Loko’s Domain You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

An apparent leak has been revealed that Microsoft will be shipping Windows 7 without Internet Explorer already bundled. While it is not the first time we’ve seen Microsoft hit with anti-trust lawsuits recently, many can only imagine why no one complains about Apple bundling all of their applications by default without alternatives out of the box.

One announcement from WWDC 2009 is that Snow Leopard is only $29 to upgrade from Leopard. That’s good news, but remember that the initial Mac OS X public beta was $29.95 and only lasted a little over half a year. As for Microsoft, we can download Windows Server 2008 R2 Release Candidate, based on the NT 7.0 kernel, and the Windows Server 2008 trial is good for 60 days. Also, Windows 7 has been out for several months now, with official and unofficial releases, for a long haul beta.

The $30 beta for Mac OS X did apply a discount for Cheetah, but was lacking in almost all features, and was rather unstable. Things did not improve for some time after the initial launch of OS X. Not only did the community pay for a beta, but they also paid for a very unfinished, featureless, and buggy operating system for the first retail release of OS X 10.0. They paid to stare at the Aqua UI. The Apple community can say what they want about Windows not being the best out of the box, but it took a couple of years for OS X to achieve usability.

Plenty of people would have became rabid if they could have only used the new Windows 7 toolbar with Jump Lists for 6 months without any real applications, DVD support, or much of any productivity software available, let alone that they received the beta for free. What would happen to Windows 7s sales if it took two years to become useful? Also, people were upset about backwards compatibility with Vista, but what of OS X Leopard/Snow Leopard and Classic? No more native OS 9 support.

I remember when Windows XP first came out. I remember the criticism about exploits, revolving door infections, and shoddy performance. After Service Pack 2 was released, everything then seemed stable enough. The same goes for Vista SP1, but what about Windows 7? There are several reports about glitches and other problems, but this is a public beta from Microsoft for a brand new operating system. No one will see a public beta, or free if “available” in beta, for Snow Leopard because everyone is already using Snow Leopard as Leopard or Tiger. It’s still OS X.

I have and still do give OS X a chance. I have had Mac OS X Tiger for the longest time and doubt I will ever upgrade to further service packs released by Apple. I cannot justify paying for a service pack for an operating system older then Windows XP that has had 5 retail service packs and a sixth on the way! WinXP had 3 SPs and was pretty solid by the second. While Microsoft didn’t focus heavily on themes, the end user can tweak their Windows desktop environment to make it unique.

It bothers me when I see blind iSheep flocking to the next “big” announcement in hopes it matches the rumors, but no keynote ever does. What is really bothersome is how the slightly positive announcements are given the most attention instead of the elephant in the room, such as a new line of expensive MacBook Pros without a removable battery. Apple can be just as greedy, if not more, as Microsoft and guilty of using guerrilla tactics equal to those committed by Microsoft.

I’d rather not wake up in the morning to see Safari secretly installed and automatically assigned as my default browser again. I uninstalled Apple software on my Windows PC, especially the disappointing Safari 4 release for Windows missing the delightful tab-process feature to kill tabs, which is featured in Chrome. Also, Chrome 2 appears has already “stolen the crown” that Apple gave itself, but was more of a pat on the back.

Mac OS X is a decent proprietary operating system with limited hardware configuration and software support, but Apple is the real culprit here with the misdirection, exaggerations, unnecessary mudslinging, and leaving loyal fans wondering if they are ever thought of in think tanks. I would imagine only true Apple fans can wait out the storm of bad ideas and implementations, but what would be considered the limit? Vista drew a great deal of fire, but when Snow Leopard drops, few will complain that they are paying for only a feature-lite service pack for OS X.