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WIndows Vista Ultimate ... worth upgrading ... CNET say no!

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jgpaiva:
If MacOS was ported and sold as a viable alternative to Windows on existing hardware it would benefit everyone - not least Apple who would expand their OS market share exponentially.-Carol Haynes (January 26, 2007, 05:52 AM)
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Yes, i think that mac OS has a giant potential, but just as you said,

While Jobs and co. are committed to style beyond substance and the perennial aim to sell basic hardware at ridiculously inflated prices MS will maintain its dominance.
-Carol Haynes (January 26, 2007, 05:52 AM)
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I think the worst problem is the hardware.
I'm not sure you're right about "style beyond substance". They do have a giant marketing machine, and they probably put as much money into style developing as they put in software developing. BUT, mac OS does have amazing features (being the one i'm most interested that thing that farr resembles of, can't remember the name) that i think MS should copy. I mean.. Why did they copy that widgets thing and they didn't copy the virtual desktops thing? Or the finder?
I think there's a lot wrong with apple, but they do put money into developing new concepts. MS only looks interested in copying the concepts that the other operating systems developed and not trying anything new.

Carol Haynes:
I didn't mean MacOS is style beyond substance - it is the hardware that annoys me. They spend huge amounts of money designing stuff for people with more money than sense just because it looks pretty but it is distinctly lacking in functionality. The iPod is a cases in point where you can't even change the battery without paying Apple £60/$100 to 'service' the item. What the 'yuppies' who buy this stuff don't realise is that the stuff inside the box is the same as stuff in other machines by other manufacturers but Apple charge twice as much for the box they ship it in and deliberately restrict interoperability to force them to use Apple's overpriced services (such as iTunes - even though the iPod hardware is third party and supports WMA but it has been disabled).

Ruffnekk:
Yesterday I heard news about Dutch authorities filing a complaint against Apple because of the iPod and the iTunes music. They say it is unfair for someone to buy music from Apple online and not being able to play it on any other music player than an iPod. They demand that music downloaded from the Apple site is playable on every MP3 music player. They also demand Apple to correct this for every song they ever sold if the customer wants it so.

cranioscopical:
Like it or not I suspect most of us will be using VISTA in a few years time, if only because of marketing.  How many new-hardware purchasers will specify that they do not want VISTA?  How long before developers specify VISTA as a requirement for new versions of software? 

If "all" it takes to milk good performance from VISTA is more power and resources I'm sure that will happen.  My view on this has changed.  Once I demanded tiny, tight code which crammed quintessential functionality into the fewest bytes.  Realistically, that was because, back then, we hadn't the intellectual and financial resources to deploy plenty of RAM, huge storage, and the processing power to manage it.  We had to wring ultimate performance from every byte.  Is it realistic even to expect that an entire modern OS be written in, say, hand-tuned assembly language?

That said, I shan't rush into VISTA.  XP was the first Windows of which I wan't an early adopter.  I waited a couple of years before moving to it.  (Looking back, I think that wait saved me a lot of trouble.)  Also, I want to see how much of the software I use needs upgrading to run under VISTA.  The total cost of an acceptable OS upgrade can be surprisingly high these days and I want a good return from that investment.

Carol Haynes:
Yesterday I heard news about Dutch authorities filing a complaint against Apple because of the iPod and the iTunes music. They say it is unfair for someone to buy music from Apple online and not being able to play it on any other music player than an iPod. They demand that music downloaded from the Apple site is playable on every MP3 music player. They also demand Apple to correct this for every song they ever sold if the customer wants it so.
-Ruffnekk (January 26, 2007, 07:53 AM)
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There have been Europe wide legal challenges on market issues such as monopoly and unfair trade against Apple - and growing calls in the US. Personally I think as a matter of principle Apple will withdraw the iTunes shop from Europe before they comply with such issues. The only effective way to do what the Dutch are suggesting is if they use MS's WMA DRM in tandem with their own DRM formats (there is no way they will swap to WMA fully and the music companies won't allow MP3 distribution).

Given that you can't download iTunes tracks more than once when you buy them in Apple's format I can't see Apply allowing users access to a different format retrospectively even if they could be persuaded to make other formats available.

The other issue is that Apple don't want to allow other companies access to the Apple DRM so that they can supply iPod compatible  music. Apple say it is for security reasons but it is really down to simple economics - they have 80% of the MP3 player market and that 80% are currently tied to the iTunes store if they want to buy legitimate music (except for a few MP3 stores such as emusic). If Apple won't licence the use of their DRM will MS license them to use the MS DRM system ?

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