Adam Turoff on Thu, 06 Feb 2003 16:50:32 -0500


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Re: [PLUG] Without OS X


On Thu, Feb 06, 2003 at 04:22:22PM -0500, gabriel rosenkoetter wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 06, 2003 at 04:16:16PM -0500, Paul wrote:
> > I guess Apple doesn't care about the person who already has OS X and 
> > decides to buy new hardware.  Not much different from M$ in that 
> > respect.  Why are Linux users who hate the M$ Tax willing to quietly pay 
> > the Apple Tax?
> 
> Because Apple's selling everything rather than insisting that
> another company charge you for Microsoft's software?

Yep.  Apple has never really been in the commodity hardware business.
They've always been in the "premium hardware" and "complete product"
business.

Lots of people buy x86 hardware because it can run their favorite OS,
whether it's Win98, WinNT, WinXP, Win2K, Linux, *BSD, Solaris x86, BeOS,
or whatnot.  Chances are if you're buying a commodity x86 box based on
the hardware components *only*, you're paying for a M$ license that
you don't want and won't use.  This is the case for most Linux users,
but just as appropriate for someone who buys a WinXP box but wants 
to run Win2K or something else (and needs to pay double!).

People don't really buy new Apple hardware to use it exclusively as 
a Linux/*BSD box.  Most of the time, there is no 'Apple Tax', because
the software is *actually used*!  Most Linux/*BSD users on Apple
hardware are looking to make older hardware useful, or gave up on 
the older Mac OSes and wanted UNIX under their fingertips.

After all, if you wanted a random box just to run Linux on, why *wouldn't* 
you want to buy an x86 box?   Seriously.

Z.

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