There’s an error in the article below, but it does illustrate how things are changing. Windows 8.1 Home Premium sells for $120. Apple’s newest OS OS X Mavericks sells for $0. The article does make it sound like Windows 8.1 is free, but it’s only free for those who have Windows 8 already installed. Windows 7 (and users of older Windows) will have to ante up $120 (or thereabouts) for Windows 8.1 Home Premium — and about $80 more for Windows 8.1 Professional.<\/p>\n
The times are changing. As more and more people access the Internet from phones and tablets — and Apple’s market share keeps growing, Windows PC use keeps shrinking. This may be the last version of Windows that Microsoft will be able to extract $120 or more from Windows PC owners. There are many many more Windows 7 and Windows XP users than there are Windows 8 users — so to say Windows 8.1 is free is a glaring error in the article — but the article does point out an undeniable trend: The days of the paid operating system are waning.<\/p>\n
The following article is from “Wired”:<\/p>\n
“The desktop operating system is dead as a major profit center, and Apple just delivered the obituary.<\/p>\n
Amid a slew of incremental improvements to its iPad tablets and MacBook laptops, Apple today announced some landmark news about its oldest surviving operating system: It will not charge for the latest big upgrade, Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks, breaking from a tradition that goes back 16 years and shining a light on a long-unfolding reversal in how tech profits are made. Eighteen years ago, the tech industry\u2019s dominant company made nearly half its revenue selling OS licenses. Now, as Apple just confirmed, the prices of OS licenses are headed towards zilch.<\/p>\n
Prices of Apple\u2019s Mac OS X have long been on the wane. After four releases that cost $129, Apple dropped the operating system\u2019s upgrade price to $29 with 2009\u2019s OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and then to $19 with last year\u2019s OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. Microsoft \u2014 the king of the operating system in the \u201980s and \u201990s and on into the aughts \u2014 still charges PC makers who sell the Windows OS preloaded on their desktop and laptop machines, but that business is shrinking, thanks in large part to the continued success of Apple. And just last week, Microsoft announced that, much like Apple, it would not charge consumers who upgrade their machines to the latest version of Windows, version 8.1…”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Read the rest of this “Wired” article here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n
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There’s an error in the article below, but it does illustrate how things are changing. Windows 8.1 Home Premium sells for $120. Apple’s newest OS OS X Mavericks sells for $0. The article does make it sound like Windows 8.1 is free, but it’s only free for those who have Windows 8 already installed. Windows 7 (and users\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6380"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}