I can't put my finger on it, but sometime during the last year, the continuous debate over Mac vs. Windows ceased to be fun. Maybe I'm just a jaded flame-warrior, but now it just sucks. Everyone's got an opinion (including me) and everyone's got the data to support it, especially when they ignore data that disagrees.
The example that brought this up was from TUAW in a post by David Cartier. His post, titled Fuzzy Tactics Aren't Helping the Mac Community takes to task a 'Digged' blog post that compared the Total Cost of Ownership between Windows and OSX.
The original article by Daniel Eran tried to compare cost of upgrading OSX from 10.0 to 10.4 versus the cost of upgrading Windows from 2000 to XP SP2. An interesting idea, but ultimately pointless, because the numbers are hard to consider.
Just a few questions I'd ask: Do you count OEM versions of Windows? Do you count the 10.1 upgrade disc that people could buy? And, how in the hell did Thurrott get to $750 for upgrades to OSX? Did he count every version of OSX, including Leopard at $129?
The article tries to compare all the variations, and then adds in Anti-Virus and Geek Squad Support to the Windows total. Apparently, unhappy about his numbers, Eran decided to stack the deck.
This is unfair, and Cartier is right to call him on it. Both Eran and Thurrott have an agenda to serve and they're going to manipulating the numbers to suffice.
What does this mean for the average user? Jack squat. The average user didn't update from 10.1 through 10.4, they skipped updates. Or they waited for the next thing, or they used that time to buy a new computer. Users don't like to upgrade their OS, they like to leave it alone until they have to change. Many OSX users can still get by with Jaguar or Panther. Windows users are the same, many are still using 98 and 2000 (some poor souls even still use ME).
So, for them, what's the TCO? That's a tough metric to give, and it entirely depends on the user and their application, and anyone who pretends there's a nice cut-and-dry number that proves one OS is better than other is serving an agenda.
Edit: See Eran's comment, and also I changed my headline to reflect that no necklaces were involved in this particular posting, which he was kind enough to point out on his follow-up story.
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1 comment:
Daniel, thanks for coming by, and I appreciate the conversation.
I disagree, I think you're playing the same game that Paul Thurott did with his $750 number for OSX. It's not that AV software isn't necessary or that people don't go to Geek Squad, but I think it's implicitly unfair to add in this number to your calculation of the initial TCO for software costs.
Furthermore, I hate these kinds of calculations because I fail to see their value when the numbers can be so easily manipulated to serve a particular viewpoint.
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