people who want satisfaction, perfection, professionals and enthusiasts in design (mainly 2D photo), tough limited scale of programs available will buy APPLE services & products.

—The problem with Microsoft’s implementation of 64 bit in XP Pro was that it made you choose between running 32 bit or 64 bit aps. Choosing one meant that you couldn’t do the other. Most of Windows aps, like Apple’s, are in 32 bit—

Wrong…

I have a dual Harpertown pc (8cores) running XP64 (and BTW leopard in virtualization ;P ).

I assure you, it runs both kind (64,32) apps with no problems (at the same time if you want) the kernel and basic system have been all along in 64, as SL will be:

If you install, say, 3dsmax or softimageXSI on XP64 or Vista 64, it installs both “binary” 64bit and 32, you can choose to start the 64 or the 32bit version.

If you save your 3d scenes in the 64bit version, it will still open in the 32bit version of the same program… Unless it’s super-complex scene that require >4gig of memory (that never happenned to me, yet)

Hell, there’s even PHOTOSHOP IN 64BIT on windows (something not available yet on OSX)!

Believe me, the extra registers don’t give such a performance boost, the real impact of 64bit OS is that apps can take more than 4gigs of RAM, so you can work on insanely big project files.

OSX is a few step ahead in many ways, but in term of 64bits, windows is indeed 4 years ahead…

Why did apple didn’t do it before, there’s a lot hassle involved in the jump to a full 64bit OS. A 64bit kernel wants 64bit services/ktex, it’s a lot of work! I’m really eager to see QT in full 64bit glory, with real 64bit codecs, that should be great!

Just a side note, the Xbox360 use three 3.2GHz PPC cores (hehehehe), developing a game for it and windows, with XNA, is mostly as simple as a recompile… Their equivalent of Xcode, is not shabby by any means.

C’mon, Louis! Microsoft is not as dumb as apple want you to believe!

Since OSX, I like mac, I’ve work with them often, but the many uniformed macusers is a real turn off for the “mac culture”! There’s differences, but not that much.

In addition, your statement that “if you are one of the people who could not install Vista on your old PC, you can still install Windows 7″ is false. The official minimum recommended specs are essentially the same as Vista at the 32 bit level, and I can tell you with confidence that my 5 year old PC wouldn’t run Windows 7. The reality is that at some point, a new OS will always leave an old model behind. My old PC runs XP comfortably, and old PowerPCs do the same with Leopard. I don’t see anything wrong with this.

I’ve been using the developer preview of 10.6 and the public preview of Windows 7 and I can tell you that those who upgrade to Windows 7 will get the most excitement out of their upgrade. This assessment is not because the 10.6 upgrade is insignificant compared to 10.5, but because Windows 7 is so significant compared to VISTA. If, like me, you have suffered through life with VISTA you will truly appreciate how clean the Windows 7 preview was. Assuming that the release version is as good as the preview, Microsoft will finally have an operating system as clean as Windows 2000.

Those of us who already use Leopard will probably feel a little visually disappointed by Snow Leopard because it looks virtually the same. You have to look really close to even notice that they changed the desktop picture and some of the finder components. The reason for this is because Leopard was already a pretty mature operating system that Apple have, for want of a better word, tweaked.

I do not accept the ignorant assessment that 10.6 is a service pack, just as I do not believe Windows 7 is a service pack even though they are both supposed to be cleaned up versions of their predecessor. OS X 10.6 contains many new versions of the major applications, includes support for new technologies, the whole underlying code base has been rewritten, and some new features for power users. I am not sure how significant 64 bit is for regular people, but for those who work with number crunching it sure is. The difference between Apple’s implementation and the older Windows 64 bit implementations, if I remember correctly, was that the Windows versions required 64 bit applications as well. I believe 10.6 and Windows 7 can perfectly happy running 32 bit and 64 bit side by side.

Pricing comparisons are not worth the effort. A lot of people are concerned that Microsoft are pricing too high, and Apple are pricing low because it is a service pack, but it is more likely due to the companies nature. Apple is a hardware company that makes software to support its hardware, but Microsoft is a software company, so it makes little or no sense for Microsoft to give away their software. Having said that I wish Microsoft would simplify their pricing to be something more like Apple is where they appear to be charging $129 for a full upgrade and just $29 for the Leopard upgrade. I just placed an order for three copies of the Windows 7 Home Premium, and will preorder the $29 Snow Leopard upgrades. At these prices, they are worth every penny.