I think I've given you all the answers I can. You don't seem to think my answers are relevant, and I don't think your questions are either. So it seems we're at a Repeaty McRepeaterson impasse.
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?
You're getting way too lost in details, which is disappointing for someone plastering a link to an analogy all over the comments section. Microsoft sells a number of flavors of Windows, all of which cost $ >= 0. Including the OEM edition. Apple doesn't. Not one. Not comparable. That isn't the product Apple sells.
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?
No?
I don't actually have any dog in the fight about what some Windows OEM should refund. I don't live in Italy, and I don't buy OEM Windows machines. The only reasons I'm participating in this discussion are:
1. I find it interesting. The ruling is an interesting one for those customers (of which I'm not one).
2. There is some impressively wrong logic being thrown about, used to draw some questionable conclusions, and since someone on the Internet is wrong here I am.
If you believe the court ordered Dell to refund the $30, can't Apple calculate how much OS X development for Macbooks costs them?
The court didn't order Dell to refund how much development of Windows cost Microsoft. I don't understand how this is relevant.
Are you implying it's hard to calculate so they needn't refund?
No, I'm stating over and over that it's not comparable, because the products are different.
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?
Honestly, I'm not sure. That would make an interesting case. It's not the same case, but I would be curious about it.
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.
I'm not really interested in talking about what anyone deserves in the context of a conversation where people can't tell the difference between categories of things. We still haven't reached a consensus on that simple distinction.
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.
Wrong. There is no SKU, no instance of (currently installed) OS X on the market for a price, no invoice for bulk licensing, no permutation of OS X on the market that a person can buy with cash money and install on their own hardware. It isn't a comparable product.
So where can I buy a Windows OEM version for $30 that it costs Dell? It doesn't exist.
Glib answer: lmgtfy.
Slightly less (but still) glib answer (that doesn't price match Dell or equivalent): http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
Non-glib answer: Where can any person or organization buy an OEM (or any other) version of OS X?
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?
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.
Anyway, the difference seems to be meaningless semantics, so I wrote up a much better analogy here
It's not meaningless. These are different products, even though they both happen to be silicon and bits. Failing to recognize that is causing you to make silly analogies.
A better analogy than yours (and forgive me if you've already gotten this, I don't have the time to read all of the comments):
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.
This is not meant to establish any claim of quality of service for either, but to point out that one provides a different service than the other.
I've never heard of this on the kind of scale you're talking about. Any links?
No, it doesn't! It means you're given a license when you purchase a Mac. That's all it means.
The cost of the OS is definitely not zero.
Of course it's not. But the price to consumers on the market is $0.
Apple only allows OS X on Macs, which means you're forced to purchase a license to OS X(and future "free" updates to it) when you buy a Mac.
It emphatically does not mean that. It means you're forced to purchase an Apple-manufactured Mac in order to obtain a license to OS X. What you're suggesting, in a manipulative way (whether you mean to or not), is that Apple subsidizes OS X development with hardware revenues. It's a subtle difference, but it's a real one.
What is being proposed is one or both of:
- 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);
- Apple is forced to license OS X to unsupported platforms.
The former is kind of silly because you could not actually purchase the thing in question as it does not exist—unless you genuinely desire the latter. The latter is potentially attractive, but far outside the scope of the case in question, and so far unsupported by any legal precedent.
You're mixing issues. Apple charges $0 for every available license of OS X. It does not license OS X to run on non-Apple hardware; this has nothing to do with price, because you cannot obtain a license to run OS X on non-Apple hardware for any price. You can "get" a copy to install, and yes it will be at no cost (except the risk of obtaining the binaries outside the Mac App Store).
There is nothing in this ruling that compels Microsoft (or Apple, or anyone) to license their software to unsupported platforms.
Well, I'll be damned. Thanks for the correction.
Yup. Lucida was chosen as OS X's previous system font for a reason, because design mattered. Helvetica was chosen for iOS's system font for a reason, because design mattered. Helvetica was forced into OS X because platform consistency which sounds nice, but its absence (in terms of typography) was never really lacking before, because both system fonts were chosen in a design process to suit the needs of their respective platforms.
You're older than you've ever been.
And now you're even older.
I can still program fine.
Do you program in the default system font? How do you even set up an editor or IDE to inherit the default system font?
I'm not aware of any claims that ClearType is fuzzy, which, while a fuzzy term, is clear in its intention. If anything, complaints about ClearType tend to be the opposite: its forced conformance to pixel boundaries (in order to avoid fuzziness) distorts the shape of letters (particularly at a small size), thus impairing legibility.
How do you cite "general knowledge"? Here, I'll give it a go:
> It's general knowledge in typography that Helvetica is the most legible typeface. [1]
[1] Some shit I might have made up, or heard from someone.
How?
Or, you'll stick with buggy-ass 10.6/Mountain Lion if your machine is one of those left unsupported by Apple in its most recent "fuck you" to its customers, or, you simply still require that your PPC apps work.
Not sure whether you mean 10.6 or Mountain Lion (which is 10.8; the marketing names are stupid and confusing, so the mistake is understandable). Presumably you mean 10.6 (which is Snow Leopard) because you mention PPC—then again, you mention "buggy", a descriptor which I've seen used less for 10.6 than for any other version, and it has a rather large user base for its age because it has been so stable—but I'll address both.
If you mean Mountain Lion, nearly all of the supported systems are also supported by Yosemite (10.10). If you mean 10.6 (Snow Leopard), this is a system that was released over five years ago. In either case, Yosemite supports machines released over seven years ago. Apple announced the PowerPC-Intel transition over nine years ago, and completed it over eight years ago.
In the past, Apple has been overly aggressive in deprecating aging hardware; at times it did genuinely feel like a "fuck you". If anything, they've become more conservative in this regard than any time I can remember (and I remember well back into the PowerPC days before Steve Jobs returned). It hardly feels like a "fuck you" that with a 2007 iMac or MacBook Pro, I could have run 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, 10.9 and 10.10 (that is, literally every major release of OS X on Intel), or that the price to upgrade rapidly decreased to zero.
That "most recent" comment is telling. When exactly was it?
Our business in life is not to succeed but to continue to fail in high spirits. -- Robert Louis Stevenson
