Dirac Angestun Gesept

Paul Thurrott’s post on Mac OS X Leopard says things like “It’s too bad they [Apple] feel the need to exaggerate so much”.

He also says that he thinks that “virtually none” of the five Mac OS X releases since 2001 have been “major updates”. Presumably “virtually none” means only one, since we’re only considering five options here, and 40% seems a bit high for “virtually none”. Which one? Well, I’d have to guess 10.0, since except for the Public Beta that was the first version that was available and was therefore the biggest difference from Mac OS 9.

He then goes on to say “(Unless you count the cost. At $129 for each version, that’s about $750 on Mac OS X upgrades since 2001. That kind of puts the cost of Windows in perspective.)”

Except for a minor detail: 10.1 (Puma) was a free upgrade, so the cost now drops to a maximum of $645 (including the cost of Leopard, since his number makes no sense without doing so); that also only applies if you count buying 10.0 among “Mac OS X upgrades” rather than an initial acquisition cost. Admittedly, that’s still a chunk of change, though it’s only an issue if you had bought a G3 or older G4 and are still using it. Anything later came with at least 10.0, saving you another $129. How many Windows users are still using 2001-vintage machines?

“More than any other company I cover regularly, Apple plays light and loose with facts.” Hey, Paul, what do you call overestimating the cost of keeping up with Mac OS X by 20% (counting the purchase price of 10.0 as a cost) or more? (Perhaps 20% is “virtually none” for price errors in Paul’s mind?)

This entry was posted on Friday, August 11th, 2006 at 11:44 and is filed under Computing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the Atom 1.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.