Lauren and the Apple Tax

Lauren buys a laptop for under a $1000.

Of course, when she goes home she figures she has to pay another few hundred for Office and all the other software she needs so she just wipes it clean and installs a Linux distro. It’s amusing that now we we are in a recession Microsoft is rabbiting on about the Apple tax.

Link to silverlight content… Moonlight 1.0.1 shows itself as Silverlight 1.0.30401.0 - any content that wants Silverlight 2 won’t work in Linux. Here’s the Laptop Hunter ad in Adobe Flash.

As for the ‘Apple Tax’ article, that MS VP is right on a few things.

Personally, I’ve always found it interesting that some are willing to berate the $50-$90 premium that Windows adds to a machine but pay no mind to what the premium is on the Apple side. Honestly, I don’t understand the things some folks in the FOSS community direct flak over with MS but grant a straight pass to Apple.

The one thing that I definitely agree with that VP on is the whole ‘Macs run Windows!’ argument. If you are willing to add Windows to a Mac purchase…At that point the question really becomes “what can you run on OS X that isn’t on Windows?” and is that software worth the extra money you’re spending?

It might be justified for any number of reasons (I could see more than a few citing iLife or Logic Studio), but that’s a legitimate question people should ask themselves. Especially if one is buying a Mac because “well there’s no viruses”. If you know you’re going to run Windows anyway, that’s got to be one of the most expensive anti-virus solutions possible…Not to mention the Windows install doesn’t become invulnerable merely due to the presence of OS X - the user must change the way they use Windows.

The MSO on Windows vs OS X is sort of funny though. Microsoft decides what not to provide in MSO on Mac, then turns around and says “but Office on Mac is missing this and this!”. Clearly the left hand knows exactly what the right hand is doing. To be fair though, the apps that are missing are targeted more toward business users - and marketshare on the business side is probably even stronger for MS than it is on the consumer side (in the United States).

Hey guys, I can’t seem to view this clip because the site doesn’t think I have Silrverlight. I have the latest version of Moonlight installed in Firefox (the MS link takes me to the Moonlight site, which says that I am running the latest version). Were you guys able to see it?

Apologies. I posted the link when I was in XP. Here’s alink to a YouTube version that plays fine on OpenSUSE 11.