Affordable OS Updates
by Michael Camilleri
Apple releases their new operating system, dubbed Snow Leopard, on Friday, and the most interesting thing to me is the price. For users running the current Leopard version of OS X the price is only USD$29 (AUD$39). This is impulse purchase territory as far as I’m concerned and I’m eager to see what the uptake is. Don’t fail me now, humanity!
(The comparison with Windows is, as one would expect, less than flattering. Expect to pay upwards of USD$120. And first make sure you can upgrade.)
Comments
Yeah, but those comparisons are pretty poor.
Apple is in the hardware business, not the software business. They can afford to be selling the software cheap to encourage hardware adoption. Not only that but Snow Leopard is mostly behind the scenes stuff, so they cannot sell it on new features, even with the incredibly lax standard they used for features in the Leopard advertising.
If Apple had tried to charge their $129US price for Snow Leopard they would have had a very low chance of getting the adoption rates of the new version that they are after so much. If they don’t get a high enough adoption rate then their habit of breaking backwards compatibility would raise far too much ire for them.
Mind you I’ve been running windows 7 on the free trial since it emerged and it’s pretty much fantastic. Microsoft suckered me in the same way they got me onto the new office, a free trial, a vastly better experience, locked on a certain day and then the ability to unlock online.
Is it cheaper to upgrade from the free trial than it otherwise appears? How much are you going to have to pay to keep using Windows 7?
(Andrew, I’m writing a fuller response to your comment which I think deserves its own post.)
[...] response to the snarky line I had regarding Windows Vista in my post yesterday, Andrew made the point that Apple can afford to sell their new operating system at such a low price [...]