You left out the given for any computer platform that all your hardware
has to be replaced every three years or so even though it still works
perfectly because hardware advances are so great in such short cycles
and tied with software advances that you have to (if you want to enjoy
those advances). There is a Luddite answer for all this but then a
Luddite wouldn't even have a computer in the first place.
Richard Gaskin wrote:
Judy Perry wrote:
Yeah, but what about the money we have invested in PPC-native apps?
Do we
get those all free?
Nope. That's part of the Mac Tax we've all been paying for years.
Artificial demand is how Apple keeps itself and its vendors in sales.
They can't do it just a 2.5% marketshare, and if you take iPods out of
the picture their revenue position rather bites.
Apple can only stay afloat by selling the same product to the same
customers over and over. We pay an annual OS X tax of $139, even
though the first two (arguably three) releases were of beta quality.
Sure, there are the occassional switchers. But I doubt many of the 2
million Tiger sales went to them.
For vendors, Apple was the only major vendor who transitioned to USB
without continuing support for legacy ports. This created an
artificial demand for new peripherals, and a lot of vendors who were
leaving decided to stay to cash in. Apple needs vendors, vendors need
disproportionate sales to justify the disproportionate R&D. It's good
for everyone -- except the consumer who gets the bill.
So if we love the Mac platform enough to have endured these things for
so long, is a third set of arbitrary paid upgrades really that much
more expensive than the two we've already paid for?
Like a friend keeps telling me, "It's an economic democracy: one
dollar, one vote". If we want to vote for Apple we pony up the cash.
If not, there's always Linux. It's already available for both x86 and
PPC. ;)
I dunno... I kinda like my dual G4 desktop
I still love my Power Computing box. It still does what I bought it
for, but that hasn't stopped me from buying newer computers in recent
years.
I suspect you'll get far more than two years' life out of your G4.
Just as with PPC, a switch to Intel doesn't mean your current Mac will
suddenly stop working.
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World Media Corporation
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Rev tools and more: http://www.fourthworld.com/rev
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