And Snow Leopard is also an new version of the OS. You cannot say that it is a service pack. It surly fixes some security issues, but waht about the native 64 bit kernel, the great and optimized multicore support und OpenCL? That’s for usual not part of a normal free update.

Other examples: try to open file extensions like docx oder PDF on windows with a new installation and “no” internetconnection. Yes, this is where your problem starts. You need a third party solutions for every extension, even for Microsoft stuff like word documents!

The next point: 90% market share by microsoft. Surely, but count the illegal distributions and the distributions payed for. OHHHWHEEE

Regards from Germany

Manolo

I haven’t used Snow Leopard, but, of course, Windows 7. I have spoken privately to developers using Snow Leopard. I’m not hearing much excitement.

There are many reasons why I’m not betting on Snow Leopard. Top of list: It only extends the Mac install base if people buy new hardware.

Yeah, Software Asset Manangement.

Just the mention of Microsoft seems to polarise people so much, the assumption is that everyone is polarised. However, I am not. So…

> “And the government concern over proprietary formats is justified. ” etc

Yes, I 100% agree, and never said otherwise. What I said was goal of using open standards was not to avoid/punish Microsoft, but to avoid vendor lock in.

> But give billybob some credit

I agree with him more than he seems to realise. My question to him was well meant: As there are free and adequate alternative to Office, why aren’t more people using them?

But give billybob some credit. There is competition to Office where none existed before. And the government concern over proprietary formats is justified. Microsoft has done everyone, themselves included, a terrible injustice by not maintaining backward compatibility with Word and Excel documents.

> Where is the data to back up your assertion that nobody is replacing Office

I am the development lead on a leading SAM toolset, and what we see in our customer(*) audit data is that Office usage is close to one-to-one with desktop devices. OpenOffice? We don’t see it much.Even most corporate Macs have Office installed.

Government is dictating open standards because they suddenly realised the wealth of information stored in a proprietary format. Its not about not using Office, its knowing your information is not needlessly locked up.

(*) our customers are of all sizes, smallest maybe 100 users, largerst customer, hundreds of thousands of desktops worldwide.

@NickH, rebuttal?

I have used neither, but from what I’ve read, we’re in for a real shoot out come fall. Both Windows 7 and Snow Leopard are evolutionary by design, but the stakes have never been higher. Vista and Leopard were not great, and Vista really stumbled on its initial release. The tech media is going to bash the other side, no matter how good it is. An SP1 release will be too late.

For Snow Leopard to succeed, it better feel crisp, like Linux does. Grand Central
better help developers to write multi-threaded code. Exchange support better work. Users will need to see a difference in an OS that has changed mostly under the covers.

For Windows 7 to succeed, Microsoft needs to keep vendors from loading on the crapware. Users need to welcome the task bar changes. XP Mode needs to support IE6 for the foreseeable future. And a more virus free environment would certainly help.

If I were a betting man, I’d bet on Snow Leopard. It won’t be a game changer, but it will let Apple resume taking market share from Microsoft. And Microsoft will stub its’ toe on something, performance, compatibility, licensing. When you get up to 1.2 billion users (Andre’s numbers, not mine), you’re going to piss somebody off.