Vista’s Hardware Requirements
Microsoft has been taking heat for the hardware requirements to run Vista with the Aero Glass UI and other goodies enabled.
Mac OS X scales its UI to the hardware that it runs on, and with Quartz 2D Extreme, will do so even more.
It’s not about needing a system upgrade to run your OS, but rather needing a system upgrade to run certain features of your OS that are designed with a certain level of hardware in mind.
Would you rather Microsoft limited the OS’s capabilities to the lowest common denominator?