Why is Microsoft Windows so much more expensive than Apple OS X when Apple's OS is so much better?

Question

I mean come on, Apple OS X is, at the most, $129, and I can get it for $69 with my student discount. Windows vista is $239 and full of bugs and glitches.

Answer 1

Apple makes most of their money off of hardware, which is why they have not released a version of their OS that will run on other hardware platforms (they're probably also worried about piracy, which could devastate them financially if they did so, which is another reason to tie the software to their hardware). The profit they make comes from the new Macs they sell, so it's in their financial best interest to make the OS cheaper to keep their users upgrading. That also means that as they add more features, users will feel like they should buy newer, faster hardware to be able to use those features.

Besides, Microsoft also caters to college students - my university has Vista for $25, or so I hear.

Answer 2

Because, apple is a less popular operating system. There are thousands of pieces of software that are targetted at windows operating systems only.

For example, you don't see many MAC supporting games out there, so if you are a gamer who does not favour game consoles, then the PC is the only choice, unless you wish to play games which are dated.

Many formats are not supported by apple also, apple does not support windows media video, which is a very popular format of video file, and it does not support windows media audio format, this audio format was very popular in the past, most CD's were written with this format but MP3 has won that over nowadays.

Apple operating systems are very limited in what you can do with them, compared to Windows systems. I'm not saying their poor, just targetted specifically at groups of people, who are not gamers and who do not massively watch media downloaded off of the internet. Apparently Apple operating systems are very good for viewing DVD, and picture editing, but the other things that Windows does as well as this is what makes it the more popular choice.

Windows Vista is only at the moment full of bugs because its just released, and no software is perfect. Windows Vista will vastly improve with the upcoming service packs, at the minute Windows XP is a fully fledged version of Windows which is more than capable in outperforming Apple software in the context of range of use. As said above, theres thousands more pieces of software for Windows than Apple...
And that is basically the reason, if Apple had the main amount of software building companies building Apple based programs, then Windows would be the cheaper alternative instead, its just like this because of Market direction, only one company can take the lead.

Answer 3

It can, this arguement is more economist and supply-and-demand and stuff it would be more better answered by economists.

The arguement of prior Mac OS versions and superiority of Mac hardware is not withstanding, since a computer system had more than hardware.

Answer 4

mac osx is well crap. that is why it is crap dont believe me? go on http://macvsmicrosoft.blogspot.com/ mac i compatible with what software? hardly any! no decent spftware at al! thats is why microsoft has bugs because it actually has compatible including antivirus software duuuh daft person, mac only works on mac computers too and mac computers are crap there are over 100 000 pc's and is this right? yes it is 11 avaidable mac computers. they are only some of the obvious reason why microsoft rules and MAC DRUELS.