Posted on 10/14/2008 5:00:40 PM PDT by Loud Mime
With more people turning to Apple products, and the holiday season just around the corner, Microsoft is keen to emphasize the fact that users looking to switch from Microsoft face the “Apple tax.”
In an interview with CNET’s Ina Fried, Microsoft’s vice president of Windows Consumer Product Marketing Brad Brooks was keen to point out the hidden costs that face those making the switch. In fact, he outlines four different taxes:
* Choice tax
* Application tax
* Technology tax
* Upgrade tax
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.zdnet.com ...
Cool.
I much prefer my 256-bit rips to anything I can download elsewhere. :-)
I used to laugh at that sentiment until I got my first Mac (for iPhone development) about two months ago.
Not any more. It is simply the nicest computer I’ve ever used. And the way they let you also run Windows either natively or virtually from the same installation is simply fantastic for what I do.
Sometimes the ease of iTunes is just too much to overcome. Plus some of the stuff I want isn’t easily found in a record store. And waiting to listen is just too much to take sometimes.
Hello, Old FRiend!
I still have my AT&T Unix PC running System III. And the Big Red Wall of Documentation that goes with it.
My point must have been poorly stated. It was that the Democrats LOVE tax hikes....not that Mac = Democrat.
and how is Vista worse for supporting HDCP, which is what I was responding to. Same deal, it has to be there to appease content providers.
You are making a truly silly semantic argument. AAC is the encoding, Fairplay is the DRM, Apple created Fairplay, Apple a prime purveyor of DRM restricted content. It is either stupidity or ignorance to hold Apple up as some great consumer rights defender. Of course Apple has a yeay/nay choice on DRM. They chose to make money, embrace labels, and embrace DRM. Look at Amazon, they are only selling non DRM’d music. It is willfully blind to blame Microsoft for support HDCP in Vista, then go an excuse Apple for selling DRM’d music.
Is your argument that Apple has made DRM less intrusive, and that's a good thing? That's like saying tax withholding is good thing because it makes taxes more palatable.
yeah, and I should have noticed you work for the local board of education with great insights like that.
Hola! Always good to see you; te extraño mucho.
I don’t get the vitriol on this topic. I am probably an outcast here, but I think Vista is absolutely amazing.
When I first used Vista I marveled at the beauty of the interface, and when I realized that the start bar would let me start typing stuff in and it would present me with an intelligently searched list of options to select...for instance: I start typing in C.....A.....
and I get
Calculator
Calendar
in an attractive menu, and I can key in immediately get what I want....that is AWESOME. To Vista’s credit I TOTALLY can’t help it but accidentally expect that when I use XP and even when I use Mac OS X.
XP doesn’t let me do that valuable thing, nor does the Mac.
But, I have also been bit in the ass by Vista. I actually have applications that I paid THOUSANDS of dollars for that SIMPLY DON’T WORK ON VISTA. My Schematic Capture tool and PCB layout tool are extremely expensive pieces of software that I need, and simply won’t work on Vista. And don’t for a second think that I am some kind of specialized weird-o and I have strange tools that do weird things. The ONLY reason my expensive software fails is because they chose to use microsoft databases as their file format (which microsoft wanted), or something like that. Something they thought WOULD LAST FOREVER. That is it. Something stupid like that. Now, the apps simply don’t work.
So, to get them to work on Vista, I had to install them in a virtual machine running XP on top of my Vista OS.
So I did that, because I want to keep my clients for whom I’ve designed circuit boards.
Get ready for the money shot here...
...Ok, so the failure of Vista to let me run my most important apps led me to discover the concept of VMs, so I could run an XP VM on the new Vista that I was forced to run.
Then I decided to get into iPhone development, where you have to have a mac to even get started.
So I had to get a Mac. But since I’d already discovered the magic of running Windows XP apps in a VM it was extremely easy to get the same thing going on the mac. But it turns out that there are better VM solutions for running Windows apps on the MAC than there are for running Windows apps under windows! (I kid you not)
So not only am I running all of my XP stuff on my Mac, I learned through experience that IT WORKS BETTER ON THE MAC THAN IT DOES ON A PC.
So here I am writing this post quite literally on a Mac on its 5th or 6th reboot that I’ve ever done. The same Mac that I run my windows apps on, and now the new mac apps that I am discovering, mostly because Vista simply decided not to let me run my programs.
In case anyone “goes there” I own 4 orders of magnitude more stock in Microsoft than I do Apple.
Don’t go Obama on me. I am pointing out that in your anger (which you need to check out) at Apple you made an incorrect statement.
Plus, are you one of those sick populist socialists that have been infecting FreeRepublic lately? What is wrong with Apple making money?
Apple would love to have DRM free music if they would be allowed and it would work out in the BUSINESS MODEL. You need to get the f off Free Republic and become a /.er. You sound like one already.
“I actually have applications that I paid THOUSANDS of dollars for that SIMPLY DON’T WORK ON VISTA. “
MSFT makes some odd decisions. I was up at Gartner in Orlando this week and it looks like MSFT has balkanized. No one is in charge.
The one great thing about Mac OS X was that for about five years Apple offered a compatibility sand box for all the legacy OS 9 apps.
It seem like MSFT with all the billions it has spent on OS development would offer this capability in the new OS vs trying to have it both ways. New platform and old apps.
Do you ever read slashdot? It is full of the same anti-Apple crap that you see here mostly based on faulty knowledge (i.e. ACC=DRM, Mac OS X FreeBSD = Linux) with a decidedly anti-business, anti-capitalist bent.
Sure the music companies are stupid about how they manage “rights” and sure it is a pain. and maybe the laws are stupid on “digital rights.” But it is there friggen content. Do I like it? No. But the populist rants here are a lot like those on Slashdot.
Great observations, krb.
The vitriol on this thread actually spills over from other forums: There are groups of Windows advocates that are obsessed with blogging about certain things they cannot adapt to on MAC. Their pet whines are “mouse control” and “having to drag items out of the trash to open them”. There are other complaints they drag out when the pet whines are put to bed.
As a computer repair person going from house to house (mostly of old people), I think the MAC is ideal for folks who work at the absolute top level, or who really don’t want to deal with problems.
Windows gets Viruses; MAC really does not. MAC resumes beautifully and rapidly. MAC is seemless with iTunes, while Microsoft seems to put up obstacles to use of competitive software. MAC doesn’t care how old software is, it runs it. MAC finds the available wireless internet at any hotel instantly.
I’ll give you an example of Windows frustration for one of my clients (an old man): He got a virus on his old R40 thinkpad; he needed to download AVG; he tried to install it, but it required SP2; he was at SP1, and attempted to run Windows Update, which could not run because it was compromised by the virus; Windows provides no other option for downloading Service Pack 2, so he called me. (I thought he did well getting this far.) I cleared the virus with Malwarebytes, which gave him back administrative control of his browser.
Why would Microsoft force the download of SP2 with a program other than the browser? This old man is better off with a MAC, but I said nothing as he was quite happy to spend the rest of his day figuring out how to get to SP3 with only 1GB of space available on his harddrive.
I have another client (an old artist lady) with Vista who calls me every other day. She loses files constantly with some of her old photo software running on Vista... It never happened on XP. Usually all I have to do for her is reboot the program. I have also moved all her old files to a clickable desktop folder... associated every file with the appropriate program, but she still calls if she can’t open a file from within the program. (Eventually, I hope to solve this one since she cannot adapt and will not buy a new photo organizer program.)
Now she also calls every time she gets a popup that says “your antivirus software is about to expire”, despite the fact that I wrote the name and renewal date of her antivirus pop-up software on a stickie on the corner of her monitor. She lives in fear of viruses (viri?) and would pull her credit card out for every anti-virus popup she sees if I hadn’t convinced her not to. If she had a MAC, I would simply explain to her that MACs don’t need [third party] anti-virus software.
So people come on MAC threads and whine about some specialty setting for which they can’t find the correct terminal command or they can’t program with UNIX, when they could more easily have done their research and figured out from blogs that their favorite game will run too slow in Rosetta emulation mode and they probably should keep their gaming on a highly customised Windows configuration. They have special requirements and should purchase/plan accordingly.
But because MAC is frustrating with their special circumstances doesn’t mean a MAC is not ideal for very top level users who use a computer for internet, email, .pdfs, office software and photo/music purposes.
So what you see is sort of pointless trolling from people vested in Windows and Windows-based software.
For the record: my household has two MACs, two thinkpads, one packard bell desktop, one Dell and a gateway tablet. With the exception of the Gateway Tablet, which is ideal with Labview, I would like to migrate everything else over to MACs.
Sorry for the long reply. Oh, lol, we own Apple stock and stock in one of the microprocessor companies.
PS. You can type C... A... in finder and get the same results... :D
Back over five years ago, Jobs used his clout in the entertainment industry to be the first to convince the labels to allow legal music online with only moderate copy restrictions. The industry proposals and attempts before that were downright draconian. Remember, this is the same group that shipped a root kit on CDs.
After the iTunes store had a large marketshare, at the beginning of last year Jobs made a public call for the end of DRM music. Within a few months he had a deal with the labels for legal downloads with no copy restrictions. EMI was the first to cave, others followed.
All this set the stage for others to be able to have such offerings.
Huh? I don’t understand...
* Choice tax - you mean like the choice to move to VISTA and lose compatibility and all the other issues that have shown their ugly faces?
* Application tax - let me guess - fewer applications means that folks would be penalized? I haven’t noticed in the last 14 years me paying a price there...
* Technology tax - Yeah, right - Apple is far superior to the Windows world in technology and its implementation in nearly every area. And the integration is what helps bring stability.
* Upgrade tax- Like the hardware upgrades to get VISTA to work right? Or the software upgrades necessary to be compatible with VISTA? Or the need for many new drivers to work with VISTA (some companies still lagging on those drivers).
OR the perceived higher prices of a lot of Apple hardware? I paid $1800 for my Apple PowerMacintosh MDD Dual 1Ghz G4 that I have had for 6 years. It still plugs along - running everything I have needed. While I would love to upgrade, the budget just won’t fit it. It still compares favorably to much newer machines.
Hmmm... longevity. Biggest hardware issue I have had - had a hard drive die (and it wasn’t even the one that came in the computer, but one I had added myself).
So - while I paid more for the computer than I might have paid for a “comparable “ Windows PC at the time (although I doubt it would have been much - this machine was considered fairly high-end at the time) - I have not had to replace it, while everyone I know with windows PC’s have upgraded to new machines at least a time or two (and some 3-4) times.
And this one can run the latest OS from Apple - but I have chosen to stay with Tiger for the time being...
Microsoft has a “reboot tax.” I used to have to reboot three or four times a day. About four minutes per reboot. 250 work days per year, thats about 4,000 minutes per year (4x4x250). So, each year I spent a work week waiting for this thing to reboot.
@ about $45 per hour, that means my customers were paying me 66 hours x $45 = $3,000.
The fact that I dont reboot repeatedly now, the savings in virus software, and the general ease of use means that I have become more productive.
I love my mac and I am not an elitist a-hole.
The mini is a neat little machine...and if it does what you need, it is great. You can’t add a vid card to it (except USB, I haven’t tried them).
That said, my daughter has an older mini. She can create movies, dvds, etc. It isn’t the fastest/most powerful, but she does way more with the included Apple iLife software than she was doing with the Dell it replaced. The Dell was basically a surfing/email box, and it played some simple games. The mini cost a bit more than the Dell, but was way worth it.
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