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OS X Businesses Operating Systems Apple

Apple Offers Cheap Jaguar Server Upgrade for XServe 64

Posted by pudge from the it-does-not-help-me-though-so-it-still-sucks dept.
MaxVlast writes "Macintouch is reporting that Apple is extending the Mac OS X Up-to-Date and Mac OS X Server Up-to-Date programs to include Jaguar Server upgrades for just $19.95 in response to intense criticism. This is good news to people who just bought an expensive XServe with expensive Mac OS X Server who don't very much want to pay the full upgrade price." Apple also added that people who bought Mac OS X 10.1 retail, by itself, can get an upgrade if purchased July 17 or later.
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Apple Offers Cheap Jaguar Server Upgrade for XServe More

Apple Offers Cheap Jaguar Server Upgrade for XServe

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  • This is still not what Mac users have come to expect. Maybe they should have numbered this one 10.5 if they want to charge nearly everyone full price for it. Then it would be consistent. Will every even-point upgrade be full price from now on? I think Apple customers are used to getting their bug fixes for free.

    • Re:Not up to snuff (Score:4, Informative)

      by pi radians ( 170660 ) on Monday July 29, 2002 @10:33AM (#3971451)
      I think Apple customers are used to getting their bug fixes for free.

      They are getting them for free. Jaguar isn't a bug fix.
      • Jaguar isn't a bug fix
        Well the thing that's most unlike a bug fix is Quartz Extreme and that's practically a bug fix - a fix for the super slow student project quality 2D engine they wrote for MacOS before 10.2. Well...maybe Rendezvous is cool.
        • Quartz Extreme is doing something no other major OS vendor has done. It is a brand new feature. How does that make it "practically a bug fix"?

          a fix for the super slow student project quality 2D engine

          "student project quality"? Are you talking about the GUI that NO other company has been able to repeat? Seriously, I understand that your bitter about something here, but Aqua is FAR from a student project.
    • I think that past practice was just part of the plan to inflate the version number to X, and now that they have X, they don't want to toss it right away.
  • It's through Amazom but hey, $50 is $50. Look here [macnn.com].

    (no I'm not associated with them in anyway)

  • Very Minor Changes (Score:4, Informative)

    by tbmaddux ( 145207 ) on Monday July 29, 2002 @09:58AM (#3971231) Homepage Journal
    For regular MacOS X, all that has changed is the $19.95 (which is "free" in Apple terms) upgrade to 10.2 for people who purchase retail copies of MacOS X 10.1.x between the MWNY keynote and when Jaguar comes out. This makes sense, since otherwise nobody would bother to purchase existing on-shelf copies of MacOS X between then and now.

    It's the same for MacOS X Server, with the notable exception that all owners of XServe machines can get the "free" upgrade, no matter when they bought their machine.

    For everyone else, the full pricetag applies. Before MacOS X, Apple used to provide upgrade rebates of $20 or $30. You sent in one of those "software coupons" and got a check in the mail. Those days appear to be gone since the advent of MacOS X.

  • 50 bucks off. (Score:4, Informative)

    by iomud ( 241310 ) on Monday July 29, 2002 @10:23AM (#3971382) Homepage Journal
    Amazon is offering a $50 mail in rebate [macrumors.com] for jaguar as part of a back to school promotion. Looks legit to me *shrug*
    • the news of this was around a few days ago, though it takes effect today. i would think a $50 rebate has Apple's hand in it, right? if that's true, i wonder if we will be seeing more 10.2 rebates pop up. i guess right now i'll buy from amazon. might be a good excuse to pick up some DVDs and books since it'll hit the free shipping price break.
      though the student price is still the best if you are associated with a university, they can get it for $69 through the edu store at Apple.com or i guess through their campus bookstore.
    • Dammit! I just bought my copy of Jaguar from the Apple Store. I knew I should have shopped around for it.
  • What's to stop me from purchasing Mac OS X(10.1.3) today, sending in my order form and receipt for the "free" upgrade, and returning Mac OS X(10.1.3) tomorrow? While I would feel like a cheap-skate, I would feel vindicated at this outrageous racketeering - $129 for an OS update. I thought only Microsoft (Win98 SE) pulled crap like that.

    • Re:Question: (Score:5, Insightful)

      by foobar104 ( 206452 ) on Monday July 29, 2002 @11:31AM (#3971858) Journal
      While I would feel like a cheap-skate, I would feel vindicated at this outrageous racketeering - $129 for an OS update. I thought only Microsoft (Win98 SE) pulled crap like that.

      Read this post [slashdot.org]. Microsoft and every other OS vendor in the industry charge for feature releases. And all of them charge more for their feature releases than Apple is charging for Jaguar.

      The fact that you bought the OS once doesn't mean you're entitled to a free copy of every release of the OS forever. That's a nice idea on its face and all, but it's not in line with industry practices.

      • Re:Question: (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        What the hell are you talking about?

        If you owned Windows 3.1x you could buy Windows 95 at an upgrade price. If you didn't, it was full price.

        If you owned Windows NT 3.x you could buy Windows NT 4.0 at an upgrade price. If you didn't, it was full price.

        If you owned Windows 3.1x, or 95 you could buy Windows 98 at an upgrade price. If you didn't, it was full price.

        If you owned Windows 98, you could order a free (postage and handling) upgrade CD to get 98SE (just like OS X 10.0->10.1).

        If you owned Windows NT 4.0 you could buy Windows 2000 at an upgrade price. If you didn't, it was full price.

        If you owned Windows 95, 98, or 98SE you could buy Windows Ne at an upgrade price. If you didn't, it was full price.

        If you owned Windows 2000 you could buy Windows XP Professional at an upgrade price. If you didn't, it was full price.

        If you owned Windows 98, 98SE, or Me you could buy Windows XP Hope at an upgrade price. If you didn't, it was full price.

        That is what it annoying people. No one is saying that Jaguar should be free; we're saying it should have an upgrade price just like Microsoft offers for Windows. In theory, you could still be paying upgrade pricing on Windows in a chain that started at Windows 3.x. A bit better then Apple, huh?

        Upgrade pricing. That is what Jaguar doesn't have. Someone that bought 10.0 is being charged the same price to upgrade to Jaguar as someone that hasn't paid for a Mac OS since 9.0 (or hell, even 8). We don't want to pay the same amount as someone that hasn't already bought it!

        People don't want Jaguar to be free. People that have already paid full price for a copy of OS X want a fair upgrade price.
    • I suppose nothing is stopping you from doing that, but why don't you just A) order it through Amazon for the $50 mail in rebate, or B) buy it through Apples educational store for $69 (pretend your a student). AFAIK they don't require any proof of enrollment, they just restrict the number of puchases you can make per academic year.

      • Well, because if I do it my way, I have a legitimate license. A student license would not be a legitimate license for commercial use, and if it ever became an issue I would be screwed. I may be cheap, but I'm not stupid.
        My way I get what I want without actually breaking any rules.
        The $50 rebate IS tempting, but I am still offended. I would NEVER have paid for Win 98 SE(except that it came with the PC I bought that year - this was before I had enough faith in myself to roll my own), and I don't like paying for 10.2. If there were enough new features for Apple to feel comfortable calling this 11.0 I wouldn't mind paying, but when they call it 10.2 and I already have 10.1.5 I don't feel it's worth $129.
        • There is NO difference between the $129 commercial edition and the $69 dollar educational version. Both are the same with the same licences etc. It's just Apples way of saying "Have some more money for beer you poor poor enlightened college student" :)

      • Re:Question: (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        pretend your a student

        Pretend my a student? I don't get it.

    • Comparing 10.2 to Win98SE is an insult at best. Win98SE was purely bug fixes. They tried to toss some of the "Plus" crap in there with it but whoTF uses that anyway? 10.2 actually has a variety of new features, and it is _more_ than a year since the last "paid upgrade" release of 10.0. Win98 barely filled in the channel before Win98SE.

    • Re:Question (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Aqua_Geek ( 527624 )
      What's to stop you? How about the reciept? You have to send in the original DATED reciept to Apple.

      Question to you: how to you expect to return it without a reciept?

      Quit whining...

  • Expensive? (Score:3, Informative)

    by h0tblack ( 575548 ) on Monday July 29, 2002 @12:53PM (#3972381)
    "This is good news to people who just bought an expensive XServe with expensive Mac OS X Server "

    OS X 10.2 is quite an expensive upgrade and the server version even moreso, especially when extras which bring out the most of 10.2 like QuicktimePro and .mac are included. That said, saying that the Xserve and OS X Server are expensive is ridiculous. The Xserve is an extremely well priced server for what it does, especially compared to competing servers. Also the version of OS X server included with the Xserve gives you unlimited clients, unlike say Windows 2k. If you don't believe Appl'es comments on this, there's always LinuxWorld's take on the subject: http://www.linuxworld.com/site-stories/2002/0724.m acx.html
    It's great news that Apple are taking note of criticism and opening up the up-to-date program, but don't confuse this argument by saying that the initial products themselves are expensive.

    • Re:Expensive? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by rbanzai ( 596355 )
      Although it is often a little late Apple does seem to respond to criticism more so than other companies in their field. When they had that trouble providing faster G4s and had to rejigger their offering and cancel orders after the screaming they did the right thing by the people who had already ordered. My issue would be that frequently they flop on both accounts: 1. They don't seem to think about the strength of the negative reactions before they do something boneheaded 2. After the bonehead move they react too slowly to get any real goodwill in return for their "corrections."
    • Compare $19.95 to a free [penguinppc.org] operating system (scroll down to "Another one bites the dust").

      If you can hold off a few weeks you'll have a free operating system on this incredible hardware (which is infinitely cheaper).

      And according to the link above, preliminary benchmarks show Linux to be much faster in some operations.
      • This isn't really the issue. I've been using various *nix derivatives on Apple hardware for years, most recently OS's like LinuxPPC - the precursor to penguinppc - and YDL (Yellow Dog Linux). Apple have had a hand in these efforts to some degree as well as creating A/UX some years back. But OS X in any of it's incarnations is not about competing directly with Linux, although this is one of it's effects. It's about bringing a friendly Mac OS to Mac users, hiding most of the sexy underpinnings from the users - although leaving them accessible to those of us who like playing :) Apple engineers themselves are giving a huge amount back to the community in the form of submitting code changes to the main trees oif many open projects, just look at the work done on gcc3.
        It's great that you can run Linux on Apple hardware, it's great that it performs extremely well, but it's not what everyone wants. What is good is that people have the choice.
        I suspect most people who bought Xserve's want an easily setup and administered friendly OS to use, else it's likely they would have gone for a purer Linux server, if cost was the only factor. The update for OS X Server may not be free, but for an unlimited user license, it still compares well to non-Linux solutions. That said, I do think Apple should be more loyal to those early adopters of hardware like the Xserve, it does seem people are being penalised for buying them ASAP. NOt a good PR move and no way to increase or hold on to loyal Mac heads.

  • Darwin sync'ing? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by raddan ( 519638 )
    Being a BSD'er, I'm used to being able to do the OS updates for free. Since development continues on Darwin, does anyone know if it is possible to update Darwin under 10.2 without breaking it?

    Ack, I've already bought software for 10.2. Anyone know if 10.2 software will be forward-compatible with future "MacOS X"'s?

    IMHO, it seems a bit abrupt to be charging for an upgrade already- the developer community seems to have just gotten rolling...

  • Still not enough (Score:2, Insightful)

    by EvlG ( 24576 )
    The problem with this is it STILL punishes the people that bought 10.0, the early adopters that worked to grow the platform.

    Sure, lots of people rushed and bought 10.1, because it was the first version that was really usable. And all of those people got to take advantage of the apps written by the early adopters.

    Apple should cough it up and let people that paid for 10.0 retail box get a $20 upgrade this time around. Return the favor!
    • Hey, I bought 10.1 BEFORE July 17, so I still don't qualify. And my friend bought a New iMac a couple months ago, and his OS X Up-To-Date vouchers are still worthless. (If you read the Apple page, only purchases of Macs or boxed OS X BOUGHT AFTER JULY 17 COUNT!!)

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