3 ms·

You're right but I don't think it's a matter of money. It's convenience. Microsoft seems to be going out of their way to keep users of their older products in t

You're right but I don't think it's a matter of money. It's convenience. Microsoft seems to be going out of their way to keep users of their older products in the dark ages. The other major OS players (Apple and Linux distros) seem to be able to upgrade users of their older products when it comes to things like SNI. I mean, unless I'm seriously misinformed it shouldn't be a big deal to offer users of XP support for SNI and generally allow them to access upgrades that are in the same kind of class (for lack of a better word) as SNI. That kind of upgrade is very different than giving users the kind of OS upgrades that bring better performance or new UI's, various little wizards to help them connect to wifi, etc. The latter type of upgrade is why an average user upgrades a system, not because of under-the-hood stuff like SNI so giving it to them when they're still such a large portion of MS users isn't going to discourage them from upgrading to Win7 or whatever new thing they come out with. I've been able to upgrade my Mac for about four years now from Leopard to Snow Leopard to Lion without a hitch. If I were using XP I'd probably have to buy new hardware with every upgrade and that's what's stopping people. It's not the money but the inconvenience that stops people. If their XP is doing the bare minimum of what they need it for then they're not going to upgrade to Win7 even if they know about the new ways it makes their life more convenient and how much prettier it is. They don't want to transfer their old important files from one drive to another. That's scary for the average person no matter how easy Microsoft advertises it to be. It feels like Microsoft makes decisions with a heavier focus on marketing than real technical improvements, innovations, or user experience. I mean they make a good product (it's not my cup of tea but I'm not a bigot about it) but they're still operating like they have no competition and it's really screwing with people like us who are trying to move things forward.

leviathant 15y ago
It's great that you've been able to upgrade from Leopard - released in 2007. Comparing that to upgrading XP is disingenuous, as Windows XP was released in 2001, which puts it in the vintage of OS X Puma. I had a Dual G5 Power Mac from 2006. Consequently, I have not been able to upgrade that machine past Leopard. That's new hardware that had all of a single year of OS upgrades. It's been demonstrated that you can run Windows 7 on Windows XP hardware. I know that when I upgraded from XP to 7 on a several-years-old machine when Win7 first came out, it was notably faster. I had installed the free beta, just to see, and was so surprised at how much better it was, I pre-ordered an operating system for the first time in my life. What version of OSX can you run on a Mac from 2001?
- billpatrianakos 15y ago
  I thought of that and you have a point. But I'd say my other point about Microsoft not really making it easy to upgrade still stands. They really don't do much to make upgrading cheap or convenient and although Apple has only been moving in the cheap/convenient direction as far as upgrades are concerned for that past few years you still can't deny that Microsoft has shown itself to be an incredibly slow-moving, stubborn company despite there finally being some real competition in recent years. Its not that Windows is somehow shitty in some way, it's just that Microsoft doesn't do as much to encourage upgrades as they could or should. And this applies mostly to the average consumer. I know you and I can get any OS to run any hardware if we really wanted to but the average person doesn't take any chances and goes with the recommendations on the box. If they could skip the box altogether and get it downloaded and installed that way I'm sure we'd see even less of XP. I'm not so sure that'll happen any time soon though.

leviathant 15y ago

It's great that you've been able to upgrade from Leopard - released in 2007. Comparing that to upgrading XP is disingenuous, as Windows XP was released in 2001, which puts it in the vintage of OS X Puma. I had a Dual G5 Power Mac from 2006. Consequently, I have not been able to upgrade that machine past Leopard. That's new hardware that had all of a single year of OS upgrades. It's been demonstrated that you can run Windows 7 on Windows XP hardware. I know that when I upgraded from XP to 7 on a several-years-old machine when Win7 first came out, it was notably faster. I had installed the free beta, just to see, and was so surprised at how much better it was, I pre-ordered an operating system for the first time in my life. What version of OSX can you run on a Mac from 2001?

billpatrianakos 15y ago
I thought of that and you have a point. But I'd say my other point about Microsoft not really making it easy to upgrade still stands. They really don't do much to make upgrading cheap or convenient and although Apple has only been moving in the cheap/convenient direction as far as upgrades are concerned for that past few years you still can't deny that Microsoft has shown itself to be an incredibly slow-moving, stubborn company despite there finally being some real competition in recent years. Its not that Windows is somehow shitty in some way, it's just that Microsoft doesn't do as much to encourage upgrades as they could or should. And this applies mostly to the average consumer. I know you and I can get any OS to run any hardware if we really wanted to but the average person doesn't take any chances and goes with the recommendations on the box. If they could skip the box altogether and get it downloaded and installed that way I'm sure we'd see even less of XP. I'm not so sure that'll happen any time soon though.