[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Tristan

But....

H.264 is just another video codec, and one that everyone will be able to view when Quicktime 7 is released. If Microsoft started advertising WMV10 as a major reason to upgrade to Longhorn, I don't think many people would take them seriously.

Windows users got upgraded to OpenGl 1.5 when the video card manufacturers updated their drivers, which was quite a while ago. Are Apple really offering a driver upgrade as a selling point? And while Apple certainly lead the way in getting the video card to produce fancy effects on the desktop, that's not new in this release.

I'm not entirely sure what that Core Audio does, but from reading the page, the only new feature is the ability to combine multiple soundcards into a single logical device. That's a nice trick, but how many people are actually going to use it? Also, Windows (and, I would presume, Mac OS 10.3) has no problem recording from multiple soundcards simultaneously -- it's just a bit more tricky to set up.

And as for performing better -- Apple have doubled the RAM requirements for Tiger compared to 10.3

Don't get me wrong, I like Macs, and I'd probably get one if I could afford it. But it always amazes me that every year, most Mac owners are willing to shell out a hundred quid for some updates that other OS's get free, and a few new applications.

If Apple released a "desktop applications pack" containing things like Spotlight, Dashboard, Automator, and released it for £25 or so, then that would be okay. But even the £60 student price seems like a rip off to me, for what you're getting.

You are forgetting all the enhancements that require .mac access to work. Another £100 a year. Imagine the outcry if Microsoft started offering services in Windows that require a subscription.
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Originally Posted by Chris T

And, (can't resist a dig here), each version of OSX has actually performed better than the previous one, despite the extra features. For example anyone with a five-year-old iMac (like me!) will find that it runs OSX 10.3 as well as it ran OS9 that it shipped with way back in 2000. And it runs 10.3 better than it ran 10.2. This is quite refreshing when M$ is known for developing new versions of its OS that are a million times more bloated than their immediate predecessor and demand a relatively current PC spec on which to run.

All true, however we do have Pentium 3 700's (from about 1999) with 128 Meg of ram that run XP (even SP2) well. I have a P3 700 at home (with 256 Meg ram) that runs Server 2003 well. Admittedly, it has started to creak a bit now I have installed Active Directory, IIS, Windows Media Server, Coldfusion server, SQL server and Exchange server, but it is still usable..