Apple Plans Regular Future OS Updates
Steve Jobs announced that this Friday's release of OS X Leopard will be only one of a series of upgrades that could continue for as long as a decade.
"I'm quite pleased with the pace of new operating systems every 12 to 18 months for the foreseeable future," he said. "We've put out major releases on the average of one a year, and it's given us the ability to polish and polish and improve and improve."
Poor Microsoft must really be upset at this news. Not only is Leopard vastly superior to Microsoft's Vista at a much lower cost, but it doesn't take Apple seven long years to upgrade its operating system as it has Microsoft to move from XP to Vista.
Source: "As Apple Gains PC Market Share, Jobs Talks of a Decade of Upgrades" by John Markoff, published in The New York Times.
Engadget.com's coverage raises the issue of a difference in price structure rather than a clear winner on cost. If Windows has a life of 6 years and costs $400 and has two free service packs in that time then three versions of OS X in 6 years at $140 each is a lot less painful but not a lower price. Of course, customers may jump from Panther to Leopard and skip an expenditure, I'm just saying that we ought not be too smug--about price. We can still be smug that we got a better value. For, at the end of the day, they had to use Windows for those 6 years!