[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Mac Owners 3X More Likely to Preview Next OS Than Windows Users here

[riskyrob]

Been running Win8 since first week of consumer preview. It's worth a peek

[allensanders91]

You wanna know why Mac users are more likely to try out the customer preview? Because those morons pay $100/year to do so. Windows is a PUBLIC beta. That's the difference. Who the heck thinks its okay to pay someone to test their software?

[nonseq]

allensanders91, on 31 March 2012 - 06:56 AM, said:

You wanna know why Mac users are more likely to try out the customer preview? Because those morons pay $100/year to do so. Windows is a PUBLIC beta. That's the difference. Who the heck thinks its okay to pay someone to test their software?

Gee, I think new versions come out every couple of years and the last 2 cost $29.95 (full version, the whole enchilada, no up-selling) You must be talking about some other set of morons.

This post has been edited by nonseq: 31 March 2012 - 07:07 AM

[CaniblCat]

There's also the fact that virtually every other Windows OS has serious bugs where most new MAc OS's are fairly stable upgrades to the previous version and (with the exception of the first OSX release) not an attempt to create a whole new ecosystem for Mac.
New versions of Windows require users (and techs) to effectively relearn everything, where new Mac versions only increase the instinctual nature of the OS without changing everything each time.

[Goldie07]

nonseq, on 31 March 2012 - 07:04 AM, said:

allensanders91, on 31 March 2012 - 06:56 AM, said:

You wanna know why Mac users are more likely to try out the customer preview? Because those morons pay $100/year to do so. Windows is a PUBLIC beta. That's the difference. Who the heck thinks its okay to pay someone to test their software?

Gee, I think new versions come out every couple of years and the last 2 cost $29.95 (full version, the whole enchilada, no up-selling) You must be talking about some other set of morons.

I guess you missed this part of the article

"while Apple limited Mountain Lion to registered Apple developers, people who had paid a $99 annual fee to receive early Apple code "

The original post was talking about the cost of being a registered Apple developer, which costs $99 / year in order to be able to test the beta version of a new OS X release. The post was not about the cost of buying the RTM version of OS X.

[veggiedude]

allensanders91, on 31 March 2012 - 06:56 AM, said:

You wanna know why Mac users are more likely to try out the customer preview? Because those morons pay $100/year to do so. Windows is a PUBLIC beta. That's the difference. Who the heck thinks its okay to pay someone to test their software?

Read the article again. There is no 'customer preview' for Mac users to pay $100/year. You are referring to the limited preview for developers only.

[nonseq]

Goldie07, on 31 March 2012 - 10:11 AM, said:

nonseq, on 31 March 2012 - 07:04 AM, said:

allensanders91, on 31 March 2012 - 06:56 AM, said:

You wanna know why Mac users are more likely to try out the customer preview? Because those morons pay $100/year to do so. Windows is a PUBLIC beta. That's the difference. Who the heck thinks its okay to pay someone to test their software?

Gee, I think new versions come out every couple of years and the last 2 cost $29.95 (full version, the whole enchilada, no up-selling) You must be talking about some other set of morons.

I guess you missed this part of the article

"while Apple limited Mountain Lion to registered Apple developers, people who had paid a $99 annual fee to receive early Apple code "

The original post was talking about the cost of being a registered Apple developer, which costs $99 / year in order to be able to test the beta version of a new OS X release. The post was not about the cost of buying the RTM version of OS X.

And, frankly the article is incorrect. Apple provides a great deal more than early releases of OS's to registered developers. https://developer.apple.com/programs/ I willingly pay $99 for each of iOS and Mac developer programs and, they pay for themselves over and over again. In fact I would pay for the developer tools, forums, and support w/o the early OS releases. And it makes sense to limit early releases to those who need to have the code to develop applications that work when the public versions are released.

I imagine the same is true for Windows developers but I could be wrong.

There is certainly a disconnect between the headline and internal copy and the actual facts in this article.

This post has been edited by nonseq: 31 March 2012 - 11:34 AM

[Nuke61]

It seem to me that the article should really be titled "Mac DEVELOPERS 3x More Likely To Preview Next Os Than Windows DEVELOPERS" -- because regular OS X users didn't even have access to the beta.

[kennyrosenyc]

Yet another bit of sillyness. This is completely irrelevant. How many people 'previewed Windows 7? Microsoft sold 400 million Windows 7 licenses last year. I'll bet they sell about the same amount for Windows 8. All of this talk about 'desktops dying' is based on the fact that desktop sales growth has dropped from something like 11% to 5%. A significant drop? Yes. But desktops last longer than laptops and/or tablets simply because you can replace every single component (on a Windows or Linux system anyway). If you take tablets out of the mix Apple only sold 5 million computers. Of course they made more money, but they also sell hardware where Microsoft does not (unless you count the XBox). If you want to compare sales you should compare the sales of Windows based systems vs. Apple based systems. Then people would see that Apple has really grown quite a bit but not enough to warrant all of this talk.

[mozarle]

OK for 1 - 1.5 year from now I can preview Win.9 & Pink Panther.

[nonseq]

mozarle, on 31 March 2012 - 12:16 PM, said:

OK for 1 - 1.5 year from now I can preview Win.9 & Pink Panther.

Which Pink Panther- Peter Sellers or Steve Martin? I say go with the original.

[AbidDin]

Windows has a much bigger market share. If both had the same market share then this statistic was understandable. Plus, you might want to look at the numbers. 1 or 2 million windows 8 downloads in one day. How many was mountain lions?

[SweetnTenderd8c4]

Goldie07, on 31 March 2012 - 10:11 AM, said:

nonseq, on 31 March 2012 - 07:04 AM, said:

allensanders91, on 31 March 2012 - 06:56 AM, said:

You wanna know why Mac users are more likely to try out the customer preview? Because those morons pay $100/year to do so. Windows is a PUBLIC beta. That's the difference. Who the heck thinks its okay to pay someone to test their software?

Gee, I think new versions come out every couple of years and the last 2 cost $29.95 (full version, the whole enchilada, no up-selling) You must be talking about some other set of morons.

I guess you missed this part of the article

"while Apple limited Mountain Lion to registered Apple developers, people who had paid a $99 annual fee to receive early Apple code "

The original post was talking about the cost of being a registered Apple developer, which costs $99 / year in order to be able to test the beta version of a new OS X release. The post was not about the cost of buying the RTM version of OS X.

... and you must of been absent that day at school when they went over the difference between Developers and Customers.

[SweetnTenderd8c4]

AbidDin, on 31 March 2012 - 01:10 PM, said:

Windows has a much bigger market share. If both had the same market share then this statistic was understandable. Plus, you might want to look at the numbers. 1 or 2 million windows 8 downloads in one day. How many was mountain lions?

Way back 15 years ago when I started using macs, the mere mention that apple would one day be on the level of MS was laughable and seemed impossible and completely out of reach...macs and PC's couldn't even talk with one another without jumping through 1000 hoops... in a few short, very short years, (since the ipod came out) apple has obliterated the industry, as well as the PC industry.... I think apple had like a .01 share of the market, macs were a niche market. Since then they took companies like Sony, MS, and ate them for lunch.
The fact that Apple has their own hardware AND software has to be taken into consideration as well. How many PC's do you think MS would sell if they made their hardware as well?