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

Post by octavn » Tue, Oct 22, 2013, 11:15 PM UTC

laureny wrote: post #245

octavn wrote: post #243

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 M…

> This is part of a bigger company wide strategy to offer software updates for free for their products, a strategy they pioneered with iOs. Pioneered? Android updates have been free since day one.

Post by dba7dba » Tue, Oct 22, 2013, 11:18 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #113

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.

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.

Post by sjmulder » Tue, Oct 22, 2013, 11:31 PM UTC

georgemcbay wrote: post #207

csense wrote: post #201

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?

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.

Post by ptomato » Tue, Oct 22, 2013, 11:35 PM UTC

ndrake wrote: post #168

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?

Post by dham » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 12:06 AM UTC

josteink wrote: post #59

foogered wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have you seen the docs for what it takes to get that running? Have you seen the docs for what it takes to complete a normal "update"? Trying to run OS X on non-Apple hardware makes the old days of "cumbersome" Linux-systems look like kindergarten-stuff. I'd hardly say it just runs.