In light of all the controversy surrounding the price of Apple’s new OSX 10.2 Jaguar upgrade scheme, it is interesting that is today obtainable from Amazon.com for $79 USD ($129 – $50 rebate). On a related note, Macintouch is reporting that Apple is extending the MacOSX Up-to-Date and MacOSX Server Up-to-Date programs to include Jaguar Server upgrades for just $19.95 in response to intense criticism. Apple also added that people who bought MacOSX 10.1 retail in its own box, can get an upgrade if purchased July 17 or later.
MacOSX 10.2 at Amazon for $79 USD
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I bought my Powerbook on July 5th, and I’m rather frustrated by this…
“Your Macintosh Server is an explosive combination of cutting-edge hardware and software.”
I think I would have used other words to describe it.
well, this laptop is barely a year old, and to make it usable with a modern OS, I’ve got to run Linux. Imagine That… OS X is too unbearably slow, and now they tell me the upgrade that is supposed to make it fast enough (I supposed because it’s compiled with GCC 3.1 + altivec) to be usable is going to cost me another $120 ….
Way to go Apple! (Last Apple notebook I’ll ever buy)
Typical reactionary.
Do you think Windows upgrading is any better? Heh, look at the price difference. Prepare for MS’s longhorn. And because you won’t spend the money on 10.2, (and apparently won’t pirate it) it means you will have to pay for all of MS’s forced upgrades. Heh, much more painful.
Spend 120 on a new OS, you’ll like it, and it will save you from buying one from dell (which techsupport is god awful right now and they refuse to honor your warretities because you upgraded by buying a new os. (as if that destoryed my motherboard?)
I moved to x86 after they killed the clones, I am moving back now,
ibjr
>I moved to x86 after they killed the clones, I am moving back now
Good luck with the UI unresponsiveness. I spent all the last week on OSX, porting LBreakout2, an arcade game. Under the hood, the speed is acceptable, but the UI is dog slow. Can’t bear it anymore. Need… faster… resizing… and… scrolling…
And unfortunately, my 2-years old Rage 128 PRO is not supported by Quartz Extreme that supposedly makes the speed of the UI more bearable (but still far away from bringing a truly fast UI the way it is on BeOS or WindowsXP, or even X11…)
I’ve said before and I’ll say again: Mac OS X 10.2 is more like Mac OS X 10.5 or 11.0, but Apple will stay in the 10.x range for about a decade (the 2000’s) because Mac OS X 13.5 looks kinda goofy.
At any rate, you could be running 9 on your PowerBook. I’ve got an original G4 PowerBook (500 MHz) and it’s always run Mac OS X as nicely as I could expect: quite nicely. And it’s faster now with Jaguar on it.
For what is essentially a service pack, where does Apple get of charging *anything* for it? At least you only have to fork over $100 to Microsoft once every couple of years, not every couple of months.
Do you think Windows upgrading is any better? Heh, look at the price difference. Prepare for MS’s longhorn. And because you won’t spend the money on 10.2, (and apparently won’t pirate it) it means you will have to pay for all of MS’s forced upgrades. Heh, much more painful.
Let’s see: Mac OS X: 18 months, two $129 upgrades (although you could get 10.1 for $20 for a limited time, or free from the Apple store).
Windows, say from 98 to XP: 3 years, one $89 upgrade (home). Not to mention that going from 98 to XP is a *big* deal. Much more so than 10.1 to 10.2.
Also, I really love the “forced upgrades” concept. Who forced you?
“(but still far away from bringing a truly fast UI the way it is on BeOS or WindowsXP, or even X11…)”
It isn’t as fast as X11? This seems contrary to what many people seemed to suggest at this place. Now I’m confused, isn’t OSX all that great or is it just great because of it’s fancy stuff like alpha blending and vsync?
The mac users who like its UI is because it looks rather good. But no, it is not fast at all. The UI is terribly and shamingly slow. I wrote it on my review last year, and I am not taking a single word back from what I wrote back then, no matter how the Mac users might want to flame me.
The UI is terribly slow. There.
Eugenia,
Will you write a new review for Jaguar when it is released, then? Do you have enough Macintoshes so that you’ll accurately be able to test it with G3’s, G4’s, Quartz Extreme on and off, and all the other stuff Apple promises?
Not trying to flame at ALL. Just wondering.
–JM
I only have a Cube G4 450 Mhz with 1 MB of L3 cache with 448 MB of SDRAM. It is *faster* than a G3 at 600 Mhz because it is a G4 and because of its 1 MB of L3 cache.
Problem is:
1. I will need to also buy the upgrade. Not sure I will do so.
2. My graphics card is an ATi Rage 128 PRO, with 16 MB of SDRAM, which is a graphics chip that it is not supported by Quartz Extreme, even if it is only 2 years old and a kind that it is to be found on all iMacs and Cubes.
If I do a review of 10.2 and still find that it is slow, mostly because my gfx card doesn’t support QE, Mac users will still flame saying “you did not use a recent Mac”. Thing is, that most Mac users (including these who will flame) have G3s or older G4s, as fast/comparable to mine, so my review could have been more “down to earth” and real of what people will get. But they will still piss and moan.
So, I don’t know if I will write a review. Depends on my mood and on how up the flaming meter is.
Note: My graphics card is not upgradable. *No one* sells the special version of GeForce2 MX and Ati Radeon 7000 that happen to *fit* in the Cube, therefore I do not have another option but to keep the Ati Rage 128 Pro.
There were some of these special versions of cards on eBay, but I find it outrageous to pay $200+ for a GeForce2MX 200, 32 MB of RAM, while you can buy the exact same card for PC, new, for $40.
Did any of the people complaining about having to pay $129 actually read the article? It’s already $80, and rumored to be available for $20 soon. Besides, the Windows world paid $80 twice for Windows 98 (Windows 4.1) and Windows ME (Windows 4.2). (Windows 95 was 4.0)
Besides, if the accelerated the GUI, that doesn’t sound like a trivial rewrite…
The Windows world never jumped to Windows ME. Today, Win98 has 48% of the global desktop market, and Windows Me has less than 1%.
Most of the WinME packages distributed were just sold with a retail PC as OEM, not individually. It never sell well.
So, this answers to your whole argument, plus can give a good food for thought on Apple.
For what is essentially a service pack, where does Apple get of charging *anything* for it?
Where do people get this perception? Jaguar is very much revamped on several fronts. It includes tons of new, useful features.
At least you only have to fork over $100 to Microsoft once every couple of years, not every couple of months.
Yes, except OS X improves, whereas Windows does not. Windows ME was certainly less of an upgrade over 98 than Jaguar is over 10.1. The same goes for XP over 2000.
Frankly, Windows XP feels that Microsoft did a thorough analysis of OS X and attempted to copy everything Apple had come up with on all fronts, failing in the process. Integraded CD recording is so much nicer under OS X than it is under XP.
Good luck with the UI unresponsiveness. And unfortunately, my 2-years old Rage 128 PRO is not supported by Quartz Extreme that supposedly makes the speed of the UI more bearable (but still far away from bringing a truly fast UI the way it is on BeOS or WindowsXP, or even X11…)
This was hilarious to read. First, Jaguar improves UI speed on all fronts. Without Quartz Extreme you’ll see a 60-70% performance increase, and with Quartz Extreme you’ll see something on the order of a 300% performance increase.
Second, X is fast? I’m sorry, but ROTFLMAO. X is by far the slowest, least responsive display server that’s still seeing common use. Its design is pathetic. Its IPC mechanisms are unbearably slow, its use of shared memory is a hack that fails to see use do to its poor design.
One way in which Win32 and X both fail horribly is handling redrawing windows. (that is, redrawing a window that hasn’t been resized) With X, the redraw event is sent to the client then the entire window redrawn over a SOCKET. Combine this with several applications on virtual desktops in something like Window Maker and after exiting a screen saver it’s on the order of 20 seconds before all windows are redrawn on a 500MHz system. This is good performance? If you think so you seriously need to have your head examined.
For those of you who think Jaguar has come too soon, I dunno, how about you wait until you feel your OS is dated enough before you purchase a copy. No one is forcing you to buy it. Personally I’m glad to see Apple is committed to improving their software, a claim that’s hard to make about virtually any large software company.
Well, if the upgrade really isn’t worth it, then why complain? As Eugenia pointed out, the Windows world never jumped to ME because they decided there wasn’t a real benefit over 98. 10.1 isn’t exactly obsolete. I know I’ll be upgrading, but that’s because I for one feel the upgrade’s worth it. A $129 upgrade ($69 with education discount
) after OS X 10 seems fair to me. Especially since they really have redone quite a bit. I for one can’t wait to play with some of the nice new features. In my opinion the reason users are pissed over the upgrade price is because they do want it and don’t want to pay. If they didn’t want it, why would they care?
I actually know very few people who have bought any Windows upgrades. They simply wait three years and get a new computer. I had to buy WindowsME as an upgrade from Windows95 because I needed to get full USB support. The upgrade from Windows98/ME to WindowsXP is very much like the upgrade from OS 9 to OS X, and that was offered at upgrade pricing as well. The 10.1 to 10.2 update sounds like it has a lot of new features (150+ supposedly), however those are all things that were promised or expected in the original OS. Furthermore, the only reason why Quartz Extreme exists is to make up for the overly burdening graphics engine that makes OS X appear unresponsive and slow.
I’m one of those people that love the OS X GUI, and love that it is essential unix underneath. It is my heaven. However, Apple is getting a little too Microsoft-ish for me. If I had to get a new computer (I’m at least a year away), I would go back to Windows. Windows2000 is good enough for me. It is also good enough for most users. Apple needs to offer something more than marginal feature improvements and less than current hardware to win over users. Their industrial design and interface asthetics will only get them so far. They used to have one further advantage for me in the lack of pervasive web-enabled services, but that has now disappeared with their .NET knock-off .Mac.
>Without Quartz Extreme you’ll see a 60-70% performance increase, and with Quartz Extreme you’ll see something on the order of a 300% performance increase.
Please stop exagurating.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/jaguar/quartzextreme.html
24fps for a 600×600 window, is LOW, no matter what Apple tries to make you think about these numbers.
While Quartz Extreme will help the unresponsiveness of the UI, it is STILL VERY LOW and SLOW.
Today, resizing and scrolling is pathetically slow. Just two times faster without QE and three times faster with QE, is still not good enough.
Bascule: This was hilarious to read. First, Jaguar improves UI speed on all fronts. Without Quartz Extreme you’ll see a 60-70% performance increase, and with Quartz Extreme you’ll see something on the order of a 300% performance increase.
What do these percentages mean? What is increased 300%, how fast you can scroll through a list? Or is it how fast the pop-up file listing comes from the dock? These sound like meanless unconfirmed benchmarks. If you have numbers, I’d like to see them because I would have to agree with Eugenia 100% on the GUI responsiveness issues on the Cube (450MHz 704MB RAM and that same 128 card).
Bascule: Second, X is fast? I’m sorry, but ROTFLMAO. X is by far the slowest, least responsive display server that’s still seeing common use. Its design is pathetic. Its IPC mechanisms are unbearably slow, its use of shared memory is a hack that fails to see use do to its poor design.
Unfortunately, my experience with current Linux boxes running equivalent cards would confirm the feeling of a faster responsiveness out of Linux running X than OS X running Aqua. It doesn’t look anywhere near as nice, but then again, I can run that same X window on any machine I want on the network…
Not sure what shell you lived in, but it went Win98, 98SE (which was better), then ME, then XP. 4 upgrades.
Second of all, if you upgrade to jaguar, you get more applications, (a wonderful date book and calendar) show me what Microsoft OS upgrade added that.
The Mac came with OS 9 and 10, and it was understood 10 wasn’t ready. If you spent money on a product which the devs said it wasn’t ready, then who are you to complain.
IB Jr (Internat. Bacc.)
It’s great mostly because of its alpha blending.
Seriously, the only major annoyance I have in practice with Aqua (as opposed to the philosophical irritations a lot of people seem to express) is window resizing–the speed often sucks lemons, and I’ve never liked the Mac-ism of only letting you resize from one corner. Minor quibbles: I want the damn trash can off the dock, and text entry in some windows (notably big browser text boxes, like this one) sometimes gets wonky.
Beyond that, a lot of the complaints I hear aren’t ones I can honestly agree with. I use my Powerbook G4/550 daily, and it’s just not that slow. Yes, BeOS 5 on my Celeron 433 “feels” faster. Windows 2000, by and large, doesn’t (some things are quicker, some things are slower). OS X 10.2 will improve things. For one, 10.2 is noticeably faster than 10.1 without Quartz Extreme; for another, it’s a 16MB AGP graphics system, which means Quartz Extreme will work. The squawking on this might be curbed if people took the time to, I don’t know, research what their machines had in them and what the specs of the OS really are.
OS X hasn’t had hardware GUI acceleration (which Windows, X11 and BeOS all did have) and people screamed about that. Now they’re upset that the hardware acceleration being developed for it isn’t going to work with machines that the company sold in the past. “But Microsoft would never do this, and they’re evil!”
In the sense that Microsoft makes sure that their current release runs on machines of a few years ago, albeit “without optimal performance” (as marketers would put it)? Absolutely. And OS X 10.2 will run on machines going back to the original Bondi Blue iMac from 1998. No, it won’t be a pretty sight.
Reality check: Run Windows XP on a PC with all 1998 hardware. You know, when the Celeron had just been introduced at 333 MHz (and the high end was the Pentium II 450)? When you had a choice between a NVidia TNT, a Voodoo Banshee or a Matrox G200 for video? Again, technically, you can do it, but I guarantee you won’t enjoy it.
As for the complaints about the price of the OS upgrade or the stupidly-named “.Mac”, hey, I’d like it for less (or free), too. Apple is just a company and they want profit, and somebody in their accounting division noticed that giving away things for free that cost a lot to develop or maintain is a bad way to get more money. For our next trick, we’ll go to Disney’s town of Celebration, Florida, where residents who thought Disney Magic <tm> would protect them from all ills have been alarmed to realize it’s just like any other subdivision.
Eugenia,
it doesn’t matter that win98 has 48% global, what matters is that MS wanted you to pay for it. (This began when someone complained that 120 is too much, and because of this it will be the last mac the poster buys. )
Unfortunately, my experience with current Linux boxes running equivalent cards would confirm the feeling of a faster responsiveness out of Linux running X than OS X running Aqua. It doesn’t look anywhere near as nice, but then again, I can run that same X window on any machine I want on the network…
Yes yes, network transparency is nice, but sockets alone are a lousy IPC mechanism for use on a local system, where I spend 99.99% of my time, with clients connected to a local server. None of this would be an issue if X managed to use shared memory properly.
I still find X to be significantly slower at basic things like handling resize/readraw events than Quartz.
24fps for a 600×600 window, is LOW, no matter what Apple tries to make you think about these numbers.
This is the speed of the Quartz compositing engine, and I don’t really know how to compare it to anything else since Windows and X really don’t have an equivalent. All I can say is I haven’t used many OS X applications that actually take advantage of this, but in 10.1 it is unbearably slow, on the order of maybe 2 fps on my iBook. I’d say 20fps is more than acceptable for resizing a window full of antialiased text.
Overall I don’t really notice any UI speed problems with scrolling, moving, or resizing windows. I’m on a 600MHz G3 with 256MB of RAM… so I’m guessing having sufficient hardware really makes a big difference as many seem to be complaining.
I used to have Windows 98 on my laptop that I bought in 1998. I never saw a reason to upgrade to Windows 98 SE or Windows Millennium because the differences are just not worth it. I was using the notebook day after day and wrote my master thesis on it. Life was good, as they say.
Now, I don’t own a Mac but I checked them out. I was very excited about Mac OS X since I like Unix. A pretty interface on top was just too good to have. And it was. The finder was damn slow. I am sure I would have upgraded to 10.1 and 10.2 just because I wanted a somewhat faster OS.
So, running Windows 98 for three years was great. I am not sure that you want to run Mac OS X 10 three years after it had been released. And I think that’s why most people complain about the upgrade prices. The first version of Mac OS X lacked a lot of things. Why pay for an upgrade that is only delivering what should have been there in the first place? Speed being the most important thing for many.
> I’m on a 600MHz G3 with 256MB of RAM… so I’m guessing having sufficient hardware really makes a big difference as many seem to be complaining.
Sweetheart, my G4 Cube at 450 Mhz with 1 MB of L3 cache, is faster than your G3 at 600 Mhz. And I still find OSX’s UI dog slow.
Oh, and I have 448 MB of RAM, while you got 256. OSX is a Unix. The more memory, the better.
And yes, it is still slow.
…that the 24fps is “compositing performance” in a 600×600 window, not merely updating the window. Real-time video composition is not as trivial as Eugenia makes it sound like it is. I don’t know how well other operating systems do it because as far as I know, other operating systems don’t do it. If you’re using Adobe Premiere or even Avid Media Composer on Windows, operations like that aren’t happening at the OS level, they’re happening at the application level.
It’s easy to rag on Apple for the cycle-sucking approach to a GUI that the Quartz model uses, and to a degree it’s justified. But Quartz is probably the most interesting and unusual thing in OS X–revolutionary in the subtle way that the BeOS Media Kit and Translation Kit were. By moving functionality from application space to the API, you don’t necessarily end up with things you couldn’t do before–but you make powerful functionality in simple things easier, and that can lead you toward applications–and levels of interoperability–that other systems don’t have.
MS has yet to come to me and tell me I have to upgrade. There are no forced upgrades and implying it is dumb. Also you don’t need to install every version of Windows that comes out. Most people went 98 – XP that was 3 years not that bad of a jump. In reality you could use 98 forever, Many people still use 95 for the reason they have no reason to upgrade or urg to, and no MS people have come to their house treatening to club them in the head with a trout or anything to get them to upgrade. Heck I knwo people who still use 3.1. The end point is, no one has ever been forced to upgrade and there hasn’t been any real reason to. it’s not like 98 was slow, it just crashed a bit often and got old looking.
WattsM Far as XP on old hardware, I only have a 500 celeron and 128meg with a intel built in graphics, runs XP not to bad at all, when it only had 64meg for a bit it was slow but not end of world, I’ve seen it run on much less.
In the end one would expect MS to charge more for their upgrades, Software is all they have, they don’t make money of hardware. Apple has to have the software cheap or thats one more reason not to buy one. Considering Apple should give all there OS’s away for free since people allready paid for the mac, comparitivly MS prices arn’t to bad.
Sooner or later, OSX users will be forced to upgrade. All new applications, compiled with 10.2’s GCC 3.1, will NOT run on OSX 10.1.x. It is a technical issue, which will force the users to upgrade.
Microsoft has never forced anyone to upgade. 99% of the people went from Win95 to Win98SE and then directly to Win2k or XP. That is only 3 upgrades since 1995.
Think of the upgrade this way. Windows 2000 is 5.0, Windows XP is 5.1. Windows XP isn’t free.
Honestly, I don’t mind the annoying candy coated look of Aqua, and I don’t mind that it’s unbearably slow. What bugs me out is the fact that I CAN’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT.
Take Windows display options: You have the ability to choose whether to display the window contents while moving/resizing. You can turn screen font smoothing on/off. You can choose to display icons with as many colors as possible or turn that off. In Win 2K and XP, you can turn on/off menu effects such as alpha blending, scrolling.
Point is, in Windows I have the option to turn it down if the UI graphics is too much, wheras in OSX I have to basically suck it up and deal with it. Switching from “Genie effect” to scaling isn’t enough. I want more control over the gooeyness of the GUI.
Curious. What I read in my “System Properties” is:
System:
Microsoft Windows XP
Professional
Version 2002
Windows 2000 was released in 1999 and it bears no apparent resemblance to XP, even if XP is based on 2k. All the control panels are different, the way that handles legacy is differnt, the kernel is different, and fs is different, the UI is different, and XP loads in 15 secs while 2k takes 50 secs. That’s different enough for me.
WindowXP *is* a real upgrade. OSX 10.2 over 10.1 is mostly upgrade on the *user* applications (sherlock etc). The only system upgrades is the compiler to 3.1, the Redenvouz thingie and Quartz Extreme. Very secondary system upgrades are the Finder and Inkwell. Windows XP has massive changes over 2k. Jaguar does not.
I AGREE that Jaguar should be a real release, but Apple SHOULD ALSO offer upgrades, not the full price.
The fact that you’ve paid the same company for the hardware that your initial software load came with doesn’t change the fact that your argument essentially boils down to “once I’ve paid for this, I shouldn’t have to pay for new versions.” That’s absurd.
The entire “forced upgrade” argument is also absurd. Exactly what “forces” you to upgrade to 10.2? If being charged for the new release really makes your britches burn so much, don’t do it. The only OS upgrade I’ve ever been “forced” to buy was, in fact, a Windows one, since the official way to add USB support to Windows 95 is to upgrade to a new version of Windows.
“In the end Apple has to have their software cheap or that’s one more reason not to buy one.”
Unless Apple is paying you to take the damn software upgrade, nobody who pays for their software is going to switch from Windows to Macintosh to save money, no matter how many cute commercials Apple has, and I say that as a happy Mac owner. I had the perverse advantage of having spent 1998 through early 2001 nearly exclusively in BeOS, on pretty obsolete PC hardware; moving to <em>anything</em> meant buying new applications. My friend who owns Windows versions of Photoshop, Expression, Painter, PageMaker and Microsoft Office likes Macs, but not enough to buy all new versions. Whether he had to spend an extra $130 (or $70, or whatever) on an OS upgrade just doesn’t figure into the calculations.
Hmm, now this is an interesting issue. Everyone is saying “you don’t have to upgrade!”. Microsoft didn’t force you to upgrade from Win98 to Win2000 to WinXP, so why should you be forced to upgrade your Mac OS?
That’s a stupid argument. Doesn’t anyone remember the upgrade from 10.0 to 10.1 … How many applications still exist that can actually run on 10.1. Adobe Photoshop? nope. Mozilla? Nope. I don’t even think Apple is providing security patches for 10.0 anymore. The same IS going to happen with 10.2. You want to know why? GCC 3.1 is one reason. Programs using C++ linked with GCC 3.1 WILL NOT run on the libraries compiled with the ABI of GCC 2.95.x which is what OS 10.1 and lower use. Then, of course, there are the constant API changes being made, since they can’t seem to stabilize their code base. That’s what happened with 10.0 -> 10.1 anyone here that tried to figure out the changes with the databrowser in Carbon knows what I’m talking about.
Doesn’t the ABI changes only mess with C++? The multiple APIs in OS X are either in C, Objective C or Java. I think well written app compiled with GCC 3.1 should run under 10.1.x.
By the way, I run OS X on a B&W G3 400Mhz, 512Mb ram (that was a cheap update) and a Radeon PCI. I get very good performances. Enough that I don’t mind using OS X on this old computer every days. I could use a faster CPU with Lightwave and the newest games, but I can wait for the next major PowerMac update.
I find it unfortunate to hear so much complains on Apple and OS X. Finally a great OS that get the attention that deserve from its owner. We could start on how much BeOS was booting fast, but that was almost meaningless after all mistakes Be did (yeah, let’s blame Microsoft instead).
correcting a typo, should be
“how many applications still exist tht can actually run on 10.0”
and also references are to that software still produced today can work on Win98, and some even on Win95. Though in a year’s time, OS X 10.0 has been left totally behind.
Well said Anonymous. I wrote the exact thing about GCC 3.1 as the last comment on the previous page, but it seems that WattsM missed it. The fact that newly linked applications to GCC 3.1 won’t be able to run on OS X 10.1.5 and earlier, is THE reason that people will be forced to upgrade. And also the other reasons you mentioned too.
If Apple had showed more PR sense and called this “10.5” rather than “10.2,” and had offered it for, say, $99 to registered owners of 10.1, there’d probably be very little complaining now.
Just a (cynical) observation.
It also occurred to me, coming from the BeOS world, that the leap between 10.1 and 10.2 is somewhat greater than the leap from BeOS R4 and BeOS 5 (when they dropped the “R” officially), and there was an R4.5 release between those two–if I hadn’t been a developer I’d have paid for both of those, albeit a relatively minimal amount. R4.5 compared to R4 was a lot like OS X 10.1 compared to 10.0.
Usually I complains about PR, but I find it interesting that Apple use modest version numbers. Solaris 2.6 -> Solaris 7, purely marketing. I think it’s Delphi or C++ builder that jumped at least one version number just to catch up to the number used by MS tools. BeOS 5 was falling short of my expectations for a major release. Where was the HW 3d acceleration?
At least, it looks like we won’t have Mac OS 23.2 in three years. The version number change nothing of what is the software, but it get a little annoying when the PR people start to play too much with the numbers.
While I did indeed miss that comment, there’s been no confirmation that I’ve seen that moving to GCC 3’s C++ ABIs will significantly affect Cocoa or Carbon applications that aren’t written in C++. Cocoa is not C++, it’s Objective C.
I grant that it means that programs that run only on OS X 10.2 or above will be happening sooner rather than later. Nobody forces you to upgrade your applications, either, though. Nota Bene 4.5a for DOS processes words just as well than Word XP does, when it comes right down to it, and it does it a damn sight faster. If you’re an Apple user and you’re really annoyed by 10.2’s mere existence, just sit out the entire upgrade cycle.
And I know I’m sounding a bit irritated, but I still think there’s a “damned no matter what” syndrome going on. Is not moving to GCC 3 more accceptable? Is not having hardware acceleration in the GUI more acceptable? And what slows down OS X’s UI ultimately isn’t “eye candy,” it’s the system that makes the eye candy possible. If Apple gave you the option to disable Quartz, would you be happy, or would you complain about how horrible it was that all the programs that used Quartz were now lobotomized? Quite frankly, I know where my money is.
Yes, I’ll admit it: one of the things that attracts me to OS X is that it’s closest to BeOS in spirit in the computing world now. Save all the technical arguments about speed–I know ’em. And save pointing out AtheOS and friends–BeOS was exciting because it had both that frontier feeling <em>and</em> the (ultimately unfulfilled) promise of commercial support that other alternative OSes didn’t.
But the reality is that being on the frontier gets you muddy and sometimes it’s a pain in the ass. Most Mac users who weren’t “frontiersman” <em>didn’t</em> get OS X until the 10.1 release (in point of fact, some I’ve talked to were waiting until “the next” release, and are actually planning to make the move with 10.2). Yes, it’d be great if people who did that didn’t have to pay for the 10.2 upgrade, or got it really cheaply.
This is a kind of ironic argument for me. I tended to be the “the emperor has no clothes” type back on BeNews, arguing that Be caused a lot of their own problems. But I don’t think many people argued about Be’s even more radical change from R3 to R4 on Intel, and people seemed willfully ignorant of the broken promises about what R4 was going to have, and what R4.5 was supposed to fix but didn’t, quite, and what R5 was supposed to finally deliver but didn’t, quite (and, oh yes, the experimental OpenGL support in R4.5 is now completely gone, tra-la).
I’m disgruntled with some things Apple’s done, and I’m sure I will be in the future, and one of the things that disgruntled me in the recent past was that essentially they released an unfinished OS as a “point-zero” release. But this isn’t unique to Apple. Be did it frequently and when people started complaining early on, they just stopped talking about what things were coming up. Microsoft has done this even more brazenly for years. (And it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that “run three years behind schedule still release software that crashes when someone in the next room sneezes” is the standard for the computer gaming industry.)
Well, to me, the fact is that right now, OS X 10.1.5 is simply too slow.
It seems that everyone will see at least some speed increase with 10.2.
10.2 is far, far more than a service pack. But, that doesn’t make the pricing any less painful. I’ve been a Mac user ever since they came out. I’m an impulsive early adopter, I admit <g>. I actually feel, in some ways, like I’m paying for betas of OS X, the changes have been so dramatic from 10.0.4 to 10.1 and now to 10.2. I mean, we’re talking *huge* changes, interface changes.
I also sort of feel like I’m still a beta tester because, as Eugenia and others pointed out, the huge majority of the user base is still using OS 9 anyway. But, there are a whole lot of people like Eugenia who have G4’s, but won’t run Quartz extreme. We early adopters always get shafted <g>. We have a flat panel iMac and an eMac and both will run Quartz Extreme – I can’t wait to see what the effect is.
We also have a 14″ 700 MHz G3 iBook that has both 9 and X. In OS X, we run it in thousand of colors instead of millions. It makes a big difference (at least subjectively). Eugenia, have you tried that on the Cube, just to see what happens?
At any rate, Apple’s on an all-front attack – high end, low end, servers, Unix, .Mac. When you write down all the stuff they’re doing, it is amazing in a way.
> It makes a big difference (at least subjectively). Eugenia, have you tried that on the Cube, just to see what happens?
Yes!! I *also* run the Cube on thousands of colors instead of millions! It is indeed MUCH FASTER running on 16bit color instead of 32bit.
And yes, it is still slow overall…
Win XP is the same as NT 6.0, not 5.1
Bascule needs to get a clue.
X doesn’t use sockets for local operations, and hasn’t for some time.
My system can whack bits as fast as Windows and faster than
MacOS X.
The X you are talking about is fast becoming unimportant.
X certainly has thorns, but then they all do, and XFree is working hard to fix them.
I run a GUI with more flash than MacOS X on my X system, and it’s a lot faster. None of it is going over a socket.
WattsM “The only OS upgrade I’ve ever been “forced” to buy was, in fact, a Windows one, since the official way to add USB support to Windows 95 is to upgrade to a new version of Windows. ”
MS did not force you to upgrade. You can’t expect them to add something to an old version. They are to work on the current version and move forwards. You wanted USB, to get USB support you need win98, not very forceful, if you don’t want to be forced to upgrade don’t by a usb devise. The idea that companies should be forced to update old versions of their product is insane, maybe a security patch but not new features. This is why they make new versions. Now if you sell hardware you have some responsablity to keap it going for your customers, such as parts and such, but still sometimes you just need to move on and upgrade. Apple can’t be expected to support OSX on an Apple IIc or the such but screwing over people who bought something just months ago is wrong for sure. Also MS did not create USB, that was the hardware people, they added USB support after the hardware people did this. Just because Hardware people decide USB is great doesn’t mean MS should have to work with hardwares plan. You don’t expect a hardware company to go back and retrofit your old mobo for free for USB do you? No you would by a new Board. Apple on the other hand makes the hardware and the software. They have a responsablity to both. If they are going to sell hardware they should provide full support for a period of time (3 years?). If they make a change they should work with the consumer to meet their needs. Apple has said their a hardware company, so they should support their stuff fully. MS makes no hardware, if they don’t support what you have, oh well. Apple has to make software to sell their hardware, trying to make money on something that is required for the thing you all ready sold someone is not right. In this case this is even more important. OSX is running like crap on their hardware but they are selling it. They keap making fixes, you shouldn’t have to pay for being a tester for something. Mac users talk about how they don’t need to upgrade hardware as often as PC people, The current afairs of OSX are disproving that. If Apple got OSX up to the performance level that is to be expected then came out with a big upgrade then selling that would be fine. I would expect them to sell OSX to those coming from OS9. But having to pay for their inability to get things working is not right. This is a good example of why having hardware come from many sources and software from others is prefered. It forces everyone to improve, and you just switch if one is trying to screw you over. How do you know your PPC hardware doesn’t suck, OSX doesn’t run on anything else, or rather any other PPC machines, Apple could have terriable slow harware that another company could make fly for same cost but no body can tell.
LOL, I feel more like a beta tester than ever.
Hey Eugenia, you know what? Having to answer all of us geniuses, your English has skyrocketed up several notches. Way to go! I have no benchmarks, of course, but I know it’s true <g>.
Bascule needs to get a clue.
X doesn’t use sockets for local operations, and hasn’t for some time.
Well, so nice of you to make a personal attack like that. Unfortunately you don’t seem to have any concept of the logical flow of ideas. One would assume that when you’re correcting me, you would, well, give the “right” answer as opposed to just saying you’re wrong.
Unfortunately, you’re wrong. X uses Unix domain sockets. These are… still sockets. Perhaps you’re thinking of the MIT shm extension, or perhaps you don’t understand that Unix domain sockets are… still sockets.
In conclusion, get back under your bridge.
If you’re running windows xp, run cmd and take a looksie at what’s at the top of the window. Windows 2000 is NT 5 and Windows XP is 5.1.
Yes, except OS X improves, whereas Windows does not. Windows ME was certainly less of an upgrade over 98 than Jaguar is over 10.1. The same goes for XP over 2000.
Windows ME never sold well because of that. But Windows XP is an improvement over Windows 2000. Maybe not so to current Windows 2000 users, but it is much more friendly, the fonts are much more better, Win32 had been extended with quite a number of new classes etc.
Frankly, Windows XP feels that Microsoft did a thorough analysis of OS X and attempted to copy everything Apple had come up with on all fronts, failing in the process. Integraded CD recording is so much nicer under OS X than it is under XP.
I invite you to take Windows XP on one machinine and Mac OS X on another, you would notice a lot, and I mean A LOT, is different. Take the icons for example, they are quite pastel-like unlike Mac OS X which is photo-realistic. Then the Taskbar is so much more different than the Dock. Even glancing on it, you could notice the difference. The Start menu is much more different than the Apple menu (for example, the Start menu shows the most frequently used apps). The login does take the basic idea from Mac OS, but it extends it – for example, you would know how much emails you have or how much applications you have open. So because Microcoft (or rather, an icon company Microsoft hired) copied a duck login icon, doesn’t mean the UI is copied from Mac OS X. In fact, Windows and Mac OS now have never been more different.
Second, X is fast? I’m sorry, but ROTFLMAO. X is by far the slowest, least responsive display server that’s still seeing common use. Its design is pathetic. Its IPC mechanisms are unbearably slow, its use of shared memory is a hack that fails to see use do to its poor design.
X11 design may be pathetic, but it isn’t slow. What is slow is the DE/WM over it that is bloated. Just see how much change happens when you compile KDE 3.0 with GCC 3.1? Another thing, XFree86 isn’t the fastest implementation of X11. Heck, it is not even close to being the fastest. Try out Xi.
Besides, X11 is much more network transperant than Quartz. And Quartz itself isn’t free from hacks. Quartz is originally a vector windowing system. But then, it realize, with current machines and media, that’s impossible, it became a resource hogging combination of vector and raster based graphics.
Combine this with several applications on virtual desktops in something like Window Maker and after exiting a screen saver it’s on the order of 20 seconds before all windows are redrawn on a 500MHz system. This is good performance? If you think so you seriously need to have your head examined.
May not be the latest versions I have used, but KDE 1.2 with the average of 20 windows of Netscape 4 open or KDE 2.0 (if I could stand the bugs) with 20 windows of Konqueror open, it was quite fast on my old Celeron 400mhz PC (now it is upgraded to 800mhz Pentiym III). In fact, much faster than Mac OS X now on a 800mhz G4 :p.
I would just love some benchmarks done by you, since between Windows, X11 and Mac OS X (mac OS X 10.1, 10.2 hasn’t been release so I wouldn’t know).
For those of you who think Jaguar has come too soon, I dunno, how about you wait until you feel your OS is dated enough before you purchase a copy. No one is forcing you to buy it. Personally I’m glad to see Apple is committed to improving their software, a claim that’s hard to make about virtually any large software company.
Whar large company doesn’t support and isn’t commited to their flagship software?
Beyond that, a lot of the complaints I hear aren’t ones I can honestly agree with. I use my Powerbook G4/550 daily, and it’s just not that slow. Yes, BeOS 5 on my Celeron 433 “feels” faster. Windows 2000, by and large, doesn’t (some things are quicker, some things are slower).
Your Celeron and that G4 isn’t exactly in the same time line, nor price range, to be compared :p. On a 800mhz Pentium III (which I run Windows 2000), Win2k is more responsive that OS X on that PowerMac G4 1GHz at that store, even though the G4 is suppose to be more “faster”.
it doesn’t matter that win98 has 48% global, what matters is that MS wanted you to pay for it. (This began when someone complained that 120 is too much, and because of this it will be the last mac the poster buys. )
Windows Me was mostly sold via OEM machines, not retail. In fact, most of the promotion done on Windows Me is for you to buy a new machine, not buy an upgrade pack. Reason: PC sales were going down.
I still find X to be significantly slower at basic things like handling resize/readraw events than Quartz.
Probably it is your installation. Cause on all three of my machines, an 800MHz P3 desktop (upgraded from 400MHz Celeron), a 1.1GHz P3 laptop, and a 1.0GHz Duron desktop (upgraded from 700MHz).
I don’t know how well other operating systems do it because as far as I know, other operating systems don’t do it.
Accroading to THG, Anandtech, Extreme Tech and a bunch of other PC sites, Windows do have that :p
Point is, in Windows I have the option to turn it down if the UI graphics is too much, wheras in OSX I have to basically suck it up and deal with it. Switching from “Genie effect” to scaling isn’t enough. I want more control over the gooeyness of the GUI.
And you haven’t mentioned TweakUI yet :p
Very secondary system upgrades are the Finder and Inkwell.
Finder was mostly rewritten, I call that an upgrade.
The entire “forced upgrade” argument is also absurd. Exactly what “forces” you to upgrade to 10.2?
The fact that most new applications upgrade would be compiled with GCC 3.1, and only can be run on Jaguar.
Doesn’t the ABI changes only mess with C++? The multiple APIs in OS X are either in C, Objective C or Java. I think well written app compiled with GCC 3.1 should run under 10.1.x.
Most of the Mac apps aren’t written in Objective C, rather in C++.
Microsoft has done this even more brazenly for years.
Actually, Microsoft didn’t change version numbers. For example, Windows XP is still 5.1, not 6.0. Thet do charge for it, but they don’t come all that often. Plus, you don’t have to upgrade just to run the latest apps. In fact, most apps made for Windows still run on Windows 95, though newer ones aren’t coming for Windows 95 (mainly because it is unsupported and the APIs is too limiting.
Win XP is the same as NT 6.0, not 5.1
On the technical stand point of view, there wasn’t much changes to make any 6.0 version. A lot of things were added, a lot of things were done, but still, it isn’t enough. The kernel changes for example, isn’t that significant compared to 4.0 to 5.0.
How do you know your PPC hardware doesn’t suck, OSX doesn’t run on anything else, or rather any other PPC machines, Apple could have terriable slow harware that another company could make fly for same cost but no body can tell.
Because Linux’s speed is rather…. well…. not that impressive.
and not trying to bait anyone. But how many of you actually use OSX or XP?
Personally, I’ve used both and have definite opinions about each.
Apple’s Army of 1000 is winning the feature quest.
You get quite a few new kitty features with 10.2
It’s worth $80.
So just open the wallet and feed your kitty.
Kitty hungry. Kitty need to eat.
Kitty have no where else to go.
Meow.
#m
I want us Mac users to be more objective about every charge and change that Apple gives its users. Blindly accepting what they dish out does nothing but inbreed the user community. We buy the line that Quartz Extreme is revolutionary, but similar mechanisms have existed for some time in other OS’s. Furthemore the very need for this is because the Apple/NeXT engineers have managed to create an OS engine a couple of years too early in hardware time. This will be the third Jobs-related project to suffer this fate–Lisa, NeXT 1.0, OS X 10.1.
As was pointed out earlier, simply offering a discounted upgrade would have appeased 90% of the complainers, including me. Apple’s major revenue does not come directly from OS X, as it did at BeOS or as it does from Microsoft’s OS division. Therefore there is no reason why they can’t offer discount pricing for current users. The very reason why they need to have their own OS is because they decided long ago to play the “not invented here” game.
I love OS X–warts and all. I’m going to love 10.2, even though I’m going to have to buy it at full price (hopefully that $50 rebate isn’t a smoke screen). I used to like Apple hardware, but their progress on this front is now woefully behind (my two year old Cube is not much slower than a brand new iMac).
This reduced price upgrade should have come directly from Apple, or have been announced by Apple from the very beginning. It was foolish to do otherwise. I’m pleased that it is happening, but in the light of the other recent Apple developments, I’m still disappointed in the company as a whole nowadays.
And you haven’t mentioned TweakUI yet :p
When Apple went from PB to 10.0 they made sure none of the tweakers worked anymore. When they went from 10.0 to 10.1, they did the same thing. I wouldn’t put it past them to continue their normalization effort in 10.2.
and not trying to bait anyone. But how many of you actually use OSX or XP?
I use OS X and W2K on a daily basis at my desk. I use WXP frequently, but the only difference I really see is the obnoxiously large Start menu. Luna was turned off long ago. Neither system handles heavy loading as well as a BeOS, Solaris or IRIX box. Neither system handles it well when file system hiccups occur (such as very heavy local disk I/O or stalled network access). Both systems seem equally stable to me, but the overall responsiveness of the GUI in W2K/WXP is higher on equivalent hardware. However, I prefer the look of OS X over W2K/WXP–even when it is themed very closely to OS X. That doesn’t mean I’m going to just accept the Apple party line on their upgrades and technology. It is in the best interest of every Mac user to complain directly to Apple, even more so than doing it in the public forum.
I put “forced” in quotes. You really weren’t paying close attention to my argument, were you? No, I didn’t have to pay for a newer Windows–I could have just not taken advantage of my hardware. This is essentially the same argument people are making with respect to OS X 10.2.
Here’s what Apple says about “Compatibility of Built Applications”:
With the April 2002 Developer Tools, you can build two-level namespace binaries which run on Mac OS X 10.1 and later. Those two-level namespace binaries will also run on systems earlier than OS X 10.1, provided that:
– those binaries do not require new APIs. At runtime you can check for the existence of APIs and dynamically load the necessary symbols if you are running on a system where they are available.
– those binaries do not reference symbols of the same name from more than one shared library (or your application).
The gcc compiler’s ABI for C++ programs has been changing as the compiler’s support for the full C++ language has become more complete. As a result of these changes, C++ code that is bound together must be created by the same version of the compiler in order to be guaranteed to work. Consequently, it is a bad idea to create libraries with C++ interfaces that are built (or distributed) independently of the code that uses those libraries.
—
In other words: developers can make stuff with 10.1 that runs on 10.0 if they plan for it, and stuff with 10.2 that runs on 10.1 (or 10.0) if they choose to distribute affected libraries with their code–and you can bet any major application compiled with GCC 3 will be distributed that way.
I’d expect that there’s a fairly good chance GCC 3 C++ libraries will be made available by someone–maybe even Apple in a 10.1.x system update–to address this problem in a way similar to the way Linux distributions can handle this, i.e., keep copies of necessary libraries for programs with both ABIs.
Your G4 Cube at 450 Mhz with 1 MB of L3 cache is an antique, run xp on a similarly configured x86 box and you’ll probably notice the same general slowness throughout the system, apple and oranges. Stop passing yourself off as some kind of mac expert who’s own experiences must mirror those of all mac users because “if it’s slow to you it must be slow for everyone else” guess what the cube was a flop, most people dont own them. It’s a nice mac novelty item, akin to a proprietary console gaming system which is unable to be upgraded due to it’s fundamental design. So leave the OSX is this and that stuff at the door, the fact of the matter is apple is pushing stuff out the door, that’s more than a lot of other companies in the current economic environment.
Your G4 Cube at 450 Mhz with 1 MB of L3 cache is an antique, run xp on a similarly configured x86 box and you’ll probably notice the same general slowness throughout the system
I am comparing it to a contemporary system. I actually compare them to two systems…a 900MHz Pentium III desktop with 512MB of RAM and GeForce2MX card and a 900MHz Pentium III laptop with a GeForce2Go card. I don’t run games, so the 3D stuff really doesn’t impact my performance assessment. And unfortunately, no I don’t notice the same slowness.
guess what the cube was a flop, most people dont own them
What does that have to do with the hardware? My processor is more than half as fast as the top end iMac, with essentially the same system bus as the iMac. The graphics card on the current iMac is one generation ahead of the one in my cube, and one generation behind the current generation of graphics cards. The Cube was a flop because it was too expensive, not because the hardware sucked.
the fact of the matter is apple is pushing stuff out the door
That’s my point, they aren’t pushing stuff out the door. There is no excuse for their current top end machine to be only marginally ahead of the same machine they sold two years ago. The Xserve benchmarks show that moving onto a faster bus will let the G4 fly, but they can’t do that because there is no room for their high end machines to go if they bring the iMac up to speed with the rest of the computing world.
that’s more than a lot of other companies in the current economic environment.
In the same economic environment, Dell, Compaq and practically every other computer vendor have managed to move ahead in terms of memory systems, graphics cards and overall general system speed. The same cannot be said to the same degree with Apple.
Stop passing yourself off as some kind of mac expert who’s own experiences must mirror those of all mac users
I’m giving people my experience, nothing more. I’m an expert on my experiences. The bottom line is this, I’m not comparing my cube to modern PC hardware, I’m comparing my Cube to it’s contemporary hardware. It doesn’t match up then. Performance on PC’s has more than doubled since the Cube’s release. Performance on Mac’s have not doubled in the equivalent time. Therefore, my conclusion would have to be that if the OS X could barely hold its own back then, it certainly isn’t doing it now.
Mac OS X 10.2 is a great deal — you people are just incredibly stingy. $129 is not too much to pay for an OS upgrade. The Windows XP Professional upgrade price is $179.99, from Amazon. Directly from the Microsoft online store it’s $199.99. That’s the UPGRADE price. You can add an extra $100 for the full version. With Apple you’re paying less for a superior product. That’s hardly a rip-off.
Most of the quibbles about Jaguar I’ve read here don’t hold water. “It’s only a point-one upgrade” — it’s a major improvement in the OS, and don’t get hung up on an arbitrary numerical designation. “OS X 10.0 and 10.1 were beta software, and Jaguar just adds features that should have been there in the first place” — I wish you people would hold Linux desktop environments to the same standard you hold Apple. Gnome and KDE don’t begin to approach Windows, let alone Macintosh, in usability, and most people here don’t seem too fazed by that. “It’s too slow” — And Jaguar, among other things, addresses that issue. Personally, I think the slowness of OS X has been exaggerated. I’m running 10.1.5 on a 350 MHz iMac with 128 M of RAM, and while it’s a bit slower than OS 9, it’s not so slow that it’s an irritation. “It’s a forced upgrade” — Well, progress marches on. Get used to it. I will note, however, that the argument that one must upgrade to Jaguar directly contradicts the argument that Jaguar isn’t a significant upgrade. “Apple issues too many upgrades. I’m not going to spend $129 every year.” — It is A Good Thing that Apple updates its OS frequently, and I don’t see how you can argue otherwise.
It’s curious. I don’t think any subject on OS News attracts as many comments as OS X, but for the most part the comments are all negative. It’s even odder that scarcely anyone here seems to be a Mac user, yet everyone has an opinion about OS X. And while all things Macintosh are bashed on OS News, Linux is too sacred to bear any criticism, and Windows isn’t even mentioned. The bias is clear — what I don’t understand is the fascination Macs have for people who don’t like them and don’t use them.
We buy the line that Quartz Extreme is revolutionary, but similar mechanisms have existed for some time in other OS’s.
No one else has done 2D acceleration through 3D hardware (for the OS) AFAIK.
As was pointed out earlier, simply offering a discounted upgrade would have appeased 90% of the complainers, including me.
Why would Apple do that? Jaguar is as worthy an upgrade as any. Is it worse than 95->98, 98->98SE, 98SE->ME, 2000->XP? Apple already sells it’s OS for less than Windows (Apple’s full price is XP Pro’s upgrade price). Would you be happy if Apple asked $400 full price and a $199 upgrade price?
Apple’s major revenue does not come directly from OS X, as it did at BeOS or as it does from Microsoft’s OS division. Therefore there is no reason why they can’t offer discount pricing for current users.
Except that the economy is rough right know and any extra income does help. Besides, it was never much different even when the economy was better. Apple and MS both try to charge for a OS upgrade about every year. Apple simply doesn’t do full pricing since every mac owner has got a previous version of MacOS. This isn’t true for Windows (you may build your own PC).
Besides, MS doesn’t get most of their income from Windows either. So you could apply your nonsense argument to them too.
This reduced price upgrade should have come directly from Apple, or have been announced by Apple from the very beginning.
I remember that people were complaining that the street prices were much lower for Windows. When there are low street prices for OS X as well, you now start to complain that the low price doesn’t come from Apple. Aaaaaargh.
Actually about Quartz Extreme being revoloutionary.. I’m not sure if that’s the word but this isn’t basic hardware acceleration in the display. I don’t know of any other OS that actually uses the higher functions of the graphics card (I know that Longhorn is supposed to start doing this..)
Doesn’t the ABI changes only mess with C++? The multiple APIs in OS X are either in C, Objective C or Java. I think well written app compiled with GCC 3.1 should run under 10.1.x.
Most of the Mac apps aren’t written in Objective C, rather in C++.
Yes, but C++ apps that use Carbon won’t have much problems because they are using a C api. With the ABI changes, the problem isn’t with the name inside the app binary, but with the system libraries.
I also guess that 99% of those C++ commercial app are built with CodeWarrior. If you’re shipping a commercial app built with CodeWarrior, you will want to staticly link with the C++ libraries.
Besides, MS doesn’t get most of their income from Windows either. So you could apply your nonsense argument to them too.
I meant to point out that XP Pro’s price is pretty high as it is (not that MS doesn’t do upgrade pricing). It seems to me that they don’t reward their past customers much either.
Why would Apple do that? Jaguar is as worthy an upgrade as any. Is it worse than 95->98, 98->98SE, 98SE->ME, 2000->XP? Apple already sells it’s OS for less than Windows (Apple’s full price is XP Pro’s upgrade price). Would you be happy if Apple asked $400 full price and a $199 upgrade price?
You should compare Apples to apples (pun intended :-)). OS X is Apple’s mainstream OS, for home as well as professional users. Most users will therefore be comparing it to XP Home Edition, at a $94 upgrade price. The two big things you get with XP Professional that you get equilavent in Jaguar, but don’t get in XP Home edition would be network management and multi-processor support.
Apple and MS both try to charge for a OS upgrade about every year. Apple simply doesn’t do full pricing since every mac owner has got a previous version of MacOS. This isn’t true for Windows (you may build your own PC).
Most Windows users have it from being pre-installed on their system. Your argument doesn’t hold water. More users of OS X have paid full price for it than Windows users, at least as a percentage. In a year or so, your argument would work, since all OS X 10.x capable machines in use would have been released post OS X 10.0’s release.
Besides, MS doesn’t get most of their income from Windows either. So you could apply your nonsense argument to them too.
I clearly stated that I was speaking strickly from the OS division’s perspective. Apple’s logic is that they have to pay their OS developer’s salaries from the full price, the same logic would have to be applied to Microsoft as well. Microsoft offers discount pricing on upgrades, not just full price versions.
I remember that people were complaining that the street prices were much lower for Windows. When there are low street prices for OS X as well, you now start to complain that the low price doesn’t come from Apple. Aaaaaargh.
I’m not complaining about the reduced price coming through, I was just pointing out what a shame it was that Apple had to leave such a bad taste in everyone’s mouth first. If they had done this in the first place, the negative reaction and press would have been reduced if not non-existent. I’m just pointing out their loss.
I just wanted to point out – if no one has already, or it just goes without saying – that you can use CarbonLib inside a Cocoa app. Objective-C recognizes C syntax and treats it as so. Last I check there was no Cocoa classes for doing HTTP programming but that functionality is available in Carbon. All I had to do was add the Carbon framework to my project and make the necessary calls.
> Your G4 Cube at 450 Mhz with 1 MB of L3 cache is an antique, run xp on a similarly configured x86 box and you’ll probably notice the same general slowness throughout the system, apple and oranges.
You are wrong and you have missed a lot of discussion previously on osnews about it. I am running XP on a dual Celeron 533 MHz, with only 128 KB of cache and 256 MB of RAM and *IT FLIES*. Supposedly the G4 is faster on the Mhz base that the x86 (and mine is a half-a$$ed Celeron), it has so much more cache and memory to compensate for the second CPU (that is only active when the application is multithreaded) and overall, they should have about the same speed.
Thing is, XP flies, and OSX crawls. NO COMPARISON!!
I truly do not know how you can say that Cube is an antique when it was purchased only 1.5 years ago.
I bought my Celerons in the beginning of 1999. And I still use them. And XP works perfectly fine!
And you tell me that the much newer Cube is an antique and that OSX should not work on it antequately?
You are such a Mac troll. Blinded from the truth. The matrix is all around you.
Thing is, XP flies, and OSX crawls. NO COMPARISON!!
Well, you have to give Apple a little credit. They wrote Quartz entirely from scratch with a software development team a fraction of the size of Microsoft’s, whereas XP is built upon over a decade of NT legacy. I’d say so far Apple has done a pretty good job. Sure there are definately some major issues that probably can’t be fixed by anything but better hardware, but overall I’ve had the best user experience in OS X.
And I suppose the second CPU on your Celeron rig doesn’t help at all…
Sure it does help. But the Cube compensates quite a lot wiht more ram, more cache and more power per Mhz. And even if the Celerons are, let’s say, 30% faster than the Cube overall, XP is not just 30% faster than the OSX on the Cube. It is 1000% faster. No comparison as I said.
Which means that it is not the hardware here that makes my XP fly, it is XP itself. And OSX on the other side, crawls.
Bottom line is, OSX is slow. They need to work on the issue and they need to work not only for the new machines that will feature QE, but for the 1.5 year old machines too.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/39/26444.html
Great article on Microso- Whoops! …on Apples current marketing. 8)=
I’d question what you’re getting from them when you buy a Mac at this point. I’d still love an OSX box, but not until Apple either comes to their senses, or I come across a deal I can’t refuse.
Unfortunately, I feel the latter’s more likely then the former based on recent events.
I am using an older than 1.5 year old mac G4 500, 960 MB, a rage pro 128 AGP (with all the recent driver updates).
And the only thing I could say was slow is the window resize.
Scrolling is good, app opening is OK.
OS X isn’t a speed demon, but it’s not sloooow (IMHO).—(BTW-build 106 is very nice speed increase–on my lowly G4 500—-no further comment)
Working in fotoshop, after effects (especially with my lil render farm of old macs),etc, I am very productive and earning a decent wage.
The stability of OS X makes it a joy to use.
And thanks for the tip for the 79 $ upgrade. Much better price.
the “10.1.3” hasta be a typo, cause it’s 10.1.5 at present and will be 10.2 in the middle of the offer time period.
They do need to clarify and change it.
I canna see why they would do something nefarious in the small print.
If they do, then shame on them.
I laughed at their disengenious closer
—-“And we’re particularly intrigued by this delightful disclaimer in the small print:-
“Apple is not responsible for printing errors.”
Then who is?”——–
Apple is obviously referring to the printing of their downloadable coupon.
The two big things you get with XP Professional that you get equivalent in Jaguar, but don’t get in XP Home edition would be network management and multi-processor support.
And a lot of other stuff that no poweruser can do without (I forgot exactly what, but I remember laughing at Home’s missing features). Trust me, a serious user doesn’t want Home. Apple’s to apple’s, OS X is closest to XP Pro in featureset.
Most Windows users have it from being pre-installed on their system. Your argument doesn’t hold water.
My point is that every Mac-owner will already have bought a previous version, while PC users may not (especially the geeks that visit OSNews and build their own PC’s like me). Thus, Apple doesn’t need a full price and an upgrade price, while MS does. Asking for an upgrade price is therefor ignorant. It seems that many want a break for OS X buyers, but why should OS X users get a break, while OS 9 users should not? They both upgrade from a previous version of MacOS. Some of them just simply skipped a cycle. I happen to be pissed when the upgrade price of software only goes if you own the previous version and not if you skipped a upgrade cycle (something that MS/M$ is trying to force on companies through their evil upgrade program). How many people would bitch about that if Apple did what you ask them to? IMO Apple isn’t treated fairly at all. They are always picked on. When they go left, they should have gone right and vice versa.
More users of OS X have paid full price for it than Windows users, at least as a percentage.
The point was that OS X’s full price is basically the upgrade price. If you don’t think the price is worth it, then bitch about that. Tell me why Jaguar sucks. But don’t start this crap about: “We deserve a low price because we thought OS X was worth it’s money (and bought it)”. That’s like those suckers who complain when Apple updates their machines just after they bought them. As a consumer you have every right to wait for the next version of an OS. If you decide not to, that doesn’t suddenly make you superior to a late adopter. It makes you into a user that decided that OS X 10.0/10.1 was worth it’s price. Nothing more, nothing less.
In a year or so, your argument would work, since all OS X 10.x capable machines in use would have been released post OS X 10.0’s release.
MacOS X = MacOS.
MacOS 9 = MacOS.
Note that one can also upgrade from Win98 to Win2000. Even though they don’t have the same kernel, they are considered successors (and part of the Windows family of products).
If they had done this in the first place, the negative reaction and press would have been reduced if not non-existent.
Except that Apple didn’t do anything. Street pricing is strictly the responsability of an individual retailer. They forgo (part of) their margin to sell more copies and/or attract you to their (online) store. It not like Apple says: “Our price is $129. Psst, retailers actually should sell it for $79.”
If they had done this in the first place, the negative reaction and press would have been reduced if not non-existent.
The press could also try to be more fair and not treat Apple any different from MS. I can’t remember this kind of flak when Win XP came out. Few complained about the price. Why is it OK to threat Apple like this? And why did you complain when you should have known that OS X 10.0 was also offered at a lower price on the street (also from Amazon if I remember correctly)? Are you ignorant or just mean?
And a lot of other stuff that no poweruser can do without (I forgot exactly what, but I remember laughing at Home’s missing features). Trust me, a serious user doesn’t want Home. Apple’s to apple’s, OS X is closest to XP Pro in featureset.
Unfortunately I couldn’t find a detailed diff of the two either, so I can’t argue the finer points of that one.
My point is that every Mac-owner will already have bought a previous version, while PC users may not
But you can’t say that every Mac owner already bought OS X. I know you go on later to say OS X = OS 9 upgrade, which is semantically correct. Early OS X adopters should be rewarded for jumping on the bandwagon early, and they aren’t. Blame Apple for releasing it early, blame users for buying it too soon. I don’t care. Either way, usability was first available in 10.1, not 10.0 and real usability will be there in 10.2, not 10.1. The same cannot be said for the Windows transition. Windows95 was perfectly usable, as was WindowsNT, from the very beginning. Each new version is really improvements on the base. OS X was too little too early, and Apple is finally catching up.
The point was that OS X’s full price is basically the upgrade price. If you don’t think the price is worth it, then bitch about that. Tell me why Jaguar sucks.<SNIP> As a consumer you have every right to wait for the next version of an OS. If you decide not to, that doesn’t suddenly make you superior to a late adopter. It makes you into a user that decided that OS X 10.0/10.1 was worth it’s price. Nothing more, nothing less.
I switching to Mac way back in public beta because of the promise of OS X that is finally coming to fruition is my fault. I guess it will be my fault if I switch back too. OS X isn’t the problem, it is Apple’s bungling of the releases and the reimburstment for those releases. I like OS X, but I don’t think Apple has done enough to appease customer complaints so far.
The press could also try to be more fair and not treat Apple any different from MS. I can’t remember this kind of flak when Win XP came out. Few complained about the price.
Are you kidding, the press had field day about that release’s incremental changes and the lack of enthusiasm in the business sector for upgrading to XP. They also complained about the costs of upgrading all the machines, the price being a big part of that.
Why is it OK to threat Apple like this?
Because they should be under the same scrutiny as every other company.
And why did you complain when you should have known that OS X 10.0 was also offered at a lower price on the street (also from Amazon if I remember correctly)? Are you ignorant or just mean?
What are you talking about? First of all, I bought my Cube and PB and paid full price for OS X because I wanted a Unix everyone in my house could use, and an OS that wasn’t Microsoft. I got all that. What I also got was very slow Finder redraws, GUI lockups during large file transfer operations, and ridiculous redraw rates for common operations in things like Word and other applications. I don’t find any of this acceptable to this day. These are all supposedly fixed in 10.2, but the sad truth is that they shouldn’t have been there in the first place. You’ll have to explain to me why general customer satisfaction shouldn’t be a top priority at Apple. The bottom line is only temporarily enhanced by sticking it to your customers. Microsoft gets away with it more than anyone because of their large percentage share of the market. Apple doesn’t have that luxury.
I’ll back Eugenia up here. I run XP on a Celeron also.. but for me its a single processor i810 based system, legacy free PC99 spec ( AST Century City 500 ) upgraded to 192Mb RAM, Also like a Cube it has a sealed case with only USB expansion and no PCI slots.
It’s faster than Win98 SE as supplied, was. I can back this up, I reformatted and did a clean install of each OS in separate partitions, XP comes out consistently ahead in speed of applications and general OS functions.
“What I don’t understand is the fascination Macs have for people who don’t like them and don’t use them.”
It’s because of the fascination Macs have for people who do like and use them.
Historically–even going back to the Lisa, even though it was a commercial flop–the Macintosh line has always gotten really strong reactions from people. Apple has always touted them as unique wonders (the original tagline was something like “Finally, computers for the rest of us”). And PC users at the time sneered. A lot. Macs were more expensive and slower than their PC counterparts, particularly in their insistence of doing everything in a GUI as opposed to “sensible” text-only displays for business works. They were obviously toys.
Of course, then Apple came out with something even more outrageous–the LaserWriter–and pushed a concept called “desktop publishing,” centered around a weird program called PageMaker that had been written by some guys who’d previously developed the dedicated (non-graphics) electronic typesetting system Atex. That made people in the press industry sneer, a lot, and loudly, until somebody produced a coffee-table book entirely in PageMaker… and suddenly it became an industry.
And pretty much, that’s when the battle lines got drawn. The Mac attracted a small and highly vocal group of people enchanted by what it did that PCs either didn’t do or didn’t do as well, and in turn this infuriated the number-crunchers pointing out (correctly) that PCs were cheaper, faster, more expandable, and so on. That just made those who’d made Macs their choice circle the wagons and get rude and abrasive in turn.
If there’s anything that the “iMac era” Apple has done wrong, ultimately, it may have been in bringing numbers into the picture at all. They’re still pushing the envelope, from brazenly declaring the floppy dead to Firewire and USB as the expansion buses to going off into the love-it-or-hate-it la-la land of Aqua with its CPU-sucking but radical display model inherited (and enhanced) from NextStep. It’s foolish to say that numbers don’t matter–they do, and Apple needs to do better than they have been recently at keeping pace–but they’ve never been Apple’s focus, and probably never will be.
And, people will either think that’s okay and want to get on board with Apple anyway, or they’ll continue either laughing at Mac owners or railing at them for being idiots. And, in a sense they’re right–the ideas they’re laughing at usually become mainstream in the PC world in a year or two. Usually not done quite as elegantly and occasionally never quite right, but inarguably faster and cheaper.
Apple’s hardware is just parts stolen from the PC.
Apple’s software is just parts stolen from other companies.
Apple hardware innovations in the last ten years?
1. Firewire
2. Expensive MP3 player with a fancy nameplate, iPod.
<end of list>
If Mac had any real world value proposition other than being an exclusive toy for the rich, more people would buy them.
If Apple didn’t tell so many lies, most people wouldn’t care. I don’t want to see ads about some bullshit G4 “supercomputer”. Or any more on how 6 Photoshop filters hand-coded for AltiVec make the G4 faster than any Intel processor.
Apple draws the spotlight to themselves with the “switch” campaign. So of course people are talking about the latest edition from the Apple Ministry of Reality.
Overall, a PC is just a more useful, more adaptable tool than a Mac. It is the choice, worldwide, of approximately 97% of computer owners.
Every day, PC outsells Mac because Mac has nothing of value to counterbalance its expensive price tag.
Buying a Mac is buying a 3 year old car with a fancy designer name tag and a fresh coat of white paint.
#m
There he goes again, the master (flame) baiter!
Needless to say, not everyone would agree with you. But the last thing I’m interested in are these endless dick-measuring contests over whose computer is manlier. What I’m curious about is this: Why do you care? What difference does it make what kind of system somebody else uses, especially a system with such a small market share? Were you scared by a Macintosh when you were a child, or what? More seriously, since it’s obvious that no one platform is going to meet every user’s needs, why don’t we agree that having different OS’s on the market is a good thing and we should be polite about other people’s choices?
His posts have been 100% anti mac with a sort of performance art quality to them.
(trying to elevate him higher than a plain vanilla troll)
I wish some of you guys would really show how much you really love computing and OS’s instead of acting so blase about it <g>. It is so exciting, we are in the midst of something that is so big, something that humankind has never experienced before. And yet, people act bored and say that this or that OS is crappy, etc. Come on, you guys wouldn’t be here if you weren’t excited! I’m going to be 51 next month and, just in my lifetime, I’ve seen things that were deemed impossible. People are talking about things being stale and the same old thing – there is no same old thing – this is it, we’re right at the beginning. It is good that there are many OS’s. Some may think it causes too much confusion, but I think the competition brings the best out in all. And you can never tell what will happen, never. Mac vs. DOS – now there was something to argue about! And, in essence, the Mac won…but then it lost. IBM came out with their personal computer leading to the most known computing description ever – “IBM compatible”, so IBM won…but then IBM lost. To me, computing is total serendipity – you can never predict what will happen next.
I think it was Isaac Singer who said “The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment”.
By surfing the edge of Apple’s market failure, it helps me to understand their character. Outside of greed, why are they perennial underachievers is a question I ask.
The ‘art-troll’ comment gave me a good laugh.
Yes, I try and have good time giving Apple the sharpened stick. There’s no point in giving them the dull stick 😉
#m
I couldn’t agree more. I love the changes and innovations that we’ve seen in the last 20-30 years. I can’t wait to see what we do in the next 30 years. My negative comments about Apple have less to do with their technology, but instead has to do with their business tactics and marketing. The same goes for my opinion of Microsoft.
I was trying a couple of days ago the new widescreen imac in the Apple store and it had 10.2 PRELOADED!!!
I check a few times to make sure, and I took it for a spin.
Seemed pretty damn slow to me. The lady in the store said it was an unfinished version (damn it I didn’t take a note of the build). Still, it should be faster than that… I tried Photoshop 7 and a heap of other apps and loading was VERY slow, even things like trying to pull down a menu seemed like there was an unnecessary delay with. Window operations in general felt still slow. If there’s an improvement, it doesn’t feel like it… (note that my home PC is a PIII 850 + 512MB RAM and 4 drives and W2K as the main OS and a lowly Geforce2 and it FEELS WAY WAY WAY faster than the Macs running equivalent apps. Also note I make my living dealing with high-end Unix boxes and I don’t bow to the ways of the mighty peecee).
Just FYI. I don’t know if that build was compiled with GCC 3.1 but 3.1 has been out for a while now. Hopefully the final version will be better but don’t think that 3.1 is going to make things magically twice as fast or anything… (OK some FPU stuff will be magically better).
X is not as slow as people seem to think, the recent Window Managers are dogs, that’s all. I remember fantastic X performance/responsiveness with fvwm years ago on a slow box… something like Gnome+Sawfish feels flacial by comparison nowadays on a machine that’s theoretically more than 10 times faster.
It’s all about user perception, Apple needs to get some RTOS programmers on-board to fix a few algorithms I think… if it FEELS slower than XYZ then that’s all that matters to the user. I agree 100% with anyone that thinks that OSX is slow.
Things like clicking buttons and pulling menus down should be instantaneous. The way it felt it was like there was a little delay and then it happened instantaneously. I’d rather SEE the graphics being drawn immediately rather than wait for the finished result after it’s been computed (that’s how it felt, I admit I don’t know how Quartz deals with things internally).
Ah, how I long for the beautiful, simple days of OpenSTEP… backwards compatibility has been the bane of computer science progress forever…
Dimitris
Dimitri, if you are Greek, next time you go to that Apple store again with the OSX 10.2 in it, please open up IE and try to load this: http://www.sport.gr/ and then try to resize that window. Big laughs are awaiting you.
And no people, it is not IE’s fault. The other browsers are equivelantly slow when rendering greek or russian or anything else that it is not english.
>>Let’s see: Mac OS X: 18 months, two $129 upgrades (although you could get 10.1 for $20 for a limited time, or free from the Apple store).<<
I haven’t payed for Mac OS X since March of 2001, not sure about anyone else! Though I wont purchase the upgrade for my iMac G3, I will however buy it for my TiBook G4 and of course will be purchasing another Mac by year’s end!
>>Windows, say from 98 to XP: 3 years, one $89 upgrade (home). Not to mention that going from 98 to XP is a *big* deal. Much more so than 10.1 to 10.2.<<
You must have forgotten Windows ME (released near the beginning of 2001 if my mind serves me correct, so there is the 18 months from Microsoft). And what is the big deal of ‘XP’? it is nothing more than Windows 2000 with a pretty face and less stability than it’s 2k cousin!
>>Apple’s hardware is just parts stolen from the PC.<<
I hope they didn’t steal the parts out of my PC to build my Mac, because I would be pissed… that thing is an over glorified paperweight 🙂
>>Apple’s software is just parts stolen from other companies.<<
You’re getting that confused with Microsoft, who doesn’t do any innovation, except for ’embrace and extend’ motto, they do that very well!!!
>>Apple hardware innovations in the last ten years?
1. Firewire
2. Expensive MP3 player with a fancy nameplate, iPod.
<end of list><<
Microsoft software innovations in the last ten years?
1. .Net… oh I forgot, it’s still a pipe dream!
>>Overall, a PC is just a more useful, more adaptable tool than a Mac. It is the choice, worldwide, of approximately 97% of computer owners.<<
So how did this number grow to 97%? You just took Sun, SGI and Alpha off the market (not including others)!
>>Every day, PC outsells Mac because Mac has nothing of value to counterbalance its expensive price tag.<<
Well until the PC can woe me back with more than what Microsoft (and Windows) can offer, then I guess I’ll be paying those expensive prices… helk I make the big bucks anyways, so who cares!!!
>>Buying a Mac is buying a 3 year old car with a fancy designer name tag and a fresh coat of white paint.<<
Some thing the PC shares with their old legacy hardware peripherals including the floppy drive (it died 5 years ago), the PS/2 (no plug and play support), Serial (only good for one thing) and Parallel (totally useless). Now they are adding USB 2 which is already slower than FireWire, and FireWire is 3 years old!
The PC is pathetic and stops short of anything great. Their ugly and have had no innovation passed the CPU. Oh and guess what people do care about what sits in their living room or den… I already have a few people asking me about the new iMacs and the one thing that is impressive in their eyes is ‘style’ and ‘footprint’… something the PC lacks in a big way!!
Just FYI. I don’t know if that build was compiled with GCC 3.1 but 3.1 has been out for a while now. Hopefully the final version will be better but don’t think that 3.1 is going to make things magically twice as fast or anything… (OK some FPU stuff will be magically better).
I wouldn’t say 3.1 has been out awhile. It just came out within the last month, and recompiling a large project may not, and probably isn’t, as easy as just re-running the jam/makefile. It should go off mostly without a hitch, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t more than a handful of gotcha’s.
In terms of increased performance, I thought I remember most operations had substantial improvements in speed on the x86 version. Speed differences that were a factor of 4 or 5 between the highly optimized intel compiler and the gcc compiler evaporated. However there wasn’t a total victory for the gcc compiler. I’m hoping similar performance increases come to the PPC as well.
http://www.coyotegulch.com/reviews/intel_comp/intel_gcc_bench2.html
Early OS X adopters should be rewarded for jumping on the bandwagon early, and they aren’t.
I don’t see why. You decided that OS X 10.0 was worth the money. You got a lot more than was promised originally, so I don’t see why you should complain. Of course, your complaints may have to do with the fact that you bought a dream. It’s hard to argue with someone who pays for a product that he seems to dislike and blames it on someone else.
Switching to a Mac way back in public beta because of the promise of OS X that is finally coming to fruition is my fault. I guess it will be my fault if I switch back too.
Then you know that the PB was slow as a snail (I had to wait for the menu’s to drop). The OS has come a long way since then. I don’t know why you feel entitled to a cheap speed boost again, when 10.0->10.1 was already a 200% increase.
Furthermore, a slow OS is not exactly a hidden defect. Are you seriously trying to gain sympathy for buying a $2000 Mac without checking out the speed of OS X? Or for ignoring the slow speed of the PB and just hoping that Apple would sort it out in time? Really, I don’t think that $129 would have been that big a penalty for such foolish behaviour.
OS X isn’t the problem, it is Apple’s bungling of the releases and the reimburstment for those releases. I like OS X, but I don’t think Apple has done enough to appease customer complaints so far.
Then what did you expect? A magic incantation to make everything faster? Personally I believe that the hard work to increase the speed without reducing features was certainly not a thing that Apple bungled (IMO they bungled a lot of other things). It certainly seems that most people complain about the speed, but don’t like Apple to remove features to increase it. Didn’t Apple do exactly what most people asked/bitched?
Or do you believe that Apple could have increased the speed more/faster? Can you substantiate that belief?
What I also got was very slow Finder redraws, GUI lockups during large file transfer operations, and ridiculous redraw rates for common operations in things like Word and other applications.
And in the beginning of your post, you called win95 perfectly usable. If there ever was a piece of crap it was win9x (all of them). Anyways, Apple never promised that OS X would be fast. It seems that some people find the speed acceptable and some don’t. As a consumer, it’s your duty to determine in which group you fall. If you choose to pay for a certain featureset (yes, speed is a feature), you shouldn’t be amazed when you have to pay for a new version with many new features (including a finder rewritten for speed, which is not a bugfix update).
I don’t find any of this acceptable to this day.
Perhaps you should switch to an OS where you do get major new features for free. Perhaps Linux for PPC? I can’t come up with any commercial OS that is supported in the way you like. This might be an indication that your demands are simply unrealistic. In the real world, engineering takes time and needs to be reimbursed. In the real world, programmers can fsck up version .0 and not get it right until a later paid upgrade. In the real world, you are expected to be a critical consumer.
These are all supposedly fixed in 10.2, but the sad truth is that they shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
So why did you buy a product that didn’t suit your needs?
You’ll have to explain to me why general customer satisfaction shouldn’t be a top priority at Apple. The bottom line is only temporarily enhanced by sticking it to your customers.
Apple believes that they are serving their customers. Arguing otherwise is just being ignorant. The problem is that they make decisions that they feel to be right which I don’t like. Unfortunately my name isn’t Steve J. As a consumer I have the basic right to choose which company to send my money to though. If you feel that Apple isn’t doing the right thing, I urge you to write to them (bitching here won’t help) and/or switch to an OS that suits you better (if it exists). In a capitalist society, companies simply don’t have the obligation to deliver the perfect product to you. You are supposed to reward those who create the things you like best to create some sort of darwinistic selection process.
You got a lot more than was promised originally, so I don’t see why you should complain. … It’s hard to argue with someone who pays for a product that he seems to dislike and blames it on someone else.
With PB I bought into the OS X system with a promise of future capabalities and performance that weren’t there. I also bought into the G4 with performance goals which have never been realized in practice as well. I stuck with it so far because of I already had time and money invested. That is hardly getting “more than I was promised”. Furthermore, your cavalier attitude of simply blame the customer is hardly the way for Apple to retain customers, much less bring in new ones.
Furthermore, a slow OS is not exactly a hidden defect. Are you seriously trying to gain sympathy for buying a $2000 Mac without checking out the speed of OS X? Or for ignoring the slow speed of the PB and just hoping that Apple would sort it out in time? Really, I don’t think that $129 would have been that big a penalty for such foolish behaviour.
Once again, the early adopters were the financial engine that pushed developers into actually porting their software. Why shouldn’t a rewritten graphics engine on top of a fast underlying OS be fast on modern hardware? By your logic, we should all wait until the speed of the OS comes up to speed and then buy. Guess how many developers would have jumped on the OS X bandwagon if we all did that.
Then what did you expect? A magic incantation to make everything faster? Personally I believe that the hard work to increase the speed without reducing features was certainly not a thing that Apple bungled (IMO they bungled a lot of other things). It certainly seems that most people complain about the speed, but don’t like Apple to remove features to increase it. Didn’t Apple do exactly what most people asked/bitched?
Apple bungled the whole issue by releasing the OS too early. If they couldn’t get the necessary performance out of certain OS components, then they either shouldn’t have shipped those components, or not shipped the OS all together. Once again, does the average PC user who sees crappy responsiveness care about the how or the why, or how much faster it was to the previous version? This was my exact point in the original message, Mac users can’t be apologists for Apple’s or OS X’s deficiencies and expect to win PC users that way.
Perhaps you should switch to an OS where you do get major new features for free. Perhaps Linux for PPC? I can’t come up with any commercial OS that is supported in the way you like. This might be an indication that your demands are simply unrealistic. In the real world, engineering takes time and needs to be reimbursed. In the real world, programmers can fsck up version .0 and not get it right until a later paid upgrade. In the real world, you are expected to be a critical consumer.
Who said free? I said discount. In case you noticed, I am asking us to be critical consumers. My point is that many Mac users aren’t critical, they are apologists.
So why did you buy a product that didn’t suit your needs?
The product suits my needs enough. I just don’t see why Apple is being a bunch of cheap skates on the upgrade. Once again I’m not asking for it to be free. Get it yet?
Apple believes that they are serving their customers. Arguing otherwise is just being ignorant.
I only believe that to be half true. If it were totally true, they wouldn’t be holding back on hardware releases the way they have. They have to answer more immediately to stock holders and corporate analysists. That is the reality.
The problem is that they make decisions that they feel to be right which I don’t like. Unfortunately my name isn’t Steve J. As a consumer I have the basic right to choose which company to send my money to though. If you feel that Apple isn’t doing the right thing, I urge you to write to them (bitching here won’t help) and/or switch to an OS that suits you better (if it exists).
That’s what I’m asking Mac users to do. Think critically, and write Apple with complaints. That is what I have done. Do you think I just complain here? I’ve written Apple when they’ve done very good stuff, and when they do stuff I don’t like. I’ve never heard a response, but I didn’t exactly expect on either. In terms of switching OS’s, I’ll make that decision the next time I have to buy a computer. Here’s some food for thought though, if someone like me, who was gung ho about the Mac two years ago when OS X was first released, is thinking about switching back to Windows, how do you expect mass defections from people who have a Mac aversion in the first place.
In a capitalist society, companies simply don’t have the obligation to deliver the perfect product to you. You are supposed to reward those who create the things you like best to create some sort of darwinistic selection process.
That’s exactly what will happen. I want Apple to survive this darwinist process, which is why I’m asking Mac users to stop accepting everything out of Apple’s mouth as gospel. Apple is not in desperate shape yet, but they certainly can’t continue with their pace for much longer without financial consequences.
>I’m hoping similar performance increases come to the PPC as well.
Reportedly, GCC 3.1 only brings 4% faster results than GCC 2.95.x for the Mac. The big increases were only for x86.
Reportedly, GCC 3.1 only brings 4% faster results than GCC 2.95.x for the Mac. The big increases were only for x86.
I remember you saying that before. I’m still hoping though 🙁 I guess that means one of two things:
1. The PPC version of GCC was already very heavily optimized and couldn’t be optimized anymore.
2. We have to wait for a group to tackle performance issues on the PPC side.
but it’s still too soon to use it on demanding production systems IMO (I work for an airline and we tend to be extra careful of what we implement and how, we have a few macs but we’re getting rid of them and have no plans for more, ever).
It’s improving but I strongly believe that Apple should only charge peanuts for it ($20 tops for media, postage and handling or a FREE download of the images a la Solaris) every time you wanted the upgrade since it’s still a work in progress in many significant ways and it’s vital to the operation of your mac. Add-on software doesn’t have to be free of course but effectively giving away all OS upgrades makes perfect sense for a hardware company and helps give people a warm fuzzy feeling (which is what the mac is all about, anyway – I’ve been using macs since they first came out, BTW, I just don’t own one now).
This is not about being a cheapskate since most people will get a pirate copy of it anyway, it’s a matter of principle and not what the market will take.
M$ should charge for their OS since they’re a software company and make huge bucks from OS licenses.
Moving to cocoa and away from the resource fork madness and onto normal flat files and a decent filesystem (UFS with softupdates, for instance) will also help heaps, especially in the server arena. Give the techies more control, if you want a bigger blocksize etc. etc. when you create the filesystem you should be able to override the defaults.
Rant ends
With PB I bought into the OS X system with a promise of future capabilities and performance that weren’t there. I also bought into the G4 with performance goals which have never been realized in practice as well. I stuck with it so far because of I already had time and money invested. That is hardly getting “more than I was promised”.
What hard promises were made? Do you have any facts? The ‘promise of future capabilities and performance’ sure sounds like you just hoped that OS X would become much better one day. That’s not very wise consumerism.
Furthermore, your cavalier attitude of simply blame the customer is hardly the way for Apple to retain customers, much less bring in new ones.
I know that Apple must perform better to appease more customers (or even just a lot of existing ones), but you make it seem like they owe you something. I don’t believe that is true. Marketeers will always present their product in the most favorable light. It’s up to you find the real facts and base your decision on that. Believing marketeers is living in a dream world were every pain can be cured and your every wish can be full-filled.
Why shouldn’t a rewritten graphics engine on top of a fast underlying OS be fast on modern hardware?
Historically, rewritten products have usually offered more features that demand more from the hardware. This goes for FPS (Doom->Doom III) and OS’s (Dos->9x->NT, MacOS 6->7->8->9->X).
By your logic, we should all wait until the speed of the OS comes up to speed and then buy.
No, quite a few people believe the speed is sufficient in light of the new features. Different people want different things. You happen to be part of the group that isn’t pleased. There are many others who are. They are not apologists, they are people with different demands.
Guess how many developers would have jumped on the OS X bandwagon if we all did that.
That would have created problems for Apple. Of course, it’s their fault if people don’t like their products. You may decide to sponsor the OS by switching earlier, but that’s your choice, not something that Apple asked you to.
Apple bungled the whole issue by releasing the OS too early.
How much OS X apps would Apple have if they did that? How much feedback would they have had? I bet that it would have taken far longer to fix up OS X if they had done that. Again, this just shows that your pissed because you made a bad purchase. But read my lips: nobody forced you to buy 10.0. You make it seem like you would have been perfectly happy if OS X 10.2 was the first release and would have come out next month. Of course, that sulking attitude ignores all those people who have been enjoying OS X very much over the last 18 months.
If they couldn’t get the necessary performance out of certain OS components, then they either shouldn’t have shipped those components, or not shipped the OS all together.
Not ship it at all. Right. A company builds a product that you don’t like and you don’t want it on the streets. Why? Are you a compulsive buyer? Or afraid of choice?
Once again, does the average PC user who sees crappy responsiveness care about the how or the why, or how much faster it was to the previous version? This was my exact point in the original message, Mac users can’t be apologists for Apple’s or OS X’s deficiencies and expect to win PC users that way.
They should decide whether the speed is sufficient for them. I don’t try to win over PC users per se. I just point out what is to like and to dislike and they should decide. I can’t choose for them. I have and never will be an apologist, but if you make a wrong purchase of a car, a toaster or an OS, I won’t be crying a river when I feel that you should have known better. Call me harsh or insensitive, but that’s just the way I am.
I said discount.
You already pay the upgrade price. Why do you expect to pay even less?
My point is that many Mac users aren’t critical, they are apologists.
I hear a lot of complaints. As a matter of fact, there really aren’t that many apologists in the responses to this story were there? Take WattsM for example. He simply corrects or questions various statements that made. Take his assertion that gcc 3 doesn’t have to prevent newer software from running on 10.1. While it may be only partially correct, it certainly enriched the discussion. It’s far from trolling like that awful PC apologist (Michael) does.
The product suits my needs enough. I just don’t see why Apple is being a bunch of cheap skates on the upgrade.
If it makes you feel better to know how bad the times are for Apple right now:
Apple made 30m profit last quarter, but that is partially due to a accounting-correction (they estimated their taxes too high in the first two quarters and have to underaccount them this quarter). If you take away the artificial bonus only 26m is left. Furthermore they capitalized 9m of Jaguar’s development costs. This means that they actually only made 17m (the capitalizing is just a trick to increase this quarter’s results). Then we have the big American fraud, options. Basically a tool to prevent part of the salaries from showing up on the balance. Apple happens to use them a lot. If the law get’s changed to force options to be accounted as expenses, Apple is losing money. Ouch.
Considering the gloom and doom stories that Apple is subjected to whenever it makes a loss, I can understand why Apple is pinching pennies. This is far from just being cheapskates for no good reason.
If it were totally true, they wouldn’t be holding back on hardware releases the way they have.
Of course, they’ve had these 8.5 Ghz G8’s for over a year now, but they just won’t let us have them. Those bastards!
You might instead decide to believe the reliable rumors I’ve heard that there were many problems with the DDR boards, holding back the entire line. And that they have been trying very hard to get away from Motorola and let their next-gen chip be designed and manufactured by a more reliable and advanced company. Of course, knowledgable people know that such an effort takes a long time.
They have to answer more immediately to stock holders and corporate analysts. That is the reality.
The reality is that they need to sell their hardware and aren’t succeeding. The Street can’t hurt Apple too badly if they just keep using black ink and the only way to do that is to offer products that customers buy. As of yet, they don’t. I know only one reality that allows you to fsck consumers and still make a lot of money and it’s called a monopoly. Apple doesn’t have that luxury.
In terms of switching OS’s, I’ll make that decision the next time I have to buy a computer.
Unfortunately there isn’t much choice. And whatever platform you chose, it will have warts. Now that you have used OS X extensively, you can certainly make an informed decision. Personally I like to use more than one OS, but I can understand that it’s a difficult choice if you are limited to one platform.
Here’s some food for thought though, if someone like me, who was gung ho about the Mac two years ago when OS X was first released, is thinking about switching back to Windows, how do you expect mass defections from people who have a Mac aversion in the first place.
Those people never buy one. People like Michael wouldn’t even touch one out of fear that they might find something to like. As for the Gung Ho’s, it seems that quite a few switchers do like OS X very much. My experience is that ‘off-worlders’ are often much more content about OS X than people who used OS 9. OS 9 users miss a lot of stuff that NeXT didn’t have. And since Steve and Avi believe that NeXT was perfect…
I want Apple to survive this darwinist process, which is why I’m asking Mac users to stop accepting everything out of Apple’s mouth as gospel. Apple is not in desperate shape yet, but they certainly can’t continue with their pace for much longer without financial consequences.
Apple is not a company that dies easily. Unlike the Compaqs and Gateways of this world, Apple has a face. They innovate, they give us some great new things. This kind of attitude may be considered arrogant and self-centered, but it has always kept Apple in the running even when every analyst and newspaper declared them dead in the early 90’s. The situation is far less dire than it was back then. I’ve heard this ‘they can’t last much longer’ for over 15 years know, so excuse me for being sceptical.
8000 char limit
How much OS X apps would Apple have if they did that? How much feedback would they have had? I bet that it would have taken far longer to fix up OS X if they had done that. Again, this just shows that your pissed because you made a bad purchase. But read my lips: nobody forced you to buy 10.0. You make it seem like you would have been perfectly happy if OS X 10.2 was the first release and would have come out next month. Of course, that sulking attitude ignores all those people who have been enjoying OS X very much over the last 18 months.
I’m one of the people that is enjoying OS X. That doesn’t mean I don’t disagree with their upgrade costing policy, nor does it mean that I have to accept degraded speed with some kind of grace.
Not ship it at all. Right. A company builds a product that you don’t like and you don’t want it on the streets. Why? Are you a compulsive buyer? Or afraid of choice?
They should release a product when it is at an acceptable state for public consumption. OS X 10.0 was far from that. OS X 10.1 was the first usable release of OS X. Before that there wasn’t even CD burning or DVD capabilities. Now they are fixing bugs and speed issues. I’m pleased to pay for that, just not $129.
I have and never will be an apologist, but if you make a wrong purchase of a car, a toaster or an OS, I won’t be crying a river when I feel that you should have known better.
As you said, every platform has warts. The problem is that Apple has to fight the buying inertia of a platform with an over 90% market share. They can have warts, but can’t have them on display for potential buyers to see, as OS X still does pre 10.2. I accepted growing pains with the OS, and I expected to be compensated accordingly.
You already pay the upgrade price. Why do you expect to pay even less?
You can upgrade Windows indefinately from Windows95 on through to XP. That is what I expect from Apple as well. If I want the convienence of not having to go through an installation tango, then I’d probably buy the full version. That should be my option however.
As a matter of fact, there really aren’t that many apologists in the responses to this story were there?
OSnews message boards are pretty good on this issue as a matter of fact. My frustration actually came about from reading postings on macslash and maccentral’s boards.
If it makes you feel better to know how bad the times are for Apple right now
So is everyone else. Most analysts believe that teflon Dell is going to succumb next quarter. Apple just finished buying up a bunch of software companies and still has enormous cash reserves as well. Apple doing good or bad has nothing to do with my arguments on their pricing policy.
Of course, they’ve had these 8.5 Ghz G8’s for over a year now, but they just won’t let us have them. Those bastards!
Oh come on now, let’s not get cute. How about Apple hardware running atleast a full generation behind on bus speeds and graphics cards in their iBook and iMac line so that they can sell PowerBooks and PowerMacs at their ridiculously high prices. It’s not like they are using middle-range components on their consumer models, and high performance equipment on their PowerMac models. Their PowerMac models are disgustingly antiquated, and they have to make up for that by stagnating the technology in their consumer line portables and desktops. Even Dell’s bargain basement PC’s have DDR RAM and ATA/100 buses, yet Apple can’t put these into their iMacs because there would be little incentive to pay the extra $1000+ for the equivalent PowerMac (which also doesn’t have them yet either). This is the holding back on hardware releases I’m speaking of. It is artifically increasing the performance edge of their “workstations” against their consumer line because they can’t put quality and up to date hardware in their high end line.
To bring this whole discussion back full circle. I used to like Apple as a company, now I can only tolerate them in light of bigger menaces. I like the technology that Apple produces, and I even like OS X. What I don’t like are their recent business practices. It is on this note that I asked users to note accept the party line as fact, but instead to look at it critically and let Apple know about that criticism.
How can apple charge $120 for a minor upgrade?
Furthermore, if you use apple, you will notice that Mac cannot surpass Windows or PC platform in terms of speed, compatibility,less limitations, as the beatiful look might imply.
I think we’ve said it all. I’ll let someone else have the last word for a change
See you around, Hank.