I'd like to know if Apple still supplies security upgrades for OS 8.0, or whether they are encouraging people to upgrade to X.
The answers are yes and yes. Although the last update to OS8 was completed in 1999, no new security issues have been encountered. The entire OS8 package is available for download from the Apple support site in 15 different languages. You can easily find support and downloads back to version 7 at the Apple site.
New software is not being developed for OS8, of course, and Apple is encouraging people to move to OSX. However, I think it's important to note that OSX is a complete new operating system. Apple also includes 9 bundled with X, specifically to allow users to upgrade while maintaining their legacy software.
Apple isn't perfect, but I left MS because they sucker punch too often. While I have no problem with MS playing hardball with other companies (it's part of business), I do have an issue with the fact that they use their position as dominant OS system vendor to deliberately sabatoge other products. There are numerous examples of this. MS is notorious for releasing specifications on Windows, then not adhering to their own specs. They've shipwrecked many companies doing this. I have no problem with MS creating a better product, undercutting on prices, or bundling previous standalone products as part of the OS. Deliberately changing Windows specifications to make competing software packages crash, licensing Java and then modifying the development tools in their Java development package so compiled Java products will crash on competing OS systems, then pulling Java from Windows when they are forced to follow their original license agreement, etc, goes over the line. They've done the same thing in the browser wars. Because MS is the 900 pound gorilla, they pretty much dictate conventions for HTML, XML, etc. to the WWW consortium. IE, however, does not adhere to those specs. Web developers, of course, develop for IE first, so if a page doesn't render properly in IE, they change it until it does. Other browser manufacturers then, who adhere to specs Microsoft insisted upon, find their browsers don't properly render many pages because MS changed the rules after making them.
My favorite MS dirty trick was "smart tags" which was announced, then pulled from Internet Explorer a couple of years ago. "Smart tags" intercepted html pages, looked for keywords on those pages, and turned them into HTML links to sales sites for "Microsoft partners." I thought this was brilliantly dirty, and classic Microsoft. If I set up a popular digital camera review site, and Kodak payed a licensing fee to Microsoft for the term "digital camera", every place the words "digital camera" appeared on my web site, it would turn into a hyperlink to the Kodak web site. The "feature" was pulled due to some serious legal threats, but if it had been implemented, it would have allowed MS to effectively hijack all internet advertising. Why would anyone pay a single web site operator any money to advertise on his site, when they could pay money to Microsoft, and turn thousands of sites into one big advertisement for the company. Microsoft planned to use the content of millions of independent web sites and suck up the revenue, with no compensation to the sites. If you want to know how big Microsoft really plans to get, think about the smart tags ploy. After MS controlled the advertising, running independent web sites out of business would have been fairly easy. Heck, even the Nikon web site would become an advertisement for Kodak. Microsft would have then been able to hold "auctions" for popular keywords. Functionally, the entire WWW would have then become an MS subsidiary.
If Windows were to really develop a new product from the ground up, I don't think many people would complain about the purchase price.