Will Windows Vista users be shut out of iPhone fun?
Posted by Dr. Macenstein
MacRumors recently got a hold of Apple’s officially sanctioned iPhone system requirements, and it looks like Microsoft’s latest OS, Windows Vista, doesn’t make the cut.
System Requirements:
Mac: Mac with a USB 2.0 port, Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later
PC: Windows PC with a USB 2.0 port and Windows XP Home or Professional (Service Pack 2)
(Notice the conspicuous absence of an “or later” in the Windows specs?)
Earlier this year there was quite a stink raised by Windows Vista adopters who found their iPods suddenly not supported by the new OS. Could this be another subtle jab at Vista from Apple, or merely an oversight in the tech specs?
Well, since no “real” business has yet switched to Vista, at least this wouldn’t hurt iPhone’s potential business sales. (Although a ton are still on NT). I’d say if this is true, then it would be fixed in a month or two after launch.
Oh … let’s hope so. Anyone using Vista deserves to be left in the cold. 😉
Could be premeditated. People already have iPods, and if they know that they can’t upgrade to Vista and expect to still use their iPods, they might just stick with Windows XP, which makes the contrast to Mac OS X even more apparent.
Or it could just be that they haven’t implemented Vista support yet. 🙂
Or it could be that Apple doesn’t advise the use of Vista with the iPhone. It took forever for the iTunes page to display Vista info, even though it ran on Beta 2.
Or it could be that XP SP2 is a minimum requirement, and later versions of Windows are fine too.
Dai Jones,
Well, the Mac requirements say 10.4.9 OR LATER.
The Windows Specs just say XP with (Service Pack 2) PERIOD.
So I doubt it is a “minimum”.
God, I hope Apple screws Vista users again.
🙂
So Microsoft breaks the APIs, and it is the other guys fault?
Kids these days are so stupid. In my day we could all spot when Microsoft was screwing over the other guy.
DOS isn’t done until Lotus doesn’t run indeed…
Apple not supporting Visa with the iPhone is Apple taking a jab at Microsoft, if that is truly the case. However, the iPod predated Vista, so the iPod and Vista not working together properly at launch is Microsoft screwing Apple (or attempting to). I don’t think Apple can really be blamed for that one. After all, the iPod worked on the Vista Betas…
So if anything, is just (temporary) payback 🙂
Besides, how many people with Vista (right now) don’t have access to an XP machine? Everyone I know, though they are mostly nerds, is duel booting into Vista, and wouldn’t dare leave XP behind and put all their stock in vista.
Good strategy by Apple to get iPod and iPhone users to buy a Mac. That was the intention all along was that Apple’s other devices would be gateways into the Mac. Now that Parallels 3 will allow PC games to run smoothly on a Mac, there is no need for PC’s any longer.
one of the reasons why apple products “work” is because of its crippled compatibility. OS X tiger is developed to run on what? 50-100 motherboards? a few graphics solutions? etc… Windows XP on the other hand runs in thousands of different motherboards, chipsets, GPU’s. with that alone, the latter is likely to have more issues than a OS X. it is also one of the reasons windows is bloated compared to OS X. Vista support for the iphone was also probably dropped because there was no time to develop a driver/software for it that meets apple’s standards and to bring the iphone to the status of “it just works”.
Curt, you are correct on a number of different levels there. However there are many things Windows could do better to help things “just work” better with less work on their part. They did a number of those in Vista, but not all of them.
Vista not supporting the MP3 player with 80% of the market, a device which is arguably one of the most popular device* plugged into a windows machine, is just plain inexcusable. Having windows bugger out on a piece of hardware that only a hacker, some kid in Sweden, and someone’s dog would actually install is acceptable.
*by this I mean a device with the same specifications, which afaik all iPods have had.
yeah there’s also a marketing/business ploy involved. microsoft wants to increase zune’s market share and apple retaliates in kind by screwing vista which is already screwed to begin with. will buy a macbook to replace my ibook when leopard ships hopefully with x3100 (not likely). will also consider upgrading to vista when sp1 is released.
Not supporting Windows 2000 may be a more significant issue in the business market, rather than not supporting Vista at this time.