Windows Vista was a highly hyped release that spent a lot of developmental and computer resources on appearance. The dedication of resources might have resulted from the fact that XP was starting to look archaic in comparison to Mac OS. Vista had interesting visual effects but was slow to start and run. The 32-bit version in particular didn’t enable enough RAM for the memory-hungry OS to operate quickly. Users still timid to embrace 64-bit missed out on a marginally better experience, offered along with investment in more than 4GB of RAM. Gamers found the added exclusive features in Direct X 10 only mildly tempting compared to XP's speed. Licensing rights and Windows activation became stricter, while user control of internal workings became less accessible. Microsoft lost market share in this time to Apple and Linux variants alike. Vista’s flaws -- coupled with the fact that many older computers lacked the resources to run the system -- led to many home and business users staying with XP rather than updating. That situation was to become problematic when Microsoft announced that XP end of life would occur in April 2014.