Comment Re:Answer: No. (Score 1) 232
Google expects you to start paying after 2 or 3 years
Google expects you to start paying after 2 or 3 years
Most malware on Windows comes from legitimately installed programs rather than exploits. E.g. Windows RT, Windows Phone and Xbox have ~zero malware, compared to Android which has a lot of malware. It's a combination of how popular the OS is, plus if it allows non-store apps to be installed.
I am also interested in knowing if you think the ruling allows buyers of the Surface Pro a refund if they wipe Windows and install Linux and if so, how the amount would be calculated.
>The court didn't order Dell to refund how much development of Windows cost Microsoft. I don't understand how this is relevant.
The court ordered a refund of how much it costed Dell, the company which sold the PC.
It is relevant because, included in the cost of the Dell laptop is what Dell pays MS.
Included in the cost of the Macbook is how much OS X costs Apple. It certainly isn't free of cost for Apple to develop OS X. They pay for salaries, office space etc.
That cost can be calculated, and having a big accounting and operations department that track every penny, Apple already knows it internally.
Back to the hotel analogy, how does it matter to the hotel visitor whether the breakfast is made inhouse or outsourced when asking for a refund? Surely in both cases, they are included in the cost they're paying for the room and the hotel knows exactly how much the food is costing them.
What if the eggs benedict that the customers really like was made by an outsourcer and not inhouse, do they suddenly get the ability to ask for a refund?
>These aren't comparable. The OEM does not have to refund what it costs Microsoft to develop Windows. In order to approach comparability, there would have to be a market price for OS X which could be assessed.
That doesn't make much sense. I am not sure what the relevance is. Assuming Dell pays MS $30 per copy, are you implying that the judge ordered Dell to refund $99.99 to the customer who didn't want Windows? If you don't think the court did that, what is the relevance of the existence of the $99.99 copy again?
>Where can any person or organization buy an OEM (or any other) version of OS X?
If, for arguments sake, MS pulls Windows from the retail market completely and only sells to OEMs, Dell needn't refund anything anymore even if they continue to pay MS $30 per copy? Is that your argument?
If you believe the court ordered Dell to refund the $30, can't Apple calculate how much OS X development for Macbooks costs them? Are you implying it's hard to calculate so they needn't refund?
1. Hotel O hires caterers, and passes that cost on to its customers. Some of its customers object, because the food served by the caterers is not in line with either their preference or their moral convictions, and the catering was not the service they were seeking, they simply couldn't opt out. They were actually interested in a safe and comfortable place to sleep for the night near some attraction or appointment.
2. Bed & Breakfast A is a hot spot for its (few) patrons because it serves a particular dish of eggs benedict that they enjoy, and has a spectacular view.
What if some of the patrons in #2 don't like the eggs benedict or the view but just wanted a place to sleep because they think the beds(hardware) are superior? Should they be denied a refund solely because there are fewer of their kind? Your earlier argument as more like if the caterers in #1 sold the same food also in their restaurant, somehow O's customers are eligible for a refund, but A's are not.
http://www.cnet.com/news/macbo...
>Of course it's not. But the price to consumers on the market is $0.
In that case, so is the price of Windows preinstalled on a Sony laptop. If you buy a $1000 laptop, you get a laptop which happens to have the OS installed.
>The former is kind of silly because you could not actually purchase the thing in question as it does not exist
So where can I buy a Windows OEM version for $30 that it costs Dell? It doesn't exist. There's a $150 but Dell didn't pay $150.
>Apple is forced to establish (or perhaps have established for it) a market price for a standalone copy of OS X with a license for non-Apple hardware (which is an unsupported platform);
Did the judge say OEM have to refund the retail market price of Windows? I don't think so. They need to refund what it costs them. Then why does Apple have to establish a market price for OS X versus what it costs them?
Anyway, the difference seems to be meaningless semantics, so I wrote up a much better analogy here:
>A Mac is closer to a PC then a car, but since most of the reason people buy Macs is they're the only legal way to run MacOS it's not exactly the same.
Most of PC buyers intend to run Windows too. Even of the 1% of people who install an alternative OS, many of them dual boot. It would be interesting to see statistics of alternative OS installs between Macs and PCs. I don't think Macs will be as low as you think since they're popular among the web developer crowd who typically deploy on Linux servers.
There are a lot of people who buy Macs because they believe it's higher quality hardware, and then replace it with Linux or Windows because they need to run some non Mac apps or it's their preferred OS. I don't see anything wrong with some of them expecting not being forced to pay for OS X and bundled software like iWork etc., especially in Italy now that it's the law.
I have a much better analogy here. Also see my reply to that post.
Posted an analogy here http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Also see my reply to that post with additional info.
Also posted a proper hotel analogy here http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Also see my own reply to that post.
To extend the analogy to OS X's free upgrade argument, imagine hotel A gives free lunch too, not just breakfast. So the arguments here seem to be saying, "since lunch is also free, it means breakfast is free, unlike at hotel O where you have to order food from M directly(which implies that breakfast there was not really free), hence CA does not deserve a refund while CO does".
All this talk is just mostly semantics and shifting things around. Let me tell you how.
Lets take a hotel that gives a complimentary free breakfast.
First, "free" there does not refer to free as in beer, nor free as in liberty.
Why not? Because the breakfast is not free to someone who hasn't paid for the hotel room(similar to how OS X is not free to install on VMs and PCs), and the cost for the beer comes directly out of the pool of the prices paid for the room by users.
So now, lets take two hotels, Hotel O and Hotel A.
Hotel O outsources their breakfast to a catering company M. A pays M for making breakfast. M hires chefs, buys food from the market etc.
Hotel A makes the breakfast in it's own kitchen, hiring chefs, buying ingredients etc on it's own.
Now , customers CO (staying at hotel O) and CA(staying at hotel A) do not like hotel breakfasts because they suck and they have free breakfast at the conference they're attending anyway. So they want a refund from their hotels.
So, your argument for Hotel O being forced to refund the breakfast cost and Hotel A not being forced legally is that "it's kinda difficult to calculate A's costs because you have to add this and that and subtract that and this, while it's easy to calculate O's costs. Hence O should refund the money to CO but CA is screwed?!
Can you explain why CA has less consumer rights just because A happens to make breakfast inhouse instead of outsourcing it like O?
What difference does it make to CA and how does this make any sense?
What apple is doing is like giving away "free" beer to people who paid a lot of money to join a private beer drinking club. So its not "free" beer, its "no additional cost" beer.
That's actually a bad example, since a beer drinking club purchases beer from the market and it shows up on it's invoices, just like the OEMs.
Apple is like a beer drinking club that brews its own beer and has costs associated with doing that, from raw materials to labor costs. Not sure what the difference between those two clubs is regarding how they resell the beer to their customer.
So apple can say "well, the operating system part is complimentory with the purchase of hardware", and other PC makers cannot say this, because they don't own the software.
Apple spends money on developing OS X in-house, the OEMs outsource the development to Microsoft. They sure can say it's complimentary. A hotel that gives free breakfast can say their food is complimentary regardless of whether they hire an outside firm to make it or if they make it in their own kitchen.
E = MC ** 2 +- 3db
