“Out-of-the-box Exchange support. With Snow Leopard the Mac now has out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, something even Windows PCs don’t have. There’s no need for time-consuming installations or complicated configurations. You set it up just by entering your email address and password — the rest happens automatically.3 Then, instead of using Outlook to access Exchange services such as email, calendar invitations, and Global Address Lists, you’ll use Mail, iCal, and Address Book. Because they’re on the Mac, you can continue taking advantage of all the powerful Mac features you love, including Spotlight for systemwide searching, Quick Look for viewing attachments without opening them, data detectors that make it easy to act on information in email, and more. (via Apple - Mac OS X - New technologies in Snow Leopard)”
While this is hardly the most interesting feature in Snow Leopard, it highlights how terrible (read: nickel and dime you for something you already overpaid for) Windows is. We got a new Dell Mini at work as part of a new laptop deal, and it comes with windows “Home Edition.” That means that you can’t use it to do any workgroup style networking.
I can’t believe there is an OS that doesn’t just do everything. I can’t think of another OS that doesn’t already do that stuff out of the box. Windows seems to be the only OS that has those tiered pricing plans, and i want to say it’s typical to handicap features on the low models to increase sales of the better. However, I’ll bet it’s not a case of handicapping to create tiers, I’ll bet they just didn’t build it in. Then did build it in for the non-home editions. Who knows, but I’ll bet $100 the next version of windows takes 10 years and doesn’t do half the stuff the next next version of OSX will. After all, they can’t copy any of the new advances in Snow Leopard cause there are no interface improvements (windows just copies mac’s UI for new features, all the old features are the same. for real. no not for real, but practically for real.). What will they do now?!!?
9 months ago
