Re:The Windows 11 taskbar is an annoying step backward
by ClumsyPilot on Friday January 21, 2022 @07:49AM
(#30022712)
> reckon Windows still actually is "the poor man's OS"
Ask gamers that paid $3000 for the graphics card alone, I recon their opinion will differ
Re:The Windows 11 taskbar is an annoying step backward
by CRConrad on Friday January 21, 2022 @10:25AM
(#30024757)
But the OS has a separate price tag there. Just because gamers rich enough to blow ridiculous money on their rigs also use it doesn't make Windows "the rich man's OS"; that expression means something only the rich man can afford. Rearrange the sentence a bit, and "the poor man's [whatever]" means the only such thing the poor man can afford.
MacOS sure ain't the poor man's OS.
Re:The Windows 11 taskbar is an annoying step backward
by alexvoda on Sunday January 23, 2022 @03:18AM
(#30044536)
Ever since Lion or something, MacOS has been free. Not free as in free upgrade, but free as in free to download and install and use on any compatible machine (only Macs, of course).
Windows always had a price, even if that price was included by the OEM in the price of the device.
Re:The Windows 11 taskbar is an annoying step backward
by CRConrad on Saturday January 29, 2022 @11:46AM
(#30127794)
> Not free as in free upgrade, but free as in free to download and install and use on any compatible machine (only Macs, of course).
Let me repeat that:
only Macs, of course
* IS just an upgrade. Those Macs all came with an OS originally, didn' they?
* ISN'T actually "free": You have to buy a Mac first. They cost money -- quite a lot of it, compared to most other PCs, I've heard.
"Whereas MacOS is free, it's included with the machine and Apple doesn't charge for it separately"?
But how much of the price you pay for that machine is because of the OS, that's an unknown. Maybe the actual development costs, distributed per device, are available somewhere deep in the bowels of Apple accounting, but that doesn't tell us how much of the (inflated) price you pay for the box is due to the OS. Microsoft's dev costs for Windows probably aren't £120 a copy either (especially considering what a tiny minority of users actually pays exactly that, as an explicit item separate from the hardware).
So I reckon Windows still actually is "the poor man's OS": You probably pay more than that for MacOS, only it's baked into the cost of the hardware so you don't know how much, exactly, it is you're paying.