News - Price war: Mac OS X Snow Leopard vs Windows 7

[PeterStoba]

Uh this seems a silly story since when can you install OSX (legally supported) on a PC ?

Oh that's right you cant its tied to a closed Apple computer.



Ramedge EFI doesn't have anything terribly useful over bios (it was conceived as a bios replacement) but no one really cares enough to use it because the bios works just fine and continues to do so. Apple only went with it so they could lock down their computers and try to keep OSX in their walled garden.



Please direct me to AMD CPU equipped Mac's and Apple systems with PCI-e graphics cards other than the ones sanctioned by Apple. Apple deliberately limit the choice of hardware on their computer and their special graphics cards are so special you can flash one intended for a PC with its firmware and have it work in a Mac.

EVGA GTX 285 Mac

[Nikumba]

Ramedge EFI doesn't have anything terribly useful over bios (it was conceived as a bios replacement) but no one really cares enough to use it because the bios works just fine and continues to do so. Apple only went with it so they could lock down their computers and try to keep OSX in their walled garden.

Not really true. EFI is in use on the PC front but it is only with Vista SP1 or 2 and Windows 7 is it supported.

So it is not a case of BIOS just works, its a case of only Vista and 7 support it. Should MS make XP work with EFI then it will be used in a lot more boards

Kimbie

[aidanjt]

Yup, the PC-BIOS should just go ahead and die in a hurry.

[Whiternoise]

Where's this $700 discount you're talking about?.. Show me which product has been reduced by $700.

"10:16AM "We're also going to update the MacBook Air with more aggressive configs and pricing. It starts at $1499... the SSD config is $1799." Wow, that's a deep cut. $700 than previous."

From the Engadget WWDC feed.

[TheAnimus]

"10:16AM "We're also going to update the MacBook Air with more aggressive configs and pricing. It starts at $1499... the SSD config is $1799." Wow, that's a deep cut. $700 than previous."

From the Engadget WWDC feed.

In fairness that is like pissing against the tide!

But seriously price war?

Apple could give free hand jobs with every copy and it would still be a fraction of a % in market share.

Then lets not even get into a competition of who has added the fewer features. Fact of the matter, win 7 is a big leap from vista, in UI (different shell, lots of touch input support) and performance as well as things like UAC. Snow Leotard is?...

[Whiternoise]

But in fairness against your point, Snow Leopard is not about features. It never was. The whole idea was that OS X Leopard was about all the new stuff, new UI, stacks and all that stuff (i.e. the whole "over 300 new features" thing). Then they realised that actually it bloated their operating system even though it looked cool and trendy, so Snow Leopard was brought in to make all the changes under the bonnet.

I'd say that all apps being 64 bit is a pretty big improvement, as is their "Grand Central" architecture along with the introduction of OpenCL. Snow Leopard is, first and foremost optimisation and it looks like it'll deliver. A 6GB decrease in installation size isn't to be sniffed at. Neither is searches being performed almost 90% faster apparently.

Windows 7 on the other hand IS a whole new OS, it's a lot lighter than Vista (the install clearly shows that) and it's been made a lot more usable and a lot less "hey this is just XP with a lot of bloat and Aero".

If MS release 7 as a fifty buck upgrade it'll be a landmark occasion, it's not even comparing like with like - even though most people see Snow Leopard as a new OS. As i said before, it's basically a glorifed service pack that's got too much in to give away for free.

EDIT: And i agree about the above, it's on the Air which is basically that they've realised that giving away a 64GB SSD or whatever it was is actually pretty cheap these days. However, the $300 drop on the macbook line is pretty damn good anyway.

[TAKTAK]

Did a little deeper, though,

typo

[aidanjt]

"10:16AM "We're also going to update the MacBook Air with more aggressive configs and pricing. It starts at $1499... the SSD config is $1799." Wow, that's a deep cut. $700 than previous."

From the Engadget WWDC feed.

So are you telling me the starting price of the MBA was $2,199?.. Or did someone fail very hard at mathematics?

Also, I don't care about US prices, because we don't buy at US prices, now do we?

[Ramedge]

You probably didn't shop around that much then.

I shopped around enough to get a good idea of how much 4 core xeons cost.

Infact nearly everywhere I looked was about the same. Scan at the time had them on their site for just over £420 a piece.

Then you've got to get a motherboard for those processors, one that can hold 8 sticks of ram.
So you are looking server grade motherboard - £200-300 would be a fair price if not more.

Then the memory,2gb DDR2 ECC Registered Ram that it comes with as standard - Again quite expensive at the time of purchase, I added an extra 4GB into mine

Hard drive/Graphics card wouldn't cost more than £200 in total

Then you have the Mac Pro Chassis - which is really well designed for great air flow so that the fans don't have to be spinning full pelt all the time.

I mean the closest you are going to get to a Mac Pro case is is top end Silverstone which you can easily spend £140-£200 on.

I have to say it is the quietest computer I have ever owned.

My Mac Pro cost little over £1500 - this is the 8-core 3.1 from this time last year.


Even if its was £100 cheaper to build your own its not worth it.

With fairy dust?

Every time I have phoned up Apple to place a big order for a machine i have managed to get 15% off.

[Irien]

OK Mac folks, time to put your one-button-mice to good use...

To support a business customer, I have to get two Macs for work. I have around 1500ukp budget. Ideally one will be used for demo/public-facing purposes, and one for light dev/support.

I'm ready to be converted... what's the best deal? I have to order this week or next.