Apple Mavericks is Still Free After A Year, What's That Mean?

The latest Apple OS is about a year old, and still free of charge. It seems the new business
 model is looking to undercut their main competitor Windows.

The latest Apple OS is Mavericks, and after a year, it’s still free. Which is great news for me, because even though my main system is an Ubuntu machine, I still have a six-year-old mac that I use.

Apple vs. Microsoft is the OS duopoly for the commercial world. Apple used to charge for OS upgrades, but now free upgrades are part of the sales incentive to buy their designer computers, other hardware, and online services. On the other hand, the Microsoft bread and butter is the operating system market.

Duopolies can create the illusion of competition. Although companies do battle, they can work together to take the fight to higher levels of interest for both of them. (tumblr/thomas.do)

Windows’ saving grace is that the bulk of their sales are done en masse. OEM contracts alone constitute 65 percent of the $19 billion in total 2013 Windows revenue. In other words, Microsoft mainly sells to manufacturers that build machines to run MS software. The user pays for Microsoft’s stuff when they, for instance, purchase an HP or Lenovo machine—which is part of the sales pitch for firms like System 76, that sell bad-to-the-bone computers for less, because they are running Linux based OSs that cost nothing, so end user dollars go to equipment, not Bill Gates.

Anyway, I don’t like all the invasive practices of Apple or Microsoft, but my aluminum MacBook (late 2008) is like an old Mercedes. I want to keep it running and I like how it handles. So I bought some extra RAM to make the jump from Snow Leopard to Mavericks, and now I can use the new apps and keep cruising the information highway until this OS is obsolete.

This car reminds me of my aluminum MacBook (late 2008). Nice lines, good looking, simple, and keeps on running. (motoring-malaysia.blogspot.com)