Apple throws free Snow Leopard bone at MobileMe punters Apple is now giving away an OS upgrade to as a ploy to wean punters off its MobileMe service and onto its iCloud storage offering. Cupertino's older OSes do not support iCloud. Cupertino has informed MobileMe customers still using the 2007 Mac operating system Leopard that they can have the next version of the OS – the 2009 …
You've got a pre 2006 Mac (in which case what are you moaning for, it doesn't owe you much at that age) or rather more likely you don't have a Mac at all. Apple tried the OS licensing route before and it was an unmitigated disaster, why would they be stupid enough to try it again?
Apple's business model is to make money selling the hardware while providing software and service at fairly low cost as incentives to buy. You don't like that? You're free to chose another supplier with a different model, but don't expect Apple to give you a free OS to run on it.
I think this is Apple's implicit recognition that they are deliberately forcing customers to upgrade, to preserve the features they're using now (and paying for now).
I had to buy a new Mac just to preserve my mac.com email address that I've been paying $90/year since MobileMe first shipped, that must be at least 5 years ago. I had no devices that could run iCloud, I have a first generation iPhone and a PowerMac Quad G5 (a really expensive one that cost $4700, with developer discount, due to the insanely expensive Quadro FX4500 video card). Both of these machines serve me perfectly well. But no, Apple is forcing me to upgrade my Mac. If I had kept using my old Mac which runs MacOS X 10.5 maximum, I would have lost my primary email address.
So I've been paying for this lame MobileMe service for years, about the only feature I used (aside from email) was file storage on iDisk. And now that's gone. I feel like I was forced to buy a new computer, and I got a downgrade in services. Well at least I can still get my email on my old iPhone, even though it no longer syncs anything.
I stopped using iCloud when it started duplicating and deleting calendar events (at random), it was OK with 2 devices sync'd but the more you add the less reliable it became, when I got to 5 it was unuseable; the whole system seems the depend on all sync'd devices being on-line all the time.
Show me a 7 year old workstation-level windows PC that has performance that is still competitive with current models. How many times did you buy new PCs in the last 7 years? Do you even run high-performance apps like Maya that need a high end video card, or do you just run Microsoft Office?
Is a 32 bit Intel Mac Mini 1.4 GHZ I love it dearly. I have had the memory & hard disc upgraded. It does sterling work these days connected to a 32" LG HD telly with an Elgato Eye TV added plus front row as my media hub. My Notebook still has Vista on it cos I have plumped for the better option of Ubuntu. No new kit required for gmail etc so i'll be pouring the cash saved down my neck.
"On the contrary, paying for an OS is a bit like how I pay a plumber to fix my plumbing, because I can't be arsed to waste my own time doing it."
I'm not saying you shouldn't buy an OS if you want to, but that argument is not sensible. The alternative to buying an OS is not writing one yourself. You know how an Ubuntu install goes? Pop in the CD (or USB stick), boot, click "next" a few times (language selection, keyboard layout, timezone, etc.), reboot, run updates. *Exactly* like an OSX install. They both have upgrades from one version to the next too.
Anyway... I don't see the logic of this. Free updates are never a bad thing, but giving people an update from an OS incompatible with your product to a slightly newer OS that is still incompatible with your product? I don't see that being very persuasive towards getting people to use your product.
Glad to hear you have had such success with Ububtu. My own experience is "not so much", in that after three tries I could not find a distro where both authentication (PAM) and WiFi (at more than WEP level) worked, until Canonical finally had mercy on me and dropped support for my system. What was that about Linux being "great for older machines"? That would be some other distro, or using the definition of "older" that means "but less than three years old".
Having done _many_ installs of, e.g SLES and RHEL on servers, I doubt I'm exactly a novice at Linux installs (even had some driver patches accepted), but you _did_ specifically mention Ubuntu. (Full disclosure: it does amuse me that a "server install" includes stuff I'd call more desktop-y, like games and media-players, but the config process lets me fix that)
To forestall any plaints of "Apple fanboi!", I was also not amused that Apple chose to break Migration-assistant from 10.4PPC to 10.5x86. They must have been _really_ pissed at PPC fans.
As for the poster with the Mac Mini and EyeTV. I agree that, modulo a few annoying bugs that I wish had higher priority than messing with new remotes, is very nice. Too bad I have Comcast, which is apparently hell-bent on eliminating ClearQAM, and thus any option of avoiding their box.
Think the article missed a critical point. Snow Leopard is virtually required to install Lion. One can not download Lion from the App Store without SL. Once one has downloaded Lion then it is possible to make a bootable install DVD or USB stick which would allow installation on a bare machine but this is beyond the comfort level of non The Register readers.
The simplest and cheapest solution for Apple was to give away physical copies of Snow Leopard to those who have MobileMe accounts. Doubt many who have 64 bit hardware (required by Lion) skipped the SL phase.
Have a first gen Macbook intel and run snow leopard (which can't use most of iCloud but CAN use its email) and an iphone with iOs 5.1 with iCloud activated...but only for email.
My Mobile me synch was going history June 30 so activated iCloud. I sync the phone wifi to macbook (calendar, some photos, and all-important contacts)
But I have gone to Google contacts which now syncs with macbook...and basic contacts list will be there until...?
Rumor has it a version of snow leopard might be released after Mobile me is dead and buried and Apple has squeezed every possible buck out for Lion...
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