shop -- good bikes start cheaper than that.

I've lost four bikes or more in ten years. [...] break it due to my own overweight, or see my investment go down the toilet because it's stolen

Buy used. Seriously. A used bike is 1/2 what a new one costs, and even despite reasonable wear and tear is an infinitely better bike. And even a 10 year old quality bike is still a quality bike. And if its got some deficiency, odds are it can be fixed.

For I've got a 2003 brodie brute.

http://www.brodiebikes.com/201...

  I paid $450 for it 4 or 5 years ago. That bike would be maybe $250 bucks today (?), but its still an infinitely better bike than anything you'll get at walmart. (8" front & rear hydraulic disk brakes, 130mm front suspension, hard tail) I've taken it down Whistler).

I've since added a Norco Team DH (also used) for stuff like Whistler.

http://www.norco.com/archives/...

Had that one 2 years now. Paid $600 for it (SRP is $5900 -- no idea if anybody ever actually paid that much for one, but it gives you an idea where it fits into the 'hierarchy' of bikes.) Its a downhill monster.

But that's beside the point; I've got no plans to get rid of the brute for riding around with the family. Its a fantastic bike. And even the brute is huge overkill for anyone looking for just a basic mountain bike for riding around town / bike paths / trails.

A good starter bike from a real bike shop, 4-10 years old on craigslist in good condition is well within your price range and an infinitely better bike.

So if I come into your bike shop for an adjustment, please do spare me the "you're gonna spend $600 on that piece of crap before you're done with it."

Its not that you are going to spend $600 on that piece of crap, its that it will continue to be a poorly adjusted piece of crap no matter how much you spend on it.

Re:New OS X is free*

[gnasher719]

Oh really? Do you know how many variations of video cards you get with nVidia and AMD alone? When I had a PC, I can tell you that an updated driver from either of them had a chance of making your video unusable to the point where you had to roll back to a previous driver. Add in drivers for Ethernet, sound, etc and and it's not pure speculation. It's fact. Apple has invested a great deal in customer support. Can you imagine the sheer number of appointments they would have to deal with for hardware problems that they had nothing to do with/ability to fix?

That _would_ be a good reason not to release MacOS X for PCs, but even if all PCs were absolutely 100% compatible to each other, Apple would still not release MacOS X for PCs for the reasons I said - because they make more money from selling Macs than they could make from selling operating systems.

Re:New OS X is free*

[gnasher719]

There is no LEGAL licensing restriction that prohibits you from building a Hackintosh. Trying to sell hackintoshes is another matter.

There is - the MacOS X license only allows running the software on Apple branded computers, and there is copy protection (which everyone can get around) which makes this fall under the DMCA.

On the other hand, there is the fact that Apple has never taken notice of anyone building their own Hackintosh. The only time they did take notice was with Psystar, and those guys effectively _forced_ Apple to take action.

Re:New OS X is free*

[Yebyen]

How long was your bike sitting there? Are you sure it wasn't impounded? Many places have winter bike rack / bike parking restrictions. You mention a flat bed truck, it may be that the rack was taken away for the winter, with everything attached to it.

It was actually a rack full of bikes, with one surgically removed (mine) and only the lock left behind, a medium cable obviously cut with some tools. I don't know how they took it away, but the cop who took the report guessed it was someone taking a joyride home eg. cable cutters in the backpack, and not some flatbed operation at all, because other junky bikes were left behind and they are not even locked. Mine probably was the one that did fit,

I am surprised because I thought I moved to a safer place, but even here, there are thieves apparently. I put the lock back out where kids could find it labeled "fuck you" because I was so pissed someone would honestly steal my bike from the rack, next to other bikes, but they did. Then that's why it was taken (because, it fit) and other bike-shaped objects were left behind. It did come from Target and it was the only bike they had, if I recall. It did need work, no doubt.

Maybe true that you need to know how to pick one that fits for yourself too, and once you know...? You can find it! This new one has 29" tires, larger than one I rode before that got stolen, and me too larger than when I rode it then, too.

I can't imagine buying a larger bike than this 29" behemoth. Or, bike-shaped object. I actually looked at close to 50 bikes, and picked one out after eliminating maybe eight before it, and tried to see the things that would make the price go up. They go low, I'm talking $79. I looked at the $79 and I had to look and try to convince myself that the welds were not as sound, and the frame wouldn't actually hold, but I didn't take it off the shelf either. Having found one already, that seemed to have fit!

And none of them fit you, had even marginally decent components, or were assembled by competent people. You got what you paid for. You are only fooling yourself if you think you'll do better with a different BSO from WalMart.

WalMart BSOs are one-size-fits-none, without exception. They are most often sized for people who are 4'11" with unusual length femurs and very short arms. There is no such thing as a WalMart BSO that correctly fits a fully grown adult. None has ever been made, and none ever will.

Look at it this way. WalMart sees no incentive in actually stocking BSOs of different sizes. It would be additional inventory to carry and it would require them teaching their employees how to address different sizes (even if they never teach them how to fit a customer, they still would need to know how to identify the size of a BSO). They just buy whatever bizarre BSO size their terrible manufacturers are making that month and send it out. They also know that the vast majority of their customers will treat the cheap BSOs like garbage and replace them when lost/stolen/destroyed, which perpetuates the business model.

They have bikes of different sizes, and their employees absolutely don't try to fit you with a bike, or profess to know what size is right for you, or address the different sizes one bit at all. There is a wall with like 50 bikes, and I got dirty looks when I asked one employee to help take a bike down off the shelf that I liked, and tighten up some things that were obviously loose and wrong with the individual bike itself. And they don't even try to sell you or send you home with a wrench, I remember when bike shaped objects were sold to kids of when I were kids era, all came with tools that you could use to take them down to bits and bolts. Yet these are billed as 'pre-assembled' when it's really just un-boxed and put together halfassedly by some part-time asshole who really works at Wal-Mart - what a joke! I would rather get a box of parts to be perfectly honest, but it seems that's not an option anymore.

Re:New OS X is free*

[UnknowingFool]

That _would_ be a good reason not to release MacOS X for PCs, but even if all PCs were absolutely 100% compatible to each other, Apple would still not release MacOS X for PCs for the reasons I said - because they make more money from selling Macs than they could make from selling operating systems.

Considering that they release Darwin for free this isn't surprising. I think the number reason not to release OS X for PCs is the support nightmare more than anything else. No amount of money would be worth it to them to deal with that.

You mean I can work for Apple for free?

[Kardos]

Sign me up!

Re:You mean I can work for Apple for free?

[Anonymous Coward]

Flip side, does Ubuntu or Fedora charge for their products? See above for posts about apple's fantastic profit margins.

I've installed Ubuntu on 5 computers at home (for myself and my kids) and paid them zero.
Granted, it is not exactly true as I donated because I support the cause but wasn't required to do so.

Re:You mean I can work for Apple for free?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Flip side, does Ubuntu or Fedora charge for their products?

How long have they been selling hardware? I hadn't heard about that.

Re:You mean I can work for Apple for free?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but I fail to see your point. Did i somehow imply Ubuntu or Fedora sold hardware?

This subtopic was about working for apple for free testing the beta product, not sure where hardware comes into play?

Re:You mean I can work for Apple for free?

[Anonymous Coward]

PS.
Sun (now Oracle) has a similair model to Apple (they sell both hardware and software as well as OS) yet Solaris is a free download and runs on non-sun hardware.

dual boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

can I dual boot Windows 7 and Mac OS X? I just need to repartition the hard drive on my HP computer, right? sorry, I'm an noob

As much as I like Macs...

[wjcofkc]

To get it out of the way, I am not an Apple hater but I am not a fanboy either. I have a MacBook, but Linux based OS' run my main systems. My thoughts:

There was once a time where every release of OS X was gutted relative to the previous version, sometimes eliminating upwards of 10 or more gigabytes of code. OS X only got faster with each release. I am not sure where that came to an end, but the last few release have been steadily slowing down my MacBook.

I have also sadly watched the interface become more bogged down and convoluted over the last few years. It used to be the height of simplicity. I wonder what decisions led things astray. I dual boot elementary OS on my MacBook, and am always astonished by how much faster it is. I rarely boot into OS X anymore, and am no longer excited about the next release. For the record my main production distro is Bodhi, and my servers run Debian and FreeBSD on extremely thin hardware - yet run extremely well, albeit they are headless.

I know all that is only partially on topic, but they are still good talking points.

Re:As much as I like Macs...

[digitalPhant0m]

sometimes eliminating upwards of 10 or more gigabytes of code. OS X only got faster with each release.

Wow, how'd they fit that onto the release DVD ?

Re:As much as I like Macs...

[jbolden]

OpenCL is a huge speed up and OpenGL 4.1 was too. If you go back Core Audio, Core Video, and Core Animation where huge speed ups. For a desktop (i.e. audio video...) I think there is a little doubt that OS X is way faster on good hardware than Linux.

Re:As much as I like Macs...

[strikethree]

OS X only got faster with each release. I am not sure where that came to an end, but the last few release have been steadily slowing down my MacBook.

Snow Leopard was the first release that was more bloated and slower than previous releases. Each release after that was incrementally worse.

Re:As much as I like Macs...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Eliminating 10 GB of code"?????

There's not a single version of OS X that has ever required 10 GB of disk space.

how is it? its not even mentioned .

[Anonymous Coward]

special...

OT rant

[orgelspieler]

This is totally off topic, but I'm posting it anyway because I need to vent.

My wife recently upgraded her iPhone to iOS7. Of course nobody* told her it requires iTunes 11 to run. But her laptop is an old one running on 10.5.something. And guess what, iTunes 11 won't install on anything less than 10.6.8 or so. Of course an upgrade costs $20. So now a supposedly free upgrade is going to cost $20, or else my wife won't be able to get pictures and stuff off her phone. Luckily it's not a PPC, otherwise she'd be really screwed. Just missed that by a few months.

All the comments on discussions.apple are basically full of rude people asking why anybody would be so stupid as to still be using a 6 year old computer or whatever. It totally misses the bigger picture that Apple is defrauding people $20 at a time. Granted even if they have a million such suckers, it's not a lot of money. But I can guaran-damn-tee ya that the next laptop in my house will not be a Mac. My PC laptop can communicate with her iPhone just fine. Seriously.

*and by "nobody," I mean "nobody besides me" since I'm apparently just a paranoid lunatic.

Re:OT rant

[jbolden]

10.6 wasn't a free upgrade. $20 is cheap it was during the time when Apple was lowering prices. They aren't defrauding anyone the prices on the upgrades are made public and haven't changed.

I have to say thought that is $20 bothers you, you aren't a good fit for Apple. You'll get hit far worse on other things. You will be much happier in the skinflint world of Linux or Windows.

Re:OT rant

[UnknowingFool]

My wife recently upgraded her iPhone to iOS7. Of course nobody* told her it requires iTunes 11 to run. But her laptop is an old one running on 10.5.something. And guess what, iTunes 11 won't install on anything less than 10.6.8 or so.

Um Leopard (10.5) was released 6 years ago and was last updated supported in 2009. So as a geek, you haven't updated your wife's machine in 4 years. That means that it was vulnerable to security holes and bugs for 4 years.

Of course an upgrade costs $20. So now a supposedly free upgrade is going to cost $20, or else my wife won't be able to get pictures and stuff off her phone. Luckily it's not a PPC, otherwise she'd be really screwed. Just missed that by a few months.

The upgrade for Leopard to Snow Leopard has always been $29. The fact that you avoided it for years does not mean that you should get it for free. Also the fact that Apple still supports it even though it is now 3 versions older than the current says that Apple still works with older products.

Re:OT rant

[Anonymous Coward]

$20 for a copy of Snow Leopard is not "Apple defrauding you". Apple used to sell copies of Mac OS X for $129. For the Snow Leopard release, they offered two deals: an OS-only package for $30 (meant only for Leopard owners, though not clearly labeled as such), and a $170 OS/iLife/iWork bundle (for anyone with a compatible Mac).

$20 for a copy of Leopard is a 33% price reduction from the original price, which itself was about 77% off the usual "major release" price.

If you were already on Snow Leopard, or Lion, or Mountain Lion; and your laptop was compatible with Mavericks, you would indeed be able to download Mavericks for free (not for $129, or $30, or even $20). But you need to be running a version of Mac OS X that includes the Mac App Store application (anything >= 10.6.8) to select the download. For someone still running Leopard, that means (pretty much) either buying a $20 copy of Snow Leopard, or trying to find an out-of-print (and likely more expensive) Lion USB flash drive installer.

Re:OT rant

[spasm]

This isn't OT. It's a major problem with apple, period. The other half of the same problem is the use of the app store as the sole way to get software means you can't roll back to previous versions of things. Which is a major problem when you're working with software whose purpose is to be multi-device. eg I use a software package used for designing iphone/ipod based surveys - the design software runs on your mac and the end result gets loaded onto idevices for use, which then sync the data collected back to the mac. A recent 'upgrade' of the design software turned out to be incompatible with the client software I had installed on 30 or so idevices. No problem, just update the client software.. Except the newer version of the device software required a newer version of ios, and the devices in question were old enough that they weren't compatable with a newer version of ios, so no upgrade was possible. ok, no problem, roll the mac software back to the previous version. Except you can't do that through the app store. The software supplier seriously suggested the solution was ditching 30 or so perfectly functional idevices and replacing all of them because (they claim - I don't know if this is true) their contract with Apple to allow distribution of their software through the app store prevents them from distributing installables any other way so they couldn't provide me with an installer for the earlier version.

Re:OT rant

[sribe]

You need to remember that if Apple were to go back and offer the upgrade to 10.6.8 for free, the SEC would require them to re-starte their earnings for several years. Yes, I know what I'm talking about, and no, I'm not kidding. Since Apple has started to offer OS X upgrades for free, they are not allowed to count the full purchase price of Macs as income right away, but have to defer recognition of it until later years when the upgrades they're implicitly promising get delivered. Sigh.

Re:OT rant

[sribe]

...because (they claim - I don't know if this is true) their contract with Apple to allow distribution of their software through the app store prevents them from distributing installables any other way so they couldn't provide me with an installer for the earlier version.

Well, FYI, that is a bald-faced lie. They could send you the installer package any moment they decided to do so. (I am speaking as a business owner who distributes software through the Mac App Store.)

Re:OT rant

[ThorGod]

whoa, so why are they doing it? That sounds like a way to make taxes spread out and increase.

Re:OT rant

[sribe]

whoa, so why are they doing it?

My assumption is they're doing it to put pressure on Microsoft. But maybe that's too cynical, and they're really just doing it in order to decrease resistance to upgrades and get more of the "ecosystem" onto the latest release.

Re:OT rant

[spasm]

Good to know. The ultimate solution in this case was to abandon their software and switch to something web-based so we could use any device with an internet connection. So really they just lost a customer out of it.

Re:OT rant

[sribe]

Good to know. The ultimate solution in this case was to abandon their software and switch to something web-based so we could use any device with an internet connection...

Good for you; definitely seems like the right move in this case ;-)

Re:OT rant

[orgelspieler]

Thank you! Finally somebody else who finds this frustrating. That was one of my biggest concerns. Almost NOBODY else seems to think this is a problem. Not my wife, nor 99% of the people on the Apple forums. Wait, this is sad... I find the validation from a complete stranger on the Internet as comforting. Oh well.

Re: Walmart model

[unimacs]

;)

Walmart is all about price and Apple isn't.

With regard to Walmart that is very apparent when it comes to things like bikes and sporting goods. What you buy there might be fine for the kids (maybe) or if intended for just occasional use but other than that, it's best to stay away. As far as bikes go, there are some online sources for good bikes at prices lower than what you'd pay at a traditional shop. You're giving up service and test rides but it's a good option for some people.

And for those that are interested, you can get good prices on refurb Apple equipment from Apple's online store. I've bought a few things that way and really the only thing you give up is the fancy packaging and the ability to take it home from the store that day.

OSX Beta in a VM

[benro03]

Didn't see anything about it, anyone else see something?

Free OSX

[Anonymous Coward]

A pox on the OSX cult and their yuppie religion!!

If it isn't FOSS ir's all but useless!

iOS7 doesn't require iTunes 11 to run

[Brannon]

It doesn't require a host computer at all.

The OSX 10.6 upgrade always costed $20, only the later upgrades have been made free. Apple isn't trying to trick you out of $20.

It seems like you just maybe had a bad day.

Re:iOS7 doesn't require iTunes 11 to run

[orgelspieler]

A host computer is not required, but being able to communicate with one is a big part of why my wife liked the iOS/iTunes combo. Nobody expects an upgrade to lose functionality, especially something as basic as being able to download the photos from your camera onto your computer.

Could i have that on common hardware...

[Elusive_Cure]

with fries on the top? In other words, i would be happy to give it a try on common intel platforms instead of buying overpriced shiny hardware. But as all things Apple does, this time they think that its easier for them to charge for the privilege to outsource/push beta testing to the early adopters.

you never used 10.4, did you?

[SuperBanana]

You never used 10.4, did you?

Certain versions of 10.4 would randomly corrupt the filesystem such that files would start occupying the same chunk of disk space (crosslinked files, I think the term is?)

I saw someone get fired because of that bug (well, not really. She was fired because she was working on client files on her computer and not on the servers, which were backed up...and then the files were hosed by MacOS.)

I think it wasn't until 10.6 or so that many of the mystery problems (that cropped up and went away if you deleted+re-added something...printer, network interface, so on etc) were by and large solved.

10.7 and 10.8 are by and large rock solid. Any time someone comes to us complaining their Mac is crashing randomly, it's *always* a hardware failure. 10.9 is quite solid as well; I wish I could say the same for my late-2013 retina MBP. That and the changes to how MBP's sleep (no sleep indicator, and no way to separate "screen goes to sleep" from "computer goes to sleep", without hacking plists) pisses me off, but has yet to piss me off enough to get down to the Apple Store to have it looked at.

Bike registration

[Anonymous Coward]

What about registering one's bike, and/or having it engraved (with like a driver's/state license ID "number")?