As you may have heard Apple have just released their new OS. "Snow Leopard".

In the Uk it costs £25 for a single user licence and £39 for a five user licence. The thing is that the disc is the same. Apple don't check they are basically trusting you to pay more if you put it on more machines.

The same goes for people who are upgrading from Tiger. Apple say they won't licence the cheaper upgrade at £25 to you because you have not bought Leopard (which had hundreds of new features). Instead Apple are asking Tiger owners to buy the Mac Box set at £129. (This gives the Tiger owner Snow Leopard would have cost £89+£25 + iLife £69 + iWork £69)

However the point is Apple don't check. If you choose not to be honest you can buy Snow Leopard and just put it on your Tiger Machine.


What I am asking here is "Is this trusting folk a good idea or not?" Should Microsoft follow suit? No codes, no complications, one version of the OS that you are trusted to pay for and instal. You register when you instal to get you year of free support from the manufacturer.

I think Apple have the right approach personally. If I install it on more than one machine then I will make sure that I have paid the appropriate amount. Apple's method is so easy and hassle-free that they are certainly worthy of the extra cash. Unlike Microsoft, I have great trouble installing their products on ONE machine (I'm sorry what? You want to activate Windows for a second time!? What do you mean you re-installed it because it was slow and clunky/broken/buggy as hell? etc).

I wonder how many users will simply "borrow" a copy from a friend? Do MacUsers tend to be more honest?

I think about 50% of the PCs I see have unlicensed Windows on. Obviously, all original Macs are supplied with a legit OS so it would be less obvious to me. I've only ever seen a couple in my life though

I do like the Apple way, it's as stress free as installing OpenSolaris or Linux. Windows can be a pain when you've installed it more than once.

But I think we have two very different companies here:
Apple, last time I checked, claimes to be a hardware company, so will do everything to protect their hardware (OS X is only available on Apple hardware, you want OS X? Buy our hardware). You can go and buy a Mac, wipe OS X off it and stick Windows, Linux, UNIX, whatever on it. Apple still gets the money for the hardware, and where OS X is concerned tries to stop you taking advantage of them.
Microsoft is a software house (mainly), they want to protect their software (Windows comes with an enforced licence, you want Windows? You must comply with the licence). You can buy almost any piece of generic hardware and Windows will mostly play with it. Whatever the hardware, Microsoft still gets the money for the software and tried to prevent you from taking advantage of them.



I would tend to say yes in my experience. When Leopard came out I lent my disk to a friend, I knew he had ordered a copy and it had got held up in the post, indeed a saw the disk a week or so later. I know it was technically wrong, but he had ordered I copy anyway. I wonder how often that happens in the Windows world, and actually, because of licence numbers, we know it can't happen.

As Ben says, Apple are mainly a hardware company, they find that hunting down people misusing Apple licences on Apple hardware isn't worth the effort and is worse for PR. In short, they don't live-and-die from OS X sales. Put OS X on non-Apple hardware and Apple with get a bit crotchety!

Microsoft is first and foremost a software company. They don't care what sort of computer you put their software on, just so long as you bought a licence for it. That is why they track the licences.

To be honest, I haven't got a problem with either model. I am trusting and I trust that MS software I pay for will work with little or no hassle. Entering my e-mail address and clicking Next isn't a big hassle and I've never had any problems with their activation.

I like Apple's method better, but it is impractical for a software company, as opposed to a hardware company that writes their own OS...

I bought Office 2008 and iLife '09 last week. Both installed in about the same amount of time, wanted a serial number, both installed without any fuss, both installed a bunch of updates afterwards...

As a Mac user I like Apples model better. It's nice to be treated as an honourable adult by a company for a change.

What I think would interesting is how Apples attitude would change if the likes of Psystar and co were really successful in opening up a stong clone market where Apple couldn't largely guarantee that it's software would only run on its own hardware. I suspect we might end up seen something more like the MS approach from Apple under those circumstances.

Apple isn't 'treating' people 'honourably'. It is a company, a company is an abstract entity with the sole purpose of drawing money into the bank accounts of its owners. Apple does things because it will earn the most money, not because it is 'jolly nice'. It's a marketing startegy.

Well of course it is. The point is though that their strategy is to not check up and use a strict registration system relying on the honesty of the users.

It works because you have to have Apple hardware to run the OS, so Apple make money whatever. If Apple were a software company it wouldn't make money. SO THEY WOULDN'T DO IT. In essence I disagree with applying moralistic terms such as 'trust' to something which is amoral, a machine, an abstract lifeless idea. It isn't about trust it's about profit. It's not that they are relying on the honesty of people, it's that they expect people to cheat the system, and they couldn't care less about it.

I don't get what you are saying.

Sure Apple made money the day that the punter bought the machine. However providing new software for that machine does not make them money unless people pay for it. Microsoft could just as easily say "Buy Vista to upgrade your machine. If you decide to put it on more than one computer then pay us extra".

That is what Apple is doing.

CC

All new Apple computers will be sold with the latest Apple OS.

From Apple's PoV, if some people want to pay for an upgrade then that's a bonus. What percentage of Apple turnovers are due to OS sales? I imagine it's quite small.

Not all new PCs are sold with a Windows OS at all, and MS doesn't make a profit on the hardware. so MS is 100% reliant on legal sales of it's software to make a profit. Of course they must accept a certain amount of piracy, but they have to make it unattractive or they'd never make any money. What percentage of MS's turnover is due to OS sales? I imagine it's most of it.

You may have a point. However I don't really see the difference with an upgrade. If a person has paid for XP or Vista they have paid a good wedge of cash out. So MS could do a similar thing with an upgrade if they wanted.

Back to the OP you are in effect saying it is NOT a good idea to trust people because if you do people will not pay. By that reckoning Apple should sell very very few family packs. I don't know if they do or not but it would be interesting to have the data.

Remember, most MS upgrades are free. There have only been 2 chargeable releases in the last decade.

As are Mac OS upgrades, out of around 50 updates (assuming each 'major' update has average of around 7 'minor' updates) only five (the upgrade between 10.0 and 10.1 was free) have been paid-for...

I think the point CC was making is that if you are currently using Tiger on a given machine, you should pay for the box set (£129).
It is a little like that band who said "Pay as much or as little for our album as you like".

5>>2 but I get what you're saying. I don't know what the relative costs were, but I suspect for a typical home user upgrading from ME to Vista via XP would not have been any more expensive than the equivalent Apple upgrades over that same decade.

However; the most interesting question remains. How many people upgraded honestly and paid the fee? As I said before, many of the PCs I see were not legally upgraded to the OS they are now running. World wide, I suspect it's a lot more than half.

The next year will be interesting in Windows licencing terms, given the number of officially sanctioned free W7 RC and very reasonably priced "pre-orders" out there. Many people bought W7 legally for far less than £129, and that is not an upgrade - that's a whole new OS which will run happily on a £100 PC.