for your $29 you get...
in addition to the nearly 1000 applications that have been code modified for back end improvements, enhancements, stability, speed, and more:
- Quicktime X (Quicktime plus previously sold ALONE for $29)
- Fully integrated Exchange support (Outlook cannot be bought for the Mac by itself, but the PC version is $129, Office with Exchange support costs hundreds) I might add, the support looks better than what Outlook offers... and it doesn't require outlook to be running to access the contacts and calendar.
- new iChat with higher def and lower bandwidth and new features (OK, updates to most chat apps are typically free, but most are also add supported and this isn't...)
- full native 64 bit including intelligent thread management, and full OS support of multi-core CPUs (even Win 7 won't be there, many underlying apps are still single threaded)
- open access to the GPU for mathmetic functions to accelerate processing. No, not just limited to apps coded for nVidia cards, open access even for everyday apps to that horepower though APIs native to the OS. (easier for programmers to take advantage of, and also allows more than 1 app to use those resources concurrently)
Yea, all the other 995 bullet points are just performance enhancements or minor gimmicks, but they end up with a result of 50% faster and 50% less install space and greater stability.
What are we getting in Win 7 Ultimate for $129 upgrade (IF it's that cheap, current is 219)? bareley some of what was originally promised for Vista coming 3 years too late, and it's still not native 64bit across the board, most apps don't run well under 64 bit, the entire OS is not nearly multithreaded, and virtually anything you add to the base OS costs more and does less than what comes for free on a mac (of with iLife for $79).