Apple takes a few shots at Windows during WWDC09

The thing about the I'm a PC ads are that that claim that the POS cheap notebooks are the same quality as Apple notebooks, which is not true, except for raw performance, and even then is only barely true.

ANd the idea of Snow Leopard being good while 7 is bad isn't hypocritical. Apple wasn't criticizing the idea of refining an old OS. They were saying that the base is still Vista, which is widely perceived as poor quality, while their base is solid. So while MS needed to back track on their OS because of inherent problems, they only patched it up. Snow Leopard is a continuation of a good thing, Windows 7 is a continuation of a bad thing.

Whether you agree is irrelevant, their thought process isn't hypocritical.

pillainp said:

Was just thinking...
Maybe MS could come up with a new ad campaign for Windows 7: You can keep your old PC.

After all, Snow Leopard leaves all those PowerMac and PowerPC based Mac owners in the lurch. It may only cost $29, but then you have to add the cost of the Intel Mac you have to buy to run it. That means Apple has, at one stroke, trashed all those older machines.

And to think people lambast MS because their 10-year-old printer won't work with Vista or Windows 7.

PPC macs are kinda old too, the first intel macs came out in 2005, right ?

pcs from that made running vista posible i guess, but not like present ones do.

pd: in fact, an athlon XP with 1gb... can run windows 7 decently, but utterly sucks on vista

you do have a point about NOT being able to run it at all, but o well :P

I don't think Apple cares too much about market share as long as they can make huge profits and make premium notebooks. Macs are just common enough that most applications most people need have mac equivalents or even ports. OS X is a solid OS, IMO with some better design choices than Windows, hardware is great, they're happy, I'm happy, everybody's happy. There's no money in cheap laptops, the margins are too small, so Apple doesn't play in that game, when they can sell less laptops for the same amount of money and come out with amazing brand image that they leverage for other products.

Apple isn't trying to capture the market, they just want to cater to premium laptop, students, and creative professionals.

@rcocchiararo: you are simplifying Vista's problems. When Vista was released, ~5% of business PCs were able to run Vista with aero, and not much more on the consumer side. Vista effectively locked out a much much larger percent of their market than Apple is now. Apple needs to complete the 64-bit and intel transitions and MS had its reasons also.

PhreePhly said:

Given that the internals (the actual part that makes the notebook run) of the MacBook are of no better quality than the competing Dells, Toshibas, Sonys or HPs, the only thing that the Macs have is a pretty shell. It is pretty, and quite sturdy, but don't tell me that the internals are any better, and that's what matters.

PhreePhly

I'm not claiming internals are better (though some of the PC comparisons lacked a few minor internal features). I don't disagree with you on that. I disagree that the internals are all that matters any more than the engine and transmission is all that matters in a car.

I will gladly pay 15-20% more for a thin, light sturdy design and, for my workflow, is a superior OS.

I don't really disagree too much with anything in your post two above.

But my point with the business and consumer readiness for Vista was just that it's unfair to criticize Apple for cutting support for pretty old computers, while Vista effectively cut support for nearly all their computers. I think both were justified.

Apple with the PPC chips were ridiculous. In fact, Apple of the 90s and early 00s was ridiculous. But ever since the iPod and the intel transition, they've seemed to have gotten their head on straight. Both Apple and MS have histories plagued by stupidity and anti-competitiveness.

I really like both companies and the work they put out. But since this thread has members crapping on Apple, I'm just trying to point out MS has done similar things many many times before.

But I don't think internals are all that matter. The internals are vital, like the engine and transmission, but past a certain point, it's all about comfort to the user. Light thin laptops are simply more pleasurable to use and handle, PC or Mac. Especially to somebody like me, who is a power user in how much I rely on computers for work and do tons of scripting and 'advanced features', but the things I do aren't resource intensive.

But this really isn't a Mac vs PC debate. It's a debate on if Apple is being unfair and deceitful to little ol' innocent Microsoft.