btoneill
keeper of the cheese
Warning: This is a rant. If I offend you, tough.
Ok, now that my nice disclaimer is done...
After reading all the whining and complaining on this board, and every other mac board on the face of this planet I have one thing to say:
Apple is in business to make money.
Ok, I really have more then one thing to say. First we'll start off with the .Mac stuff. All the free service providers are having major issues, the ones that are still around are offering either pay services, or tossing more and more banner (and even worse moving java crap) ads so that they can stay in business. So, Apple came to realise, they are losing money by giving the iTools stuff away for free. They had a choice, cover every free inch of space with an ad, charge users, or shut it down. Personally I like their decision. If I want free email with ads, I'll go to yahoo or hotmail. As to the price, it's not that expensive. If you pay the full price it's $8/month. Hell, a pack of smokes in NYC costs $8 now. For the first year, it's $4/month, thats an extra value meal at McD's. 15M of email, 100M of disk space, thats not that bad a deal. Toss in ad free webhosting, it's better. Toss in $50 virus software ontop of it, sounds like a bargain to me. Add in the backup software, it's downright cheap, all for skipping a supersized extra value meal once a month. If you still think it should be free, great, why don't you go register a domain, set up a server on line, put in a ton of disk, and start giving out free email addresses to anyone who wants one, oh, and give them web pages, and storage they can access from their desktop anywhere. Oh, let me know where I can sign up for this great service you're going to give us all for free with no ads, until then, I'll happily pay my money to Apple.
Next, the $129 price for 10.2. Yeah, I would have loved to spend $20 for it, but alas, no such luck. Is the software worth $129? Yup. I bought 10.1 2 months ago for $100 and change, combined I'll end up spending $230 or so this year on 10.x, and is it worth it? Yup. $200 is the price you pay for windows, and windows doesn't touch the software that comes with OS X. You want to play DVD's on your $200 windows software, guess what, you have to go pay someone else $30-40 for software to do it. Every version of mac's DVD player that ships they have to pay a royalty on. Oh yeah, 10.x ships with a beautiful development kit. I won't even get into what you pay MS for Visual Studio so you have an IDE and compile to write your own software. People will ofcourse say "Apple isn't Microsoft, Microsoft is evil" but you know what, Microsoft makes money. They are in business, they keep making money. If in 5 years you still want to be using a Mac and have an alternative to MS, you better hope Apple is still making money. By giving away major OS upgrades for next to nothing and free net services, they won't be around in 5 years, and you'll be stuck with Microsoft.
For all those "I'm a poor college student"'s out there, they have .edu discounts, $69 for 10.2. For those of you with jobs who complain at it being $129, when are you going to start giving stuff away for next to nothing at your work, and if you do, how much longer will you be getting a paycheck.
And last but not least, for those people who continue to complain about the software, and hardware, saying "I can buy a PC thats faster for $500" Fine, go buy one. Waste time trying to get the crap to work. Hope that your hardware doesn't blow up. Ofcourse, most of you who do that end up using a copied version of windows anyways because you refuse to pay microsoft because they are an evil company who wants to make money. So, ofcourse, you get no support, and you'll still bitch about things not working right. After awhile you'll complain even more about Windows then you did about the Mac. Someday, you'll probably switch back wishing you had never left in the first place. And as to PC's being cheaper, they really aren't. A nice business class PC is the same cost as a mac. Mac's are built as business class machines, the $500 HP you get at Best Buy isn't. For a good dual proc workstation from compaq, you'll be paying around $5k. Gee, that dual 1G box doesn't sound that expensive now does it. But ofcourse, most everyone who is complaining has never really delt with buying hardware somewhere other then Best Buy and CompUSA or some 2 bit online PC store.
So, give Apple a break, let the company try to make a profit so that you can keep using the software and hardware that you love. Otherwise, shut up or go complain to your cat, it will care about as much as I do.
And, you can feel free to flame away, but this will be my only post on this thread, a flame war is not on my agenda this week. But, ofcourse feel free to tell me I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread and I should win the nobel peace price
Brian
Ok, now that my nice disclaimer is done...
After reading all the whining and complaining on this board, and every other mac board on the face of this planet I have one thing to say:
Apple is in business to make money.
Ok, I really have more then one thing to say. First we'll start off with the .Mac stuff. All the free service providers are having major issues, the ones that are still around are offering either pay services, or tossing more and more banner (and even worse moving java crap) ads so that they can stay in business. So, Apple came to realise, they are losing money by giving the iTools stuff away for free. They had a choice, cover every free inch of space with an ad, charge users, or shut it down. Personally I like their decision. If I want free email with ads, I'll go to yahoo or hotmail. As to the price, it's not that expensive. If you pay the full price it's $8/month. Hell, a pack of smokes in NYC costs $8 now. For the first year, it's $4/month, thats an extra value meal at McD's. 15M of email, 100M of disk space, thats not that bad a deal. Toss in ad free webhosting, it's better. Toss in $50 virus software ontop of it, sounds like a bargain to me. Add in the backup software, it's downright cheap, all for skipping a supersized extra value meal once a month. If you still think it should be free, great, why don't you go register a domain, set up a server on line, put in a ton of disk, and start giving out free email addresses to anyone who wants one, oh, and give them web pages, and storage they can access from their desktop anywhere. Oh, let me know where I can sign up for this great service you're going to give us all for free with no ads, until then, I'll happily pay my money to Apple.
Next, the $129 price for 10.2. Yeah, I would have loved to spend $20 for it, but alas, no such luck. Is the software worth $129? Yup. I bought 10.1 2 months ago for $100 and change, combined I'll end up spending $230 or so this year on 10.x, and is it worth it? Yup. $200 is the price you pay for windows, and windows doesn't touch the software that comes with OS X. You want to play DVD's on your $200 windows software, guess what, you have to go pay someone else $30-40 for software to do it. Every version of mac's DVD player that ships they have to pay a royalty on. Oh yeah, 10.x ships with a beautiful development kit. I won't even get into what you pay MS for Visual Studio so you have an IDE and compile to write your own software. People will ofcourse say "Apple isn't Microsoft, Microsoft is evil" but you know what, Microsoft makes money. They are in business, they keep making money. If in 5 years you still want to be using a Mac and have an alternative to MS, you better hope Apple is still making money. By giving away major OS upgrades for next to nothing and free net services, they won't be around in 5 years, and you'll be stuck with Microsoft.
For all those "I'm a poor college student"'s out there, they have .edu discounts, $69 for 10.2. For those of you with jobs who complain at it being $129, when are you going to start giving stuff away for next to nothing at your work, and if you do, how much longer will you be getting a paycheck.
And last but not least, for those people who continue to complain about the software, and hardware, saying "I can buy a PC thats faster for $500" Fine, go buy one. Waste time trying to get the crap to work. Hope that your hardware doesn't blow up. Ofcourse, most of you who do that end up using a copied version of windows anyways because you refuse to pay microsoft because they are an evil company who wants to make money. So, ofcourse, you get no support, and you'll still bitch about things not working right. After awhile you'll complain even more about Windows then you did about the Mac. Someday, you'll probably switch back wishing you had never left in the first place. And as to PC's being cheaper, they really aren't. A nice business class PC is the same cost as a mac. Mac's are built as business class machines, the $500 HP you get at Best Buy isn't. For a good dual proc workstation from compaq, you'll be paying around $5k. Gee, that dual 1G box doesn't sound that expensive now does it. But ofcourse, most everyone who is complaining has never really delt with buying hardware somewhere other then Best Buy and CompUSA or some 2 bit online PC store.
So, give Apple a break, let the company try to make a profit so that you can keep using the software and hardware that you love. Otherwise, shut up or go complain to your cat, it will care about as much as I do.
And, you can feel free to flame away, but this will be my only post on this thread, a flame war is not on my agenda this week. But, ofcourse feel free to tell me I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread and I should win the nobel peace price
Brian
