[antiRepublicrat]

Yes but 6 months to a year is too short... Two years is the minimum acceptable lapse..

Why? Between the release of 10.1 (the first usable OS X, it was a free upgrade because of 10.0 problems) and the inability of Macs to boot OS 9 was about a year. I don't remember ME and XP existing together in the OEM chain for long either. Having a year overlap in the OEM channels sounds just right, if not generous, to me. Remember, retail XP will likely be available for a while after that.

[N3WBI3]

True the bar is a little lower for OSX because not too many huge enterprises had to replace thousands of apple desktops to keep their environment a unified one. Apple also sells their own systems not just the OS, its a different market. Finally OS9 was a dog and had to die, that being said apple should have left it at the vets a bit longer before putting her down.

As for the ME thing, MS was wrong there as well ME was *CRAP* but once you start pushing it you need to keep it around a bit when there are other alternatives so large organizations can migrate.

[Tribune7]

Between the release of 10.1 (the first usable OS X, it was a free upgrade because of 10.0 problems) and the inability of Macs to boot OS 9 was about a year.

A little bit more but not much. OS 10.1 came out in Sept. 2001 and the last tower that could boot OS 9 came out in June 2003. BUT that computer, the Power Mac G4/1.25 GHz, was sold into 2004 IIRC.

Of course, a lot would argue that the first usable OS X was 10.3, which came out in late 2003.