Well, yes, Apple designs products for rich people in the first world who have always-on fast internet (have you seen the sheer size of Apple point updates?!). Microsoft designs far more inclusive products.
Well, they might have fixed it then. All I know is that I balked at the 1GB OS X update waiting for me.
And judging by the popular success of the iPad I have to disagree with the suggestion that Apple is less inclusive.
The iPad is only popular in rich first world countries. You will find tons of PCs running Windows in not-so-rich countries, orders of magnitude more. That is exactly my point.
> The iPad is only popular in rich first world countries.
At very least in Bangkok, which is obviously not belongs to rich first world countries, I can see iPad (and Galaxy Tab) everywhere on a train or even in a not-so-expensive restaurant. My not-so-rich neighbor bought an iPad few weeks ago and ask if I could help him setup Wi-Fi, etc.
Maybe I have an Apple-fan Attraction Field turned on or something, but I've found iPad-availablity around me to be pretty amazing. It's hard to deny that Windows-running PCs are still orders of magnitude more but it's still amazing.
Apple is on an incredible roll in Thailand. Our tiny town of Tak just got its first superstore ... and an Apple (iBeat) store at the same time. Dumbfounding.
The iPad is only popular in rich first world countries. You will find tons of PCs running Windows in not-so-rich countries, orders of magnitude more. That is exactly my point.
New technologies tend to be adapted by first world countries first. This was as true of the original IBM PC as it is today for the iPad.
But the iOS model of syncing everything to the cloud or whatever is simply incompatible with the current realities of those countries. Microsoft's taking that into account rather than just shrugging it off.
The size of Windows 7 SP1 is based on how many updates you already have. It's generally 60-100 MB. Only the absolute full ISO download is a gigabyte, and most people simply won't need that. Not to mention that non-SP1 Win7 kept getting security updates for quite a while.
To add to the other voices here, it's massively popular in Eastern Europe not so much as a computer replacement but as a symbol of wealth, regardless of whether you actually possess any.
What is interesting is that Apple and MS have two totally opposed philosophies in handling the issue of the user not understanding the file system.