Comment by MarsIronPI
1 day ago
No, Windows still has Windows tax, which is why I always choose "No OS" when buying a machine. MacOS/iOS/iPadOS were never for sale separately, so we can't judge the price. Android sure is subsidized though.
1 day ago
No, Windows still has Windows tax, which is why I always choose "No OS" when buying a machine. MacOS/iOS/iPadOS were never for sale separately, so we can't judge the price. Android sure is subsidized though.
> MacOS/iOS/iPadOS were never for sale separately
Mac OS was though. OS X 10.0/10.1 were sold for $129 as an upgrade for Mac OS 9 users. Apple continued to offer OS X as a paid software product up to 10.5 or 10.6 (though it was also bundled with new Mac purchases).
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS_version_history]
Android does have a cost. While the OS itself is free, any manufacturer that wants to put Play Store, which is almost every company outside China, needs to pay Google a license fee, which effectively pays for Android. Of course there are also ads everywhere in Android and Android apps that helps pay the bill.
There are really any ads in Android itself, even with Google Apps installed. Which, by the way, you don't need to use even if they are installed (except, for example, Chrome to get a different app store or whatnot-, just like a fresh Windows install needing to use Edge to get Firefox or Chrome).
And it's still miles easier to get Android to switch default apps and also respect your choices, than to get Windows to allow you to switch default apps and then shut the fuck about their crap.
Wow, so the only OSs with no money in them are the FOSS ones. Makes sense, though.
(No, at this point Android hardly counts as FOSS anymore.)
Someone has to pay for it because it’s expensive to develop. There’s a ton of money in Linux just like there is in proprietary operating systems. There are like 4000-5000 kernel contributors and most of them are doing this work on some company’s payroll. There’s an enormous amount of resources going into Linux to the point where a proprietary OS couldn’t possibly keep up.
The real genius of Linux is the economic model, getting companies to buy into it and actually delivering value far in excess of what it costs anybody to contribute. It’s winning precisely because the value proposition cannot be matched.
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