The whole free OS which can only run upon hardware they have already sold you is reminding me of how IBM used to sell AIX and moved into giving it away free as it would only run upon hardware only they made and sold you.
Question is though, what about support. You have a 3 year old Mac of some flavour and upgrade to this OS, what about issues you may have.
ANother aspect would be that by in effect making this level of OS available to all supported models out there warranty wise, they make life in supporting systems a little bit easier and very likely will drop support for the other older OS's on these models quicker. Again making life in support easier in many ways as well as making developers lives a lot easier. Especialy if they can target toward the a single denominator OS wise and take advantage of all the features without working towards only features common to the previous flavours.
Either way a good move. Though can bet there will be somebody on the older flavour of OS who will have some essentual application that they must have which has issues. But time will tell.
> The whole free OS which can only run upon hardware they have already sold you is reminding me of how IBM used to sell AIX and moved into giving it away free as it would only run upon hardware only they made and sold you.
On the other hand, once upon a time Apple made you pay for software which also run upon hardware only they made and sold you. Back before Snow Leopard, that was $129 per user (though installable on an unlimited number of machines)
Apple has taken measures to technologically limit your ability to do so. When I bought my most recent MacBook Pro it came with Lion. Because of network issues at work I could't use Lion (still can't), so I tried to put Snow Leopard in a VM (using the copy I had previously put on my now defunct MacBook Pro) but Apple and VMWare had put in technological blockers to prevent putting SL on a Lion VM or Lion on a SL VM. So, I repartitioned and copied my old MacBook over and am still living happily with SL.
I suspect there were other factors which prevented your success.
There were no measures to technologically limit one's ability to perform multiple installations from a purchased OS X install disc. You could buy two different Tiger installers and they'd checksum the same, and there were no serial numbers to be entered. It was an honor thing.
There was a restriction on VMs, but they've since eased up on that. I imagine it was because of the Hackintosh thing.
I'm reasonably confident the OS didn't actively try to detect that it was running in a VM, but VMware Fusion (and presumably other such software) would prevent you from installing the OS.
There was a relatively simple work around (a hack) that allowed you to install in a VM. I think it was as simple as touching the right path.
At the point that I was trying to solve this problem (and not getting paid as a result) I was unable to find anyone who had successfully gotten SL to run in a VMWare VM or Lion to run in a SL VM. Interestingly, I did find individuals who had Lion running in Lion VMs, but that didn't help me get back up and running.
Edited to add: You are correct, the technical restriction was on the VMWare side, but IIRC it was because of legal threats from Apple. Apparently earlier versions of VMWare would run SL without any problems, but the VMWare version I had would not not and I couldn't get a copy of the older version.
I'd forgotten that, but yes, I seem to remember reading that. Unfortunately I didn't have the server version and was already loosing money because of my down time, so I needed to get up and running with a known good system as soon as I could.
A funny thing about the family pack is that for at least one version of OS X, the only differences between the family pack and the single user version were a sticker that said "Family pack" on the front, and the price. The contents of the box were identical.
As I recall depending on what you paid you could install in on a different number of machines, but they didn't restrict you from installing it on more.
I think that it's most likely they want everyone on the latest OSX for the same reasons that it's good to have everyone on the latest iOS.
Whatever they're planning, getting everyone on board is obviously an important part of that.
I think the biggest thing over the last two keynotes is the iWork update - MS have been ridicuslously slow in the one area they could have won, which was bringing Office to iOS. I'm pretty sure this is the nail in the coffin.
This seems to be really powerful. I've been surprised, during the last two demos of iWork, at the lack of oohs and aahs in the audience when things like (last time) the web-based editing, and (this time) the collaboration on live documents were demo'ed.
They don't get oohs and aahs because exactly the same thing has been possible via google docs for several years. It's impressive, yes, but not groundbreaking.
The quality of document you can get from Pages vs. Google Docs is night and day. Google Docs is a barebones office suite with an awful UI and live sync. iWork is a semi-professional ('prosumer?') home/school/office suite which now has synchronization as well.
Very true. That's the reason I've personally stuck with Pages for document editing. The ability to collaborate easily is going to be really, really great.
It's not unique, but it's still under-appreciated. The potential of this dual threat (Google Docs, iWork) to Microsoft is substantial. Besides, it's cool technology.
Even if your Mac is no longer supported or on Apple care you can always book an appointment with the genius bar to get questions answered regarding setting up email accounts or if something is malfunctioning.
Apple also sells one-on-one sessions if you are so inclined or need longer sessions than what the genius bar can help you with.
I wonder how "out of date" your Apple product can be and they will still help you with it? I think a trip to my local Apple Store with my trusty Apple ][+ is in order.
That's been the case for the last few releases. When Lion came out, a lot of major apps dropped support for Snow Leopard within a year. I stuck around on SL for a while because I preferred (and still prefer) the way that it handled Spaces, but I eventually didn't feel like I could keep missing out on updates just for that.
Yep. I was pretty dumbfounded by how much less functional it was in Lion. I basically went from using Spaces constantly to probably not having used it in the past 2 years. I ended up completely replacing it with a bunch of keyboard and gesture shortcuts in BetterTouchTool.
I discovered http://totalspaces.binaryage.com recently. I haven't tried it yet because I didn't want to buy it when Mavericks was so close, but it certainly looks like it brings back the original Spaces functionally. And now it's compatible with Mavericks, so I'm gonna be grabbing the trial when I get it installed. Hopefully it'll help you get your original productivity back. (and mine as well)
(and here's hoping that the download doesn't take TOO long. almost 2 days estimated right now :( )
> Question is though, what about support. You have a 3 year old Mac of some flavour and upgrade to this OS, what about issues you may have.
If you have an Apple store nearby you can walk in and get help. There is a limit to what they will do, my anecdotal experience is that most people with software issues get them fixed in a few minutes without going to repair.
But if you don't you are SOL with a >3 year old product.
>Question is though, what about support. You have a 3 year old Mac of some flavour and upgrade to this OS, what about issues you may have.
I have a Macbook Pro 5,1 and only about three weeks ago did I upgrade to Mountain Lion from Lion. I typically wait a couple of point releases to make sure all the beachballs are resolved.
I have a late 2008 macbook pro (which happens to be the oldest supported version) and Mountain Lion worked flawlessly. I'll upgrade to Mavericks today and see what happens. I think it'll work without problems :)
Stab in the dark, but, I guess it's because it requires the App Store to get it, which, AFAIK, first became available in 10.6.6, meaning, Snow Leopard is the farthest back you go.
If you get someone to DL it for you and burn it to disk/USB drive, you can probably also install it on Macs with older versions, since you'll just boot up in it..
So, it is free for everyone, but, only distributed easily to Snow Leopard and thereafter users.
It should be worth noting that if you run Adobe's Creative Suite (version 6 and below), it has some compatibility problems for a number of users, including me[1] while running it on Mavericks. If your business depends on this software, I would advise you to wait for a few more months until these bugs are fixed. Overall, very excited!
It seems the key initiative here is to improve adoption rates which is a sound strategy. As a developer, it's always a pleasure to write apps that only have to support the latest and greatest.
It would be a pretty big feat if the adoption rates for Mavericks came anywhere close to the adoption rates for iOS7.
Installed it on a Mac Mini (3rd gen i7) and after the install it sat on a blank screen (with mouse cursor), but a forced restart and all was perfect and everything is operating brilliantly. Fantastic treat that it is free.
PRAM stores a bootarg that boots off the current caches. There's an issue with DMProxy and the display drivers that causes the black screen + cursor issue described. Hardrebooting has the benefit of causing the magic in the EFI to supply a -f (ignore kernelcaches)
If you're too busy to read the whole article or watch the keynote, also note that you can upgrade directly from Snow Leopard or later. They listed the hardware models which will take it as well– the 2007 Mac Minis and MacBook Pros are supposedly good to go.
While they may be good to go, I still like waiting a week to upgrade apple products. They do occasionally break things important to my workflow. The last one for me was VirtualBox support along with the Xcode commandline tools. While workarounds and patches appear fairly quickly, it is prudent not to put myself out of action, potentially for days or weeks, if I can avoid it.
Just because it's "free" and you can update systems that are on Snow Leopard, doesn't mean it'll update all systems on Snow Leopard. For those paying attention, Apple killed off quite a bit of hardware with 10.8. Those certainly aren't upgradable to Mavericks.
It's not. All hardware has a planned lifecycle and it's just up to them to draw the line in the sand. They'll also do it through software updates by making less features available on the older model in order to compel you to upgrade to the newer. "AirPlay Mirroring" only available in Sandy Bridge or greater because of the usage of Intel QuickSync is an example of that.
For any cocoa/obj-c dev that's dealt with constant deprecated API's on Mac, they know exactly what I'm talking about.
> They'll also do it through software updates by making less features available on the older model in order to compel you to upgrade to the newer. "AirPlay Mirroring" only available in Sandy Bridge or greatest because of the usage of Intel QuickSync is an example of that.
By your own admission that's not "in order to compel you to upgrade to the newer." That's because the newer hardware is required to make it work satisfactorily.
The point of Quick Sync is to offload video encoding to specialized hardware, which reduces CPU usage. A quick Google search confirms that AirParrot uses a lot of CPU, which hurts the user experience. I won't opine on whether this is worth dropping the feature (and of course an application could be designed to use Quick Sync if available and fall back to the CPU otherwise; would be nice if OS X exposed this as a public API, although I think it's not hard to get at anyway), but there certainly is an advantage.
I’ve heard it made plenty times in reference to OS X (also iOS where they are really pushing the boundaries of the hardware to bring it to old devices). Every time a new version comes out, actually.
Whatever. Is that why I've used my desktop Macs for an average of about 8 years before replacing them, and same with the laptops, at which time, I sold them, still working, to others?
It can still be planned obsolescence even if the plan is a good one. ;)
Apple has always attempted to strike a balance between longevity and progress, especially on Macs (5-7 year lifespan, usually). iOS is faster-moving, and gets the shaft more often (2-3 years, sometimes less). The latter will hopefully get better as the mobile hardware catches up to desktops; most of the forced upgrades have been due to low RAM or other hardware deficiencies.
Also, their OS upgrades are more expensive than everyone else's because their customers are idiot sheep easily fooled by flashy marketing. That's why this is so expensive.
I'm hopeful I didn't misread the slide, and that the original Macbook Air will be supported. Not my primary laptop, but it'd be great to move up from Lion.
Maybe because the App Store requirements, rather strangely, say "OSX 10.6.8". I suspect that might well be why it's free - can't have lots of people paying for something they can't use, much easier to do the checks during installation than at POS, and there will be a LOT of compatibility issues with various machines on the cusp.
I tried buying Mountain Lion on a machine that ran Lion but doesn't support ML, and the App Store does have hardware checks at point of sale. It won't let you buy/download it if your machine is incompatible.
The most technical reason for not offering an upgrade to all 10.5 users is: PowerPC-Architecture! 10.6 was the first Intel-Only OS X, and 10.5 the last one for PowerPCs.
As someone who is using Snow Leopard (10.6) on some older macs. The path to upgrading seems to be through apple support or buying a snow leopard disc.
(as the app store offers me mountain lion upgrades on machines that don't support it).
10.5 doesn't support the Mac App Store. And, why would they put effort into testing the upgrade process from an OS that is only still used by people who never upgrade the OS?
snow leopard was the first 64-bit only OS X. You couldn't allow all Leopard users to upgrade, so that's not what's in the press release. People may still be able to upgrade though, if they can work out how to install the App Store.
Depends on which model and when you bought it. If it's an iMac, you're good all the way back to mid-2007. Mac Pro needs to be early 2008 or later. Mac Mini needs to be early 2009 or later.
If it won't run Lion/Mountain Lion, it won't run Mavericks either, unfortunately.
Also note that some features (e.g., AirDrop) aren't available on older machines running Mountain Lion, even if the basic OS runs. I don't know if that's been changed for Mavericks.
My girlfriend uses a 2008 aluminum MB (non-Pro), and I never had any issues upgrading her to previous versions of OSX. Now it's running Mountain Lion and downloading Mavericks as I type.
Some would say that Mavericks was launched for free because Windows 8.1 did the same. Those same people might also say that Apple did one better by offering the update for computers running older than the most recent version of their software.
This has been coming a long time. The updates were already very cheap (20something Euros) compared to the old days (> 100 Euro if I remember correctly) and it fits in with the iOS strategy of having the latest version on every device.
OS X upgrade revenue is now such a minuscule piece of the pie that it probably doesn't matter anymore.
> the old days (> 100 Euro if I remember correctly)
Yes, 129 for single-user and 169 for family (5-user).
And these are not so old days, Leopard was 129 and that was in 2007. Snow Leopard and Lion were 30, and ML was 20 (in USD, IIRC $129 translated to 129€ but ML is "only" 18€)
Apple's policy until System 7 was that you paid for the hardware and you should be able to expect software updates free for the life of the product. Nice to see them coming home, on this point anyway.
The reason they offer it for free is pretty simple to me. They have an app store which is making them more money than the Operating System itself. The more people who have access to the app store the more money they make, so why put a price barrier between the user and the store?
This is why Windows 8.1 is free and I will assume the next iterations of Windows will be. Windows now has an app store and they are banking on getting as many people into that ecosystem as possible. While they may lose money in the OS purchase, that isn't where the bulk of the money is made anymore.
I think the bigger hit to Microsoft, or just as big, is the free and much improved iWorks. Now there are 2 office suites from 2 big companies being offered for free (Docs and iWorks), which are becoming increasingly more popular not just with consumers, but a lot of enterprise customers, too.
Microsoft should be terrified. Both of their cash cows are getting rapidly commoditized.
I would think iWorks is targeting the same market ClarisWorks did from 1984 until the 90s. [1]
It's the same reason iOS is coming into corporate environments: people want to use it.
iWorks is never going to be a threat to Microsoft in corporate environments, really. But the fact that Apple's customers don't need Microsoft at all just as Microsoft is taking a big step into consumer devices is probably an issue.
Apple still makes money selling the computers that are running free OS X Mavericks. Microsoft makes no money by giving away Windows 8.1 for free to consumers.
When you need to finally replace that 2007 machine, Apple obviously wants you to buy another Mac. Screwing over people with perfectly good hardware wouldn't do a whole lot for customer goodwill.
It very much is for the average home consumer. Normal users upgrade their version of windows when they buy a new computer, because the new version is what comes installed.
It's not as much effort as it sounds. My home laptop has had Ubuntu, Mint, Mageia, Suse, Fedora, Arch, Windows 7, 8, OS X 10.7, 10.8, and just today, 10.9 on it in about a month (it's a mac).
I have an external hard drive with all my documents, projects, music, movies, etc. on it. What's absolutely essential is recopied to my hard drive each time. It's kind of addictive to dive into a new operating system and learn it every so often. That's why there's a term for it - distro hopping.
It's good for some things. It gets you very good at doing rote computer tasks because you do them over and over in slightly different environments each time - install homebrew, update ruby, install rvm, configure common programs, tweak preferences and small aspects of the OS, etc.
As a result, I can wipe my entire hard drive and bring it back up to my workflow speed in less than 3 hours on a linux distro I roll myself via Arch.
All that said, I like OS X, so I'll be sticking with Mavericks for a while now.
I'd be interested to see your thoughts on each distro, even if it's just a sentence or two. Switching quickly, while obviously making some types of perspective difficult to develop in such a short timeframe, probably makes it easier for you to notice some things most people wouldn't through more typical usage habits.
I think it just pays Apple more in customer satisfaction to have everyone on the same boat. Simple economics. They make the money on the hardware after all. Same thing for free iLife and iWork, customers pay for the complete experience in the price of the device.
It also helps developers. It would be a reasonable position to take to only support the latest MacOS release and features. (People who don't want to upgrade their MacOS version for free are also less likely to want to try your software or upgrade to new versions of it.)
They went out of their way to point out that this is a "going forward" thing, too — system software on Apple devices is free. I assume Windows 9 isn't gonna be.
Nokia announced their event first. Two ways to read Apple then targeting the same day -
For the Apple Fanboy: Apple wasn't even aware Nokia was releasing anything, because honestly, it's windows mobile so who cares, and this is pure coincidence.
For the Msft Fanboy: Apple releases a sad, incremental improvement in hardware that isn't their primary focus anymore in an attempt to keep the attention off of a rival.
Or Apple knew, but it didn't affect their timing at all. Apple only announces on Tuesdays, and there are only 5 Tuesdays in October - and we've known this announcement was coming this month for a very, very long time.
I sincerely doubt Apple gives one tiny hoot about Windows tablets when it comes to timing their announcements. A flagship Android tablet maybe.
Considering today's October 22 iPad announcement came 364 days after last year's October 23 iPad announcement, I'm going to guess Nokia's announcement wasn't a contributing factor for Apple's scheduling.
I think that the total Android revenue was greater than the total Windows Phone revenue quite a while ago. I don't know if it still holds true now that WinPho sales are more than a whisker over none.
That is how they've been able to give customers free iOS upgrades all this time without having to defer any revenue from the original sale of the hardware. They are apparently now applying the same practices to OS X software.
I think you may be thinking of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act, which is what Apple cited for charging for some upgrades in the past (that and GAAP)[1]. If I remember correctly, things have changed on that level now, though I don't know if it's through legislation or through a reform of accounting practices
Microsoft sells software, Apple sells hardware with matching software. But make no mistake, they are a hardware company - OSX won't even run without a chip confirming its an authentic Mac.
The idea that they would charge for these smaller OSX updates is bizarre, and the price point has been in the "we need this for accounting" range in the past.
And according to companies like HP , they are officially a competitor. At least for them. On paper. They have yet to make any real world moves to proof they actually compete in the hardware sector. A 800 million dollar write off with the first device does not really count.
I feel the need to point out that you can run Mac OS X on pretty much any recent Intel processor and a wide range of motherboards. It is not locked to Apple hardware.
If you spend the time to research and get the parts that are supported by OS X, building a Hackintosh is breeze. I have had no problems with the one I built.
That's sort of what he's going for though- remember the old days of Linux when only certain devices were supported? When using OS X like this, you don't even have the luxury of writing in new code to support them.
It's definitely limited. But hackintoshes are a planned and strategic undertaking. You want OS X but don't want to pay the rape rates requisite of the apple brand. So you build your pc based on the hardware guide so that everything will work from the start. If you need to add more hardware, you just buy the brand that will work. There's not enough limitation to make it suck, and you're paying 700-800 bucks for a computer that the mac equivalent would run you 3 grand.
You've really got to just follow the hardware guides to the tee, and I personally recommend using their prebuilt configs. If you go on tonymac or the other hackintosh sites they will have different hardware lists that are more or less guaranteed to work, as all the components will be ones used in mac desktops and have built in support. There is definitely a huge dick around if you try and be adventurous and go off the beaten path, and you will spend hours messing with the loader configs and kexts etc.
Na. If you get the right parts(mainly gigabyte motherboards) and read TonyMacOSX, you can get a Hackintosh up as easy as a Linux install.
It's literally build the computer, put the required software on USB drive(Unibeast). Boot computer, format drive, install OSX. Run Multibeast. Voila. Keep usb drive for when you update.
When the Hackintosh movement started that was the case, sure. Nowadays it's a lot easier - tools like MultiBeast make it trivial on fully compatible hardware.
I guess you should take a look at what installing a hackintosh system entails. It starts with flashing your BIOS and it doesn't get any better afterwards.
You're either running a massively unsupported configuration (even for hackintosh standards) or just plain trolling. I'm posting this from a hackintosh I triboot with Windows and Debian. The difficulty involved reading a HCL when I built the system 3 years ago. The installation involved burning a disc and booting from it.
Nope. You burn the disk and install OSX as normal. Depending on the hardware you might need to download a few kext (Kernal Extensions AKA "drivers") Comparable to installing Linux or Windows.
When I was dabbling with Hackintoshes a few years ago, updating the OS was not supported (regardless of your hardware) and there were a couple of other limitations. Have most major issues like that been sorted out?
Which I did/do for my Macbook Pro anyway. So when I got into the Hackintosh scene, it's second nature. I typically recommend formatting when upgrading anyway. Just doesn't feel right to just upgrade. Maybe it's just left over nightmares from when I was on Windows. Only way to upgrade was to format.
And it's worth pointing out that the SMC does more than copy protection. It's also responsible for some power management functions and practically all the thermal management - which is nice because it means you get sensible fan speeds even when running a different OS that doesn't have drivers for the Mac.
Apple's attempting to set a new expectation with consumers: OS updates should be free. Users are already accustomed to it on their phones, now they'll start to expect it of their computers.
I'm willing to wager that Apple never charges for an OS update again. I'm surprised they've taken this long to make the leap. (Of course, Microsoft makes more from OEM licensing than upgrades, but it's still a blow to their value in the consumer headspace.)
No kidding. You didn't buy your laptop/desktop from Microsoft, did you? Maybe you should take up your claim for free Windows 8 with Lenovo/Dell/HP/Toshiba.
Apple and Microsoft are in almost entirely disjoint businesses, anyway. I doubt that there's much useful analogizing to be done about their current respective situations.
Not only will Apple get some good press for this (barring any major technical snafu) but they'll glean some additional community goodwill and drastically reduce the number of legacy OS X versions in the wild.
OsX is not free, you still need to buy a Mac.
As for MSFT , they are a software company,not sure what they can do about Windows price ,which will never be free.
Want free stuff? use Linux.
Any computer. Including the one you already own, and none of which are produced by the Linux Foundation.
I will give that driver support for wifi cards may make some computers more awkward than others. It's very rare these days that any common device other than a wifi card or a just this week released graphics card causes problems any more.
Well, a much smaller percentage of Windows users are on 8.0 than OS X users are on Snow Leopard or later. If Blue allowed upgrades from Windows 7 for free, that'd be a more equal comparison.
Microsoft's business model is selling a licensed OS, something which honestly is getting harder every passing day. Apple's business model is selling compelling hardware at a premium price with their own software preloaded.
Apple could (and now indeed does) give away their software for free and still make a decent living. Their software wont run on any hardware they haven't already made a profit on, so there's no significant "piracy" risk either way.
That said, Windows 8.1 was a free upgrade for everyone already on the Windows 8 bandwagon (and thus in need for some overhauls).
I knew it existed, but the claim was that Windows 8 sold poorly with the $40 promo, which I couldn't find any backing for. The only reference I could find for Win8 sales around that time said that "Upgrade sales [are] outpacing those of Windows 7 at the same point in its lifecycle": http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/11/window...
Download the installer from MAS, it's a .app within which you'll find a `createinstallmedia` binary. As its name indicates, that binary can be used to create a bootable install media. Not sure it can create a DVD, but it can create a bootable USB key.
You can't download an ISO, you'll need a working OSX install to download it from the App Store. From there I believe you can burn an install DVD and AFAIK you've always been able to do a non-networked install.
edit: Un-tested by me, but I've heard this is how you do it:
As of Mountain Lion, the recovery partition doesn't contain the full OS. Just enough to bootstrap and download the whole thing from Apple. They also do not sell the update on physical media (thumb drives, DVDs, etc.) in store.
Lion DiskMaker has a beta for creating a Mavericks GM disk. It should be updated soon to support the release. You just download the installer from the App Store and run Lion DiskMaker.
sudo "/Applications/Install OS X Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia" --volume /Volumes/Mavericks/ --applicationpath "/Applications/Install OS X Mavericks.app"
Note the double hyphens before the keywords. The quotes just make it easier to read.
Probably the same way as I've done with Mountain Lion, but with a dual-layer DVD instead: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/apple-in-the-enterprise/how... (not that exact link, but the same basic thing is all over the internet) If you want to do this for an older OS version you've purchased, you can option-click on the Purchases tab-button-thing in the App Store, and it'll show everything. (totally undiscoverable, but at least it exists)
"Very interested to see if Microsoft will follow suit."
And what? Make it up in volume? Unless Microsoft's Surface sales take-off, they can't afford to give Windows away for free apart from what are essentially service-packs like the 8.1 update they just released.
I expect they could offer free upgrades for the consumer edition of the OS without any significant hit. The bulk of their revenues are surely from OEMs and businesses, not home users buying a boxed copy.
Just chiming in conversationally (not refuting anything), but Windows original ascension was entirely based on piracy -- Microsoft did nothing to stop home users from thieving Windows as it lubricated its use for business (and business could much more easily be convinced to spend, if not at the outset, once the infrastructure was in place and they suddenly worried about a disgruntled employee turn them in).
And of course, Microsoft knows (and controls) the ecosystem more than anyone. Microsoft should be able to monetize users beyond just the operating system, but they are proving totally incompetent at doing that with home users.
Microsoft has a history of giving away free updates to the operating system when you buy their hardware: I never had to pay for any OS updates on my Xbox 360.
This is part of a bigger company wide strategy to offer software updates for free for their products, a strategy they pioneered with iOs.
There's also a huge difference in what each update adds when compared to 8.1 . Where 8.1 tries to fix all the initial issues with W8 (missing start button anyone?), Maverick adds serious new features (1+ hour of battery, compressed RAM).
The free iWork suite is a direct attack to MSFT Office. Giving it away for free will pay long term in decreasing market share for Office. Office H&O is $220. Buy a Mac/iPhone/iPad and you get that for free.
I haven't used any Apple machine since 2004. Some HN'ers like Apple, so I've been kind of interested to see what Apple machines do that PC's don't. But I don't want to pay premium prices for iGoods.
Does this mean I can run the new OS in a VM to check out the Apple ecosystem? Or is this only free (as in beer) to people who have an existing paid license for a previous Apple operating system?
Apple devices aren't really that overpriced.
Try to get a comparable device (power, weight, battery life, slimness) for the same price and it's harder then you think.
If you can find me a good alternative for a 11" macbook air for less then an macbook air I'd be delighted to hear what it is because I've been dying for a good ultralight laptop that can run ubuntu without dealing with efi/uefi/bootcamp stuff.
I've been very happy with my Samsung NP900X1B, which was much better value than an air for me at the time I bought it. (There's probably a newer equivalent model nowadays)
efi/uefi seems to be a solved problem for ubuntu. I'm running Linux Mint on Asus UX31A (which would be best laptop ever if it was more reliable) installed all-by-default without _any_ problems, even with hotkeys and touchpad. Also a colleague of mine happily runs Fedora on UX32A.
On other devices this is true, but on my macbook air I keep having issues where I either have to wait for several seconds (10-20) at a black screen with a blinking underscore or that the options in the boot menu don't correspond with what gets booted. (mind you, I have been using ubuntu for at least 7 years now but the macbook air is the only device I couldn't install it reliably, guess it's even worse then using Windows on mac hardware :))
I'll agree with you with respect to laptops. Desktops are a different story. Non-Mac desktops are much cheaper, especially if you choose to build it yourself.
You don't need to have an existing paid license(1), but you do need to run it on Apple Mac hardware. Non-Apple hardware and VMs are not supported, don't work without some significant hacking and are forbidden by EULA.
(1) Practically speaking if you have a machine capable of running this legally, you also have an existing paid license for MacOS, so this is mostly a theoretical difference.
A honda accord starts at $20k. All I want to do is get to my cousins house three blocks down the street. I could buy 20 bicycles for that price or buy 1 and save money.
This doesn't mean the honda is overpriced, correct? Your entire comment is a non sequitur.
I bought my current laptop in late 2011 for $750. Specs are 4 GB (which I cheaply upgraded to 8GB right away), GT 540M (1GB dedicated graphics memory), Core i7 @ 2.2 GHz, USB 3.0.
Moral: If you're looking at the higher end of the performance/price spectrum because you do things like gaming and compiling large programs like the Linux kernel, Macbooks aren't just overpriced, they're underpowered.
Okay, here goes: In 2010 I bought an Eee PC. It has great battery life, a small screen, and less-than-stellar specs. It's very light and portable. It's perfectly fine for email, web browsing, document editing, or even light development work.
That still doesn't make for a fair comparison for what the Air is, but what you'd use it for. The two are not the same.
As far as performance goes, my 2011 11" Macbook Air was my primary development machine for a year (in both Xcode and IntelliJ/Scala). That Air also sported better battery life than any of the Eee PC line. It was more expensive, sure, but $500 is not very much when I'm using the machine for 6+ hours every day of the year. It was also more capable than that Eee PC and ran an operating system I found actually enjoyable to use (versus merely tolerable in the case of Windows or Linux); I have no problem paying $200-$300 more simply because of the feature that is OS X because for me, it's better.
And I haven't even touched on the build quality, which--in rather stark contrast to your attempted handwaving of an Air being "insubstantial" in another comment in this thread--is fantastic and makes me feel happy to use it, makes me enjoy working with it more. (Form is not superfluous. Pleasing form makes interacting with the computer more enjoyable, much like a well-designed tool in my shop or my kitchen.)
Note that a 2.2GHz Sandy Bridge is not the same as a 2.2GHz Haswell. Older Macbooks had substantially higher-clocked processors, because Sandy Bridge was lower IPC.
None of that matters to me enough to make me spend hundreds of dollars more and be content with a laptop that does less.
> hot
Only when you're actually running a game or using all the CPU cores.
> feels cheap
I don't like spending money unnecessarily. I regard my laptop with pride. Not just because it's a practical tool for day-to-day work and play. Not just because the specs give me bragging rights. But also because it's a symbol of how good I am at bargain hunting.
Your MacBook is tiny, insubstantial, and would make me feel like a sucker if I'd shelled out an entire grand for it.
Just because your use of a computer is 'basic' enough to be serviced with bargain spec machines, doesn't make the Apple stuff "overpriced" as you are trying to imply.
To those of you saying Apple h/w is overpriced, find comparable spec'd machines to compare with and you'll find it's not as horrific as you claim. i.e. weight, battery, screen, power
I've switched to OS X exclusively about ten years ago. The reasons for choosing tech platforms are always personal, based on a combination of perception and actual benefits, and how those benefits are subjectively weighed against the drawbacks. So I can only answer that from a personal point of view.
> so I've been kind of interested to see what Apple machines do that PC's don't.
They run OS X. The hardware is nice, too, but if that was the only selling point I would probably buy cheaper and more powerful PCs.
> But I don't want to pay premium prices for iGoods.
Then don't. We don't all have the same preferences and usage patterns. If using Apple stuff doesn't hold any benefits for you, that's totally fine and reasonable. Contrary to many Apple users, I do believe their hardware is quite expensive. The question is if it's worth it. For me, that answer is "yes" at the moment, though that may change.
> Does this mean I can run the new OS in a VM to check out the Apple ecosystem?
I'm not sure if you can legally check out OS X in a VM, but technically that option has been available for some time. However, I don't see why anyone would. Doing actual work inside a VM is bound to be painful.
That article agrees with Touche, unless I'm missing something.
EULA: "[you are free] to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software within virtual operating system environments on each Mac Computer you own or control that is already running the Apple Software."
If you only care about CPU speed and memory, then apple is going to seem pretty overpriced. But if you also care about weight, battery life and build quality, then apple is almost then only option. Not only is there no cheaper option from the PC companies, theres not really anything comparable for any price.
As a recent Mac convert, who plans to do Mac software development but hasn't started yet - is there a way to copy the existing mountain lion install on my Mac to a VM image so I can test on ML after I upgrade to Mavericks?
You can: I upgraded my Mountain Lion test machine to Mavericks when DP1 landed and created a Parallels virtual machine for Mountain Lion.
However, I found—at least with Parallels—you can't just take an existing hard drive image and use that: you have to create a new virtual machine, install Mountain Lion from scratch on it, then use OS X's Migration Assistant to move everything over.
You'll need to re-download it from the App Store (it should automatically be flagged as purchased, though, so you shouldn't need to re-buy it: just check the "Purchases" tab).
It'll download as an application: "Install Mac OS X Mountain Lion.app". If the installer automatically launches, just quit out of it. Right-click on the application, select "Show package contents", then navigate to Contents/SharedSupport. In there, you'll see "InstalESD.dmg": that's the Mountain Lion image.
You should be able to use that image directly in Parallels et al, but if you really wanted physical media, you can burn that image to a disc or create a bootable flash drive using Disk Utility. If you go the flash drive route, you'll need to use the GUID partition table.
I successfully installed Mac OS X in VirtualBox using iAtkos ML2, then upgraded it to the latest Mountain Lion through the App Store. You could probably do this, then arrange to mount your current drive and use Migration Assistant.
I might be doing this myself. Google "iAtkos ML2 VirtualBox" to find the settings for VirtualBox that will work.
Hypothesis: Apple OS X is now knocking hard at the doors of the enterprise, and it's removing every barrier to entry except their main source of revenue, hardware costs.
iWork is more than good enough for many MS Office use cases. If you work on documents that you often don't need to exchange with co-workers, then you don't really have any barriers to switching. Obviously, financial analysts with their massive models in excel aren't going anywhere anytime soon, but real estate agents like my mother and others like her have few reasons not to switch.
Next time someone goes to upgrade office, they are going to have to compare an expensive software license with putting that money into a brand new computer instead and who doesn't love having a fresh new computer.
I guess somehow they are already completely inside with the iDevices?
I guess it's more seen as a push to avoid maintaining old software at high costs, and limiting fragmentation, by migrating as much people as possible. I guess the longevity of Windows XP must be seen as a scary thing. Also on a psychological level, the users get used to upgrade without too much fear. The company can retire the products sooner, flip the technology faster.
iWork has potential because of iPads being moved into the enterprise, the OSX release is largely irrelevant (OSX is never going to be popular in the enterprise). Since they are doing iWorks web apps now, this gives people the ability to use iPads while they're on the road and then log into the same document from their Windows Office machine.
OS X is a seperate OS. Apple didn't say that this is the first time they had given away an OS. They said this is the first free OS X release. Which it is.
What about virtualization? Previously, one would only be allowed virtualize OS X if they purchased a copy (you can't virtualize the copy that came with the computer). Since it sounds like that's no longer an option, do I get virtualization for free now?
Recent releases of OS X, and probably this latest one too, have focused a lot on actually improving the efficiency of the OS. Can't know for sure w/o trying it, but I'd expect to get a performance improvement from the upgrade.
Initial reports from the GM tell of many improvements, especially the memory subsystem which aside from the possibly gimmicky memory compression finally stopped sucking and swapping for no reason because it couldn't handle its own caches correctly. Users on even high-RAM configurations (16~32GB) which would still end up swapping in previous versions due to memleaks and memory mismanagement report 0 swapping.
I believe they are offering this update for free since it's more about performance tweaks and library frameworks for app developers, not so much in terms of features or bundled apps, so it makes sense to have as much people as possible running it. Given OS X updates are a pretty streamlined process (and Time Machine helps in the case it borks something), I hope they keep this trend.
Thats certainly a reason to offer it for a cheaper price. I think once you offer something free -- its hard to go back. I imagine it will tick off customers. So I dont think the incremental nature of OSX is the reason its free.
Just give it up, and call it "liberated software" or something. Language is defined by usage, and no one outside the FOSS community thinks that's what "free" means. (And while we're at it, the media is never, ever going to adopt the word "cracker" either.)
free fre·er, fre·est, adverb, verb, freed, free·ing.
adjective
1.
enjoying personal rights or liberty, as a person who is not in slavery: a land of free people.
2.
pertaining to or reserved for those who enjoy personal liberty: They were thankful to be living on free soil.
3.
existing under, characterized by, or possessing civil and political liberties that are, as a rule, constitutionally guaranteed by representative government: the free nations of the world.
4.
enjoying political autonomy, as a people or country not under foreign rule; independent.
5.
exempt from external authority, interference, restriction, etc., as a person or one's will, thought, choice, action, etc.; independent; unrestricted.
2. used for emphasis or to express strong feeling while not being literally true.
Words are literally defined by how they are actually used by humans over time. If I hold up a sign saying "Free Donuts", no one is going to think I mean that pastries should be liberated. To unnecessarily cling to the word "free" when it has a more obvious secondary meaning is to tilt at windmills; there is no shortage of synonyms.
If there is one argument it's impossible to win, it's an argument with people trying to impose their own "original" or "traditional" word usage over the more colloquial understanding of it's meaning.
It's definitely a great incentive for users to update their hardware. If you could still use iOS3 on your iPhone 3GS, it would be reasonably fast and responsive but because the upgrade to iOS6 is free, you go for it only to discover that it is now unusable. Same logic goes now for Macs.
Damn disappointing to see I can't upgrade the Mac mini I have from ~2008. It's a Macmini2,1, but I have upgraded the ram from 500mb to 4gb (3gb addressable), the cpu to the fastest possible (2.3ghz core2), and a samsung 840 128gb ssd. The machine is a beast now, except for the fact the sound occasionally stops working (sudo killall coreaudiod!)
I understand the why - the chipset/cpu is 32bit, and Mavericks is 64-bit only. Bit of a bugger. The user won't notice though (My wife)
I'm sure the upgrade experience would be better than my Windows 8 -> Windows 8.1 experience of last week. The best way to describe that would be train wreck.
When I went into MSFT's Store app on my Win8 VM and installed the 8.1 upgrade, it rebooted and then went through the entire first-time setup routine. Everything it wanted, was already configured, so asking me again is just a sloppy experience!
Seems like a sensible move and going with the flow. OS upgrades seem like a strange thing to pay for these days. It adds to the proposition first time macs converts.
One downside is that paid software upgrades provide a useful feedback mechanism. It must get over the 'is this worth $100' bar to sell. I think this is probably important for iwork also. Between creating revenue vs enhancing the mac's value & pulling users deeper into Apple-land, I think the right decision could be to go free. OTOH, that would absolve iwork from having to be good enough that users choose to pay money for it.
Still, free OS upgrades seem like the right choice.
Curious to know whether the fact that OS X is no longer a revenue stream might mean that Apple are more inclined to open it (or at least parts of it) up.
As with a mobile OS, the services layer on top of the OS seems as important as the operating system itself. With so much of the value in owning a Mac being iLife, iWork, iCloud, maps, iTunes, the Appstore and so on, could Apple open up OS X in the way Android is open (by which I mean for inspection more than contribution and just the core, not the services)?
Seems against their culture but this takes away one of the big reasons why they wouldn't.
Finally. There is almost no point if you are selling your OS for just $30, $40 dollars. I am going to wait a few months until I upgrade. Most of the software I use probably be better off with the current version.
Battery life is said to increase an hour and the multiple screen monitor functionality has been improved. Nothing that would really change your development drastically. That being said it is a solid release and quite stable, I wouldn't see much reason not to upgrade.
For n=1: The 10.9 GM has been smooth as butter, didn't break any of my mac apps or *nix tools. Obviously double-check on any tools which are mission-critical, but I recommend it in general, a noticeably pleasant upgrade to usability, battery and performance.
I would think it'd only make a big difference if you're developing targeting this newest release of OSX. There isn't a new XCode release at this time.[0] It is likely that the next XCode release will require Mavericks to run.
I would be just happy if it would be possible to upgrade, but I've tried 3 times the downloading keep crashing. I don't understand why they just don't make it so the updates would roll out on bittorrent like network. Its 5.29GB after all and every time it stops I would have like 1.6 - 3GB downloaded. And that is not to mention the download speeds that are just awful right now...
It sounds great, but an OS upgrade shouldn't had been paid in the first place. For instance I would be pretty pissed off to pay to upgrade my phone's software. This is just a reminder that computers have become general consumer items.
If they can cope with the UI, absolutely. Computers are a commodity. Personally I know very few people that even upgrade windows. They just buy a new machine (which like their current machine, already comes with windows preinstalled).
Anyone know what the JVM situation is on Mavericks? Does Apple still provide a version of 1.6 or would I be required to upgrade to Oracle's 1.7 install?
Finally got a chance to test this on a spare machine at work. Apple directs you to download Oracle's Java 7 installer, but I was able to download the recent 2013-005 update and install it on Mavericks. Seems to run fine.
The competition is already free and Apple has still a high security prison as far as the lock-in effect of its technology is concerned, so they're still safe.
Yeah if by breakthrough you mean shits the bed. The reason OSX works so well is because Apple has a limited set of hardware they have to support vs the wild west of hardware that windows has to support.
Yes, Apple is a hardware manufacturer that happens to make it's own OS (something that Dell or Lenovo could do any day if they could get off the MSFT/INTC gravy train - by creating their own Linux distro).
Switching models to compete with the Windows model is a mistake they were lucky to make once and live to tell about. They will not make that mistake again.
If you're looking for competition against Microsoft, look to Google. Both of these companies aren't hardware companies at their heart, and both want manufacturers to bundle their OS.
I'd say that if Microsoft had an ally, it would be Apple today (only in the sense that Apple doesn't care for Microsoft's business).
OS X exists entirely to facilitate selling more Apple hardware. Apple has zero interest in giving anyone a reason to buy anything other than Apple computers (broadly defined from Mac Pro to iPod Shuffle).
Question is though, what about support. You have a 3 year old Mac of some flavour and upgrade to this OS, what about issues you may have.
ANother aspect would be that by in effect making this level of OS available to all supported models out there warranty wise, they make life in supporting systems a little bit easier and very likely will drop support for the other older OS's on these models quicker. Again making life in support easier in many ways as well as making developers lives a lot easier. Especialy if they can target toward the a single denominator OS wise and take advantage of all the features without working towards only features common to the previous flavours.
Either way a good move. Though can bet there will be somebody on the older flavour of OS who will have some essentual application that they must have which has issues. But time will tell.
Good move on many levels I'd say by Apple.