The point is that Apple has made the switch to lower cost OS upgrades while Microsoft has not.
But then again, Apple has the benefit of being in control of the hardware, which makes up the lion's (haha) share of their revenue.
But then again, Apple has the benefit of being in control of the hardware, which makes up the lion's (haha) share of their revenue.
- Apple can let OS X be its loss leader, whereas Microsoft doesn't have a thing to let Windows be a loss leader for (the Windows Store, maybe, post-8?)
- breaking backward compatibility hurts Microsoft's sales, since there's no single source of application updates, and since so many Windows licenses are in the enterprise; it doesn't affect Apple's sales (maybe even helps them) because it sells shiny new Macs for shiny new features and because Apple doesn't live or die on OS X revenue.
its saving grace is that retail sales of Windows licenses are probably dominated by people refreshing their computers.