Speed to speed, quality to quality, an AMD or Intel box costs less than a Mac. The price evens out only when you add in the value proposition that OS X offers, and that few people understand (obviously we do here). The $129 price is for an UPGRADE. There's no such thing as a NEW license of the Mac OS.

Does anyone really believe that a hardware-agnostic version of OS X would sell for $129??

Regardless, while I'm certainly not thrilled with supporting all those versions, it makes sense from a consumer standpoint. Most people can simply buy the cheapest version. The only people possibly being "screwed" are the corporate users who have to buy a minimum level just to support domain authentication even if they don't need any other capabilities. On the other hand, I foresee corporate migration happening very slowly.

And for my clients, migrating to Linux will be MORE viable and less expensive than upgrading to Longhorn. We're already positioning for that and Macs instead of Longhorn.

BACK TO PC IDEAS... If you get these brands you will be in the top 1% of quality and ease of support:

ASUS motherboard
AMD retail box CPU
Crucial or Corsair memory
Antec power supply

Huh, never thought of that. Since all Mac's come with the OS installed already you never have to actually buy an operating system. So you're only buying an upgrade to the one on your system...interesting.

By that definition, there is also no such thing as a NEW license of Windows. Even if you build your own, you still need a BIOS, which needs to be licensed or "certified" by Microsoft, and I doubt they've given any of those away.

Since when does a bios get digitally signed (or certified as you say) by MS? BIOS is all firmware and runs before any OS takes place and is completely independent of any OS you might load onto a PC. The BIOS controls the PC at the very basic level and does not require any resource from any OS.

I say buy a PC over a console for many reasons, mainly because it is a PC and you can do a LOT more with it than a console and it can play games. Also, multiplayer games just plain out run better on a PC over the internet than on a console. I like consoles (I own a PS2, xbox and gamecube) but first person shooters just plain out run better on a PC.

I would just go AMD 64bit proc (dual core), xp pro, antec case and powersupply (true blue), corsair memory (if you can afford it) and a high end ATI or Nvidia card.

If that were true, there'd be no issue running Windows on an Intel Mac, but the fact is that the BIOS isn't compatible. There was an article recently quoting one of the vps at Microsoft who said that they'd be happy to get Apple in their certification program. That leads me to believe there is one.

Of course, even if there isn't one, you still need to get a BIOS from somebody, so any OS is just an upgrade from there.

There is no BIOS in the Intel Mac, it's got a new technology for bootstrapping a system. It simply isn't recognized by Windows XP, or any other OS that doesn't have a new bootloader specifically written to work with it. The BIOS is part of the hardware and is licensed/purchased by the manufacturer of the motherboard, typically from Award, Phoenix, or AMI. There is no MS involvement whatsoever, except that you can optionally choose to "MS Certify" your hardware, or not. You can put any OS on that machine as long as its bootloader recognizes BIOS standards. It has nothing to do with "upgrade."

The new technology, EFI, works the same way. It's just different, and requires an OS bootloader with different calls.

For a while there you could get system-specific HALs (Hardware Abstraction Layer) for various non-Intel systems and Windows, such as those from DEC and some from HP. You could also write a HAL for Windows on PPC if you wanted. The HAL separates the OS from the hardware.

Vista will run on EFI hardware, which will slowly be adopted by all manufacturers.

BIOS, EFI, some new technology that hasn't been developed yet, the point remains the same. None of them appear out of thin air, so if you're going to classify all versions of OS X as upgrades, then you have to do the same with Windows, because both systems require you to purchase somebody else's code in order to run them.

BIOS developers do not develope a BIOS tailored to an OS. The OS devs write code in the boot strap that supports the BIOS. BIOS stands for Basic Input Output System, and it controls just that. The basic functions of every I/O on your system. Onboard devices, ATA drives, boot process, IRQs and other resources, Advanced Power management, so on and so forth. Once an OS loads, it pretty much takes control of all those things. The BIOS is how a PC runs with out any OS. Therefore, there is no unsupported x86 based BIOS that you can't load MS windows on because its not digitally signed by MS. I have never ran across any x86 machine that I could not load windows on (excluding any propritary system, that runs on its own closed x86 hardware).

Intel Macs have their own special firmware just like all macintoshes have before. You can certify your hardware to run in the OS, however a BIOS does not need to run in the OS. Once a system reaches the point in the boot strap where the OS takes over, the OS does in fact take over the system and all hardware is now controlled by the OS.

The reason you cannot load win xp on an intel mac is because no one has developed a boot strap process that boots up windows xp on a mac. If someone did develope that then you could in fact load XP on an intel mac. Getting drivers would be the next step to making the machine work in the OS.

...and once again, Windows would be an 'upgrade' to that boot strap process. The technical details aren't relevant to that point.

Which console has Barbie Pony Racing? My little girl would love that!

I just don't see the logic in that since an OS is entirely seperate, but I will just agree to disagree.

Now, back to building a PC, this is how the Vista release of windows will work

http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=1269

When you purchase your version of vista it will have all the versions of that tier on the install DVD. So if you want a low end retail version you install that. If you wish to upgrade to the premium retail version of that OS (like Home edition) then you can do so right off the DVD and by running windows upgrade manager.

Pricing and all the features and not really listed yet, so I do not know what all will be the differences between the three consumer level OSes.

It's simple, really. The claim is that every version of Mac OS is an 'upgrade' because you need to buy Mac hardware in order to run it. I'm simply pointing out that the same is true of Windows. Software doesn't run without hardware, and you have to pay the same kind of toll no matter what OS you choose. You can argue that the toll for the Windows hardware is lower if you like, but it's still there, so you can't call OS X install disks upgrades without labeling Windows installers the same way.

I was just checking out the different versions of Windows Vista that are slated for release at this point.

Windows Vista Ultimate Edition sounds good.

thoughts?

You can't possibly really need this explained to you, but heck, here goes... Windows runs on any compatible hardware and MS gets no income from that hardware. OS X retail boxes are upgrades for an existing Mac system, from which Apple made a profit, on both the hardware and original software. Now please, stop trying to prove the unprovable.

Good for what? So far it's little more than Win XP, with some eye candy and trivial features.

Who cares where the money goes? The point is, in either case you can't run the OS without making prior purchases of both hardware and software. That makes them both upgrades.

Example: I can purchase a car from GM or Toyota and have them upgrade the stereo, security system, etc, or I can take it to somebody else to do the job, but either way it's an upgrade. The same applies to computers, but Apple does a better job upgrading their hardware than Microsoft does upgrading somebody else's.

Right. I hope you're just being obstinate and don't really think that's "logic."

I don't think it's logical to call either one an upgrade, but if you're going to do it, you need to be consistent.

<ROTFL>----- :D

Maybe what you're missing here is that you CANNOT buy a Mac without buying a copy of the Mac OS bundled with it. You CAN buy an Intel/AMD machine without a copy of Windows. Therefore, there is no such thing as a retail box "original" license of Mac OS. There are both original and upgrade versions of Windows XP.

When you can buy Mac OS unbundled, there will be a full price original license and a low-cost upgrade.

The BIOS firmware is an irrelevant straw man, you should let it go. It has nothing to do with MS.

I'm not missing anything. I just don't buy the argument. Any computer that you buy without an OS needs an "upgrade." Buying a computer and not putting an OS on it is like buying a car with no steering wheel. Neither can be driven. If some auto maker offered cars without steering wheels, would you claim that Ford, GM & Chrysler cars all had "upgrade" steering wheels or OEM steering wheels?

By the way, here's the dictionary definition of upgrade:

Note that it isn't necessary to replace a component in order to qualify as an upgrade. Adding a component is sufficient.