In My Experience... | OS X for system administration. (1337)

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OS X for system administration.
[ Posted by Dan on October 09, 2003 | 4 Comments ]

The rumor around my office is that we're going to buy a site license (for our department anyway) of Mac OS X 10.3 (aka, Panther) due to the large amount of system administrators doing their SA work on OSX machines. In case that rumor doesn't pan out, and we don't get a site license, I plan on buying Panther myself.

The important thing is this, Panther is going to be expensive ($130), but everyone around here wants it (except for the Linux guys) and no one wants to pirate it. That's pretty good news for Apple I think, and I can't wait for the 24th to roll around. I'm most lookng forward to Exposé.

[I've been pretty busy recently with real life stuff. I hope to return to regular blogging volume soon.]

I wouldn't say OSX is expensive by an means, especially compared to Windows.

I'm more surprised how people are suprised that Apple charges full for each major OS release - they haven't given away an OS since 1989. (We got a break with 10.1 if you bought 10.0).

-Posted by Quinn on October 11, 2003 12:32 AM

Quinn, thats because their hardware is so cheap they don't make any money on it.

oh... wait... uh...
isn't the new logo cool?

-Posted by JC on October 11, 2003 03:49 AM

IMHO, $130 for a point one release (ie, from 10.2 to 10.3) is pretty expensive, but I'm going to pay for it, which means I think the $130 is worth it. If we get a site liscense, then I'm probably not going to buy my own copy that I can keepda and take with me (and if I leave my job I'll be a buyer at that time).

-Posted by Dan on October 11, 2003 09:09 PM

I dunno. If it's just the naming throwing people off (as it has with every version of OSX), and Panther was called 10.5, people would pony up without question. Apple's been doing X.1 naming convention to indicate major releases for OSX all along.

Windows, by contrast, names vastly similar products with entirely new names - take Windows 98 and Windows 98 Second edition. And each of those were full, paying versions.

Perhaps not having the less-costly upgrades is the price for not having product activation or serial number registration?

I do think the Mac OS Up To Date program needs to be revamped, however.

-Posted by Quinn on October 12, 2003 11:12 AM

Comment posting has been turned off because I don't have enough time and will to deal with the constant comment spamming. I'm very sorry and will fix this sometime soon (soon = before 2004 ends).