Apple Says New OS X ‘Mavericks’ Will Be Offered for Free • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Says New OS X ‘Mavericks’ Will Be Offered for Free

#341

Post by krrrh » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 7:46 AM UTC

ucha wrote: post #142

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.

Check out whited00r if you Have an old 3GS that you want to make snappy.

As for OSX, this update (like many in the past) has several features which rejuvenate older hardware. It does the opposite of what you claim.

Re: Apple Says New OS X ‘Mavericks’ Will Be Offered for Free

#342

Post by oneeyedpigeon » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 8:02 AM UTC

shinratdr wrote: post #166

twoodfin wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

10.8 didn't support that MBA, so I'm not sure why you would hope that 10.9 would suddenly reintroduce compatibility.

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.

Re: Apple Says New OS X ‘Mavericks’ Will Be Offered for Free

#343

Post by masklinn » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 8:04 AM UTC

willimholte wrote: post #253

masklinn wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

IIRC it was not legal to install on multiple machines (perhaps it was legal for multiple personal machines?).

> it was legal for multiple personal machines?

Yes, the licenses were per-user, if you as a person owned and used 20 macs, you only needed a single license.

Re: Apple Says New OS X ‘Mavericks’ Will Be Offered for Free

#344

Post by dottrap » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 8:08 AM UTC

matasar wrote: post #309

3825 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but there was no technological measure preventing you (serial number or phoning home) that would stop you as far as I can recall. You can buy a single copy or a family pack for five computers. http://www.amazon.com/Mac-10-4-Tiger-Family-Pack/dp/B0007LW1... http://www.amazon.com/Apple-Mac-10-4-Tiger-VERSION/dp/B0002G...

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.

Apple always trusted people to buy the Family Pack on the honor system. They never put enforcement or checks like license keys for this.

I greatly respected this trust and always bought the family pack for my Macs.

Re: Apple Says New OS X ‘Mavericks’ Will Be Offered for Free

#345

Post by locusm » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 8:29 AM UTC

ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #100

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.

The upgrade path for Windows 8.1 is pretty confusing - it differs depending on what edition you have.

Re: Apple Says New OS X ‘Mavericks’ Will Be Offered for Free

#346

Post by Tyrannosaurs » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 9:00 AM UTC

astrodust wrote: post #202

epsylon wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft makes no money by giving away Windows 8.1 for free to consumers. Of course they make money from it. That's very naive of you to think that they don't.

I'm sure with Bing they make at least $0.25 a year per user.

And with the number of users Bing has that's literally tens of dollars each and every year.

Re: Apple Says New OS X ‘Mavericks’ Will Be Offered for Free

#347

Post by Tyrannosaurs » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 9:10 AM UTC

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.

Re: Apple Says New OS X ‘Mavericks’ Will Be Offered for Free

#348

Post by nwh » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 9:24 AM UTC

gohrt wrote: post #234

nwh wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offline means nothing in a world where NSA slides reference jumping airgaps with hardware backdoors.

How exactly will their hardware backdoor transmit its secrets back to the NSA? By sneaking out your apartment backdoor?

If you'd read any of the background on it rather than down voting me, you'd know!

Re: Apple Says New OS X ‘Mavericks’ Will Be Offered for Free

#349

Post by ranebo » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 9:27 AM UTC

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #347

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 ope…

No chance this will happen. All their software and services only have one purpose, to help sell more hardware. Thats where their money comes from.

Re: Apple Says New OS X ‘Mavericks’ Will Be Offered for Free

#350

Post by rsynnott » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 10:00 AM UTC

csense wrote: post #240

AwayMachine wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macbook Air starts at $999. All I want to do is browse the Internet. I could buy 3 Chromebooks for the price of that Macbook Air. Or 1 Chromebook and save money.

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. Looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macbook_air , in terms of specs it blows away even today's Macbooks -- two years later! Moral: If you're looking at the higher end of the performance/price spectrum because you do things like gaming a…

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.