oh look!
they even have one of the rare Australian versions...
Looking forward to Lion, but think it's too advanced an operating system for you? Pop over to Game's shop in Swindon's Regent Street, which is still flogging copies of Mac OS X 10.3 circa 2003. Yes, the branch of the retail chain has three copies of Panther, any one of which can be yours for a penny short of £100. Game's …
Might the version Game are selling be the full (non-upgrade) version, and the £20 version of 10.7 quoted be the upgrade version? In other words, while the £20 10.7 version may install from scratch, for licensing purposes you need a "full" version of OSX for it to be strictly legal? I seem to remember something about that.
I'm just guessing, though it might explain the price difference.
Heck, who cares... I sure don't, I hate Macs anyway.
Also, Panther runs only on PowerPC Macs. Lion runs only on 64 bit Intel Macs. There are no machines that are capable of being upgraded from one to the other (even with intermediate steps).
In a sense, copies of OS-X are upgrade versions, as it is only legal to install them on PCs that came with an earlier version of the Mac OS included when you bought the PC. I think the licenses supposedly require that you upgrade from the previous version of OS-X, so theoretically you couldn't go directly from 10.4 to 10.6. On the other hand, if you just simply bought the disc and did it, it worked fine, and Apple did not support an official upgrade path for this once they had released 10.6 and discontinued sales of 10.5, one doesn't get the impression that they cared, especially.
Things are perhaps different with Lion as you can only buy it from the App store. On the other hand, it remains to be seen if there is anything stopping you from simply downloading the image from the App store, copying it to a DVD or a memory stick, and then just using it to install on another machine, that may or may not be running 10.6. Apple has not traditionally used any copy protection or registration keys or such for its OS: it remains to be seen if they will do so now. It may well be that the App store is the only way to buy it, but it may not be the only way to get it.
The Gold Master of 10.7 is already available to developers. I'm running it on the machine I am using to type this. It installed fine without using the App store. I will be intrigued to see whether the App store notices that I haven't yet paid for it and asks me to pay when 10.7 is officially released. (I will do so even if it doesn't - Apple have earned the money).
Of course, even if there is a mechanism to check whether I have paid and ask me to if I haven't, this still probably isn't going to check whether I was running 10.6 prior to upgrading to the GM, and it certainly isn't going to be able to check if I paid for that.
In practice, I think we are still at "Apple doesn't care much what you upgrade from".
I care.
I love Macs., but I don't hate PCs.
Strikes me as being a little stupid to generically hate Macs, hate Windows, hate Linux, or hate Unix. I just love best that with which I'm comfortable, and which I find works best & easiest for me.
Getting a little pissed off with those who think their point of view is the only possible valid & correct one in the world, and anyone who differs is some kind of retard and/or deviant...
... is Tiger. The only Tiger retail boxes sold were for PowerPC machines, as the the first Intel Macs came with Tiger pre-installed, thus no need for an Intel Tiger upgrade.
These boxes contain Panther, PowerPC only (it never ran on Intel outside of Apple HQ), and is missing Dashboard and a very slow Spotlight.
The software may be 8 years old now, but that's because here in Swindon we're at least 8 years behind the rest of the world. Take a walk around Penhill and you'll still find people wearing Global Hypercolour t-shirts, Pepe jeans and Converse All Star trainers.
I took the peasant carrier the other day and someone was listening to GWR Radio* on his Walkman - they were playing Chaka Demus & Pliers. I think he was going to the cinema to watch that film that's just been released in Shaw Ridge, The Full Monty.
It's not all bad though cause petrol in Swindon only costs 60p per litre and you can buy a very nice house for £70K.
"Escape" key, obviously, cause one day I'll hopefully escape from Swine Down.
*for those not from round 'ere GWR Radio was renamed Heart a few years ago, but nobody has thought to tell the people of Swindon about it yet.