Ever sense apple started charging for OS's it has been the same
charging pattern, but the numbers have changed.
Buy 7.0, get 7.1 free
Buy 7.5 get 7.6 free
Buy 8.0 get 8.1 free
Buy 8.5 get 8.6 free
Buy 9.0 get 9.1 free (kind of 9.2 as well but that was mostly for
10)
Buy 10.0 get 10.1 free
Buy 10.2 get 10.3 free (we just stopped jumping by half numbers
because apple wants to stay in OS X for a while)
Combine this with the incredible value of the family pack (huge
volume discount for 5 users? wow) and your comparison to
Microsoft is crazy. I agree that apple should discount if you purchased
the last release. This encourages people to buy all of the OS
updates and not skip or hold off as you are thinking. They ship coupons
in the boxes and use to use them for $30 discounts, they should
again.
So, my recommendation to you is....buy 10.2! enjoy 10.3 and start
saving your pennies for 10.4 next year.
Sarcasm alert.
No, Doug, we don't seem to pay much attention to history at Low End
Mac. Not to older Macs. Not to the course of Apple developments.
C'mon, wake up and smell the coffee. Very few websites are as familiar
with Mac history as Low End Mac. I was there
when Apple released System 7.0 as their last free operating system,
although those who wanted to do so could buy a copy. I was there when
Apple released System 7.1 as their first non-free operating system. It
was the patch update to 7.1.1 that was free.
You are correct that 7.5 cost money, but it was the 7.5.x updaters that
were free. Mac OS 7.6 was not a free update, but the patch to 7.6.1
was.
Versions 8.0, 8.5, and 9.0 of the classic Mac OS were not free, but the
updates to 8.1, 8.51, 8.6, and 9.x were free.
For those who owned 10.0, all updates through 10.1.5 could be
downloaded for free - or they could order update CDs from Apple for
$19.95.
Jaguar, Mac OS X 10.2, was not a free release, nor did Apple offer any
kind of discount on it. This "update coupons" Apple ships with the OS
weren't worth the paper they were printed on for those who had any
prior version of OS X.
As I said in my article, I'm cynical. Apple took away free iTools and
made it .mac. Apple took away reduced cost OS upgrades with Jaguar, and
despite your conviction that Apple has to follow the historical trend
you outline, I don't expect them to do so when Panther ships later this
year.
If you're right and it's going to be free, we'll all be thrilled. If
I'm right and it's not going to be free, you and a lot of other Mac
owners are going to feel as disappointed as you did when Jaguar ("only
a 0.1 upgrade") wasn't free. And if it's not going to be discounted
either, you'll be even more frustrated with Apple not following a
pattern you have attempted to impose upon them.
If history teaches us anything, it's that things change. Patterns that
seem to hold up for years, decades, or centuries often break and never
show up again. At one time, the whole universe was composed of moons
and planets and stars in perfectly circular orbits with the earth at
the center. Every observation was made to fit that pattern until
someone proposed elliptical orbits where the Earth wasn't a
focus.
Likewise, Apple has no stated policy as to which OS updates will be
free and which will cost money. I fully expect them to try to milk us
for a full OS fee with Panther - and I'd love to be wrong about
it.
Further, what in the world does Apple's 5-user family pack have to do
with the way Apple sticks it to single license users? And why am I
crazy to compare Apple's most recent upgrade policy (and what I suspect
will be the ongoing one) with Microsoft's policies? After all,
Microsoft is the leading OS vendor on the planet - and they do offer
discounts when users upgrade.
Sorry, but I'm not going to take your word for it that Panther will be
free. At this point we don't know whether Apple will consider it a
major upgrade or an incremental update, and their policy since System
7.1 has been to charge for major upgrades.
Apple update program
In response to the same column, Darren Varner comments:
What would be Apple's incentive to put out any updates if you paid
in advance for them? This isn't working so well for corporate citizens
that paid for the M$ licensing scheme.
No, I would rather pay for them as I need and want them.
You have an older Mac, and what does Apple get from you anyway?
Updating your machine every so often and Apple charging you to do this
doesn't seem so bad.
I had an old car that was all paid for. Damn thing made me add gas
and oil and brakes every so often. Why couldn't I just get a plan that
I could prepay and when the brakes go out or I need gas I can just go
get it. Yeah, like anyone would do that....
Update to Jaguar. Then update to Panther. Somehow I doubt you will
be updating to Panther that soon anyway. Jaguar has been out for a year
now. If you would have sunk in then, it would seem okay now. I
understand not wanting to pay for 2 updates so soon together, but this
is your fault, not Apples.
I do like your columns. This one just didn't sit right.
I never suggested that Apple stop selling OS upgrades so that those
who want to choose if and when they upgrade can do so. I simply
suggested that with Apple's pattern of a big upgrade to OS X about
once a year, they might benefit and their customers might benefit if
they offered an OS update subscription.
My PowerBook is two years old. Among Mac users, that's fairly new,
since we tend to hold onto and productively use our Macs for more years
than Windows users. But what the heck does that have to do with the
cost of OS updates?
What does Apple get from me? Since the start of 2001, there's a $2,600
PowerBook G4, a copy
of OS X 10.1, my .mac subscription, and the 14" iBook my wife's
business bought on my recommendation. And I do plan on updating my
machinery every so often - but not until my TiBook is three years
old.
I have a car that's all paid for, and I don't have to go back to my
dealer for gas, oil, and brakes every so often. I don't have to pay an
annual update fee to GM so my vehicle can keep up with the newer cars
on the road. I have to pay for gas, just as I have to pay for
electricity and an Internet connection on my Mac - this neither
benefits GM nor Apple. Your analogy is flawed.
I have updated to Jaguar, and for the first time my investment in
OS X 10.0 paid off with a version of OS X that I could
actually live with as my primary operating system. It's rock solid, but
it has also reduced my efficiency compared with OS 9. I guess
that's the price of a fully modern OS with a bloated GUI.
But I take the low end seriously. As regular LEM visitors know, the
dot-com collapse has been very tough on us. I've taken two cuts in
salary since I started managing the site full-time, followed by a
part-time 20 hour a week job to help make up for the lost income. I
only have Jaguar because a reader donated it; I don't have the luxury
of spending much money without making sure it's a wise
investment.
So it's entirely my fault that I'm earning one-third as much as I did
two years ago and can't afford the luxury of upgrading OS X and
all my other software as soon as new versions are released. Unlike some
people, I live in the real world of tight budgets, limited income, and
being three months behind on payroll. (Unlike some people who have been
"let go" over the past couple years and are still searching for
employment, at least I have a job. These are tough economic
times.)
I really would like a full copy of Jaguar so I can do a clean install
and find out if it makes my poky (under OS X) 400 MHz PowerBook G4
work more efficiently. But with Panther maybe four months away, I have
to question the wisdom of investing in Jaguar today when Panther might
be yet another full cost OS upgrade.
Panther will not be out in July
Paul Lee writes:
I just want to point out that Apple just reschedule the WWDC from
May to June, and that in the press release, announced that Panther will
be "demonstrated" at the developers' conference. Given the wording of
that statement, there is almost no chance Panther will be ready by
July. A more optimistic time frame would be fall at the earliest, and
more likely by January 2004.
Secondly, if the tidbits of news and rumors concerning Panther are
true, I think we need to look beyond the "Apple is going to rip us off
again" line being touted by the disgruntled (with all due apologies to
the disgruntled). The word is, Panther will introduce 64-bit support,
and if it does nothing else, this is hugely significant.
As you've noticed, Apple has been carefully and quietly planting the
seeds for a revolution. We saw that first with Jaguar, which greatly
enhanced compatibility with Windows-based networks and even traditional
Unix-based systems. We saw that with the introduction of the Xserve - a
seemingly crazy attempt to penetrate the enterprise. We see that now as
Apple releases beta after beta of the X11 windowing system. All these
things point to Panther.
How? Because Panther is likely the first and only workstation 64-bit
OS that is also a consumer OS. Coupled with IBM PowerPC 970 chip, this
will make for a powerful attack that Microsoft will not be able to
answer until 2005 with Longhorn. While people debate how much
performance can be gained from going 64-bit, one huge advantage remains
largely unaddressed: A Panther-system running on a PPC 970 system will
be able to address more than 4 GB of RAM.
No matter what kind of engineering Dell or any of the Wintel PC
manufacturers put into any of their systems, until Microsoft introduces
Longhorn with 64-bit support, a PC will be limited to 4 GB of RAM.
When Apple introduces a dual-970 Panther-based system with 8 or 16 or
even 32 GB of RAM, won't a Dell workstation look rather rather pitiful
with a mere 4 GB?
Furthermore, Intel has thus far no credible strategy of moving the
x86 line to 64-bits. They have a 64-bit chip called Itanium, but it
does a horrible job of emulating x86 code. In fact, Intel came out a
while ago claiming 64-bit isn't all that important for consumers. Sure,
AMD will have the 64-bit Hammer, but without Windows support, a Hammer
system will be consigned to running Linux or some variant of Unix.
With graphics and video professional regularly manipulating files
that are several gigabytes in size today, a system that can support
more than 4 GB of RAM will be a huge boon. And I suspect there are
a legion of scientists and engineers who could use a system with 8 or
16 GB of RAM. The processor will become secondary when comparing two
systems with such a huge gap in available memory.
Certainly, no consumer will need that much RAM for quite a number of
years, but when looking at Panther, ask not what Panther can do for
consumers, but what Panther can do for Apple.
Sorry for the long email, but thanks for listening.
Apple has sometimes demonstrated products and then made them
available immediately. I suspect that Apple moved the WWDC back so that
Panther will be closer to golden master status and IBM will be that
much closer to having the PowerPC 970 ready for market.
As I understand it, with Panther Apple will be migrating to the Mach
5.0 BSD kernel, which should bring with it several improvements. Like
you, I strongly suspect that 10.3 will offer full support for the
PowerPC 970, quite possibly including a 64-bit mode that would be a
real boon for next generation servers.
I don't anticipate Apple waiting until January to release PowerPC 970
hardware, and that means they won't wait that long to release 10.3. I
expect that Apple will announce the availability of Panther at the same
time as the PPC 970-based Power Macs - if not earlier.
I don't have a crystal ball, but my guess is that Apple will announce
Panther at Macworld Expo in July, assuming they have a presence at the
show. I also expect that they will be showing next generation Power
Macs based on the PPC 970 processor, either as early production
machines or behind closed doors prototypes. Power Mac sales are
hurting, and Apple needs to address that.
Regardless of the release dates for new hardware, by making Panther
such an important topic on the Mac Web last week, Apple has built the
kind of anticipation that shouldn't be left hanging until next January.
I don't anticipate Panther coming out any later than the end of July,
although there may be a later revised version when the PPC 970 machines
are ready to ship.
Just an educated guess, but it seems sensible.
OS X Subscriptions a Great Idea
Antti Vahtera
"I've suggested it before. I'm suggesting it again. Apple needs to
offer some kind of software licensing and upgrade package. Maybe for
$149 per year a subscriber would have a basic .mac account, one full
installer for the current version of OS X and all of Apple's free
applications, and one additional CD (or set of CDs) for the next major
Mac OS revision released during the year."
I've not seen you comment on this before, so this is my first time
reading this, and I must say I agree one hundred percent. This is the
single best idea I have heard in a long time concerning Apple. (One
other was a .mac account lite version, with only about 20 MB iDisk
space for Backup & iSync for about $25 a year, but this is even
better.)
Like you said, most likely many (even most?) users would just renew
the subscription year after year even if there wasn't a big update on
the line
This could get Apple just what they want: Old Mac OS out of the user
base and most of The Mac People to always upgrade to the latest
version. I'd fork out the cash the minute this option would be
available, and I know a couple others who'd do the same thing. And this
wouldn't just benefit the random Mac users - consider the options for
large corporations, just subscribe year after year to the update-thingy
(without a yearly crazy paper war to fork the dough from the yearly
budget, it could always stay in with the initial establishment). That's
what I'd call a "cash flow".
It was last summer that I suggested in Apple Services: OS X and .mac for One Fair
Price that Apple bundle .mac and OS X updates at a reasonable
discount. Imagine how a half million subscribers at $149 a year would
help Apple's bottom line. And then add in schools and businesses that
prefer fixed costs they can budget to unplanned expenses.
I think it would be a huge plus for Apple, but the ball is in their
court.
OS X 10.3 price
Roger Harris writes:
Apple has weak hardware sales and are lowering markup. They are
spending a lot on OS and software R&D. They have to get money
somewhere. I can find a lot in Apple Land to whine about besides the OS
cost.
Printers don't work with full features.
Scanners hardly work at all.
Macs that are almost a year old can't boot to repair CDs.
My year-and-a-half-old $1,500 Epson printer and $1,200 scanner
require me to keep an old Mac around just to use the hardware.
Latest OS X update has made networking with OS 9 Macs a hit
and miss affair. Is that just chance? Apple doesn't seem to be in a
rush to remedy.
I would pay the $129 if some of this stuff would work.
Don't get me started on printer drivers. My wonderful LaserJet
2100TN, which has been serving the needs of Low End Mac, Family
Matchmakers, and my kids for years still prints just fine, but I can't
access all of the paper trays from OS X. Companies like HP and
Epson need to offer much better support for their legacy products under
OS X if they want to keep Mac users loyal.
For that matter, so does Apple, as your note about networking reminds
us. Sometimes it seems that Apple wants to bask in the glow of their
traditional long product life, low cost of ownership history, and
sometimes it seems that they want us to ditch that all and embrace
OS X completely.
Apple needs to keep old Macs and new working well together to keep the
next switcher from moving from the classic Mac OS to Windows XP.
Complaining About the Price
Richard Clayton writes:
Here's a hint originally posted on MacFixit (until Apple's lawyers sent
the usual cease-and-desist letter) that you may find helpful:
Apple's free updater CD for Mac OS X 10.1 is actually a full
version of the operating system (which helps explain why it's so large)
but it adds an extra little package called "CheckForOSX." Remove that
and you can install 10.1 on any disk. [Remainder of article deleted to
avoid yet another letter from Apple 's lawyers. dk]
This may work with your 10.2 update CD as well. Of course, Toast
Titanium can be used in place of Disk Copy - you have to make sure the
CD image file is of the entire device (boot sectors and all) and not
just the partition.
One comment: While I agree with you that Apple shouldn't charge full
price for Panther so soon after the release of Jaguar (August 23, 2003
- only ten months!), I do think it's a little premature to be
complaining about pricing that hasn't even been announced yet. I
understand that you are writing about this now in hopes that Apple will
listen and do the right thing when Panther is released, but I believe
the best way to vote on this matter is with our wallets. Just my 2
cents.
Some of our wallets aren't as thick as they used to be. I did
attempt to use the procedure listed on MacFixIt, but I never quite got
it to work. I hadn't thought to try it with the Jaguar disks - worth
investigating.
As you surmise, the point of the article is to nudge Apple into
thinking things through before announcing yet another $129 upgrade. I
don't know if they plan on making Panther a major, full-cost upgrade or
not, but a lot of us saw the no discount policy for single copies of
Jaguar as a slap in the face. It was not a good PR move for Apple; I
hope they can avoid a similar fiasco with 10.3.
Good Grief
Genevieve Shirk writes:
Good Grief Dan, why go into a tirade rant before Apple has even
announced any policy.
I read recently on another board that Apple's history shows charging
only for the .EvenNumbered versions - 8.0, 8.6, 9.0, 10.0, 10.2.
.OddNumbered versions were free. If history holds 10.3 will be a free
upgrade unless you want Apple to send you a version on CD.
As noted in my response to Doug Petrosky (above),
there is no pattern based on odd numbers vs. even numbers. There is a
pattern of major upgrades costing money, minor updates being free. At
this point we don't know that Apple will consider Panther a minor
update.
Apple Alienation
Ken Cavaliere-Klick writes:
I agree with your article completely. I bought 10.1.3 and just
missed the Jaguar cut off. I don't want to drift into the "sour grapes"
I'm sure you've heard many times over.
I'm adding Yellow Dog Linux
3.0 in the next few months, along side my trusty 9.2.2, on my
ancient, reliable, but upgraded, Bondi. Once burned, twice shy. It's
not that my decision is retaliatory; it's a matter of practicality.
Apple will never support older iMacs and Macs fully, and I'm not all
that willing to buy a new Apple computer to run a not quite finished
OS. (Mandrake is also releasing an updated PPC Linux any time now.)
Apple is perilously close to alienating a lot of old followers. Now
here's the kicker: I'm an Apple "helper," and I'm heading to Linux.
Alienation. That's an appropriate label. Sometimes we feel
alienated inadvertently (like all the foreign-born kids being reminded
of their difference while singing "land of my birth" in school), and
sometimes it's very deliberate (like the descendants of white
immigrants telling the descendants of black slaves to "go home to
Africa").
Apple should understand alienation. The Macintosh alienated both Apple
II and Lisa users. Apple alienated Newton users when they abandoned the
best midsized PDA in history. They alienated people who bought pre-G3
Power Macs based on the promise that the next great Mac OS would run on
any Power Mac - and then created OS X specifically for G3 and
later hardware.
Sometimes you have to leave the past behind in order to move forward.
The question is how you do it - do you run roughshod over users or go
out of your way to avoid deliberately alienating them? After the mock
funeral for OS 9, I think we have a pretty good idea how Steve
Jobs feels about things. The classic Mac OS is alive and well, but
Apple would rather alienate older Mac users with an "in your face"
funeral than simply let OS X move forward on its own.
On the other hand, unless you're running System 6.0.8. or 9.2.2, you'll
probably always be using a "not quite finished OS." Unix has been
around for decades, and it keeps evolving. Yellow Dog Linux 3.0 will
give way to 3.1 and 4.0 and who knows what else in the future. The same
is true of Mac OS X; it will never be quite finished. That's the
nature of current operating systems.
I'm not opposed to Apple making things better, and Jaguar was a huge
improvement over 10.1, which was a big step up from 10.0. I'm
frustrated by the way Apple stuck it to loyal users by offering no
discount on single copies of Jaguar - and I hope they learn a lesson
from it before their next major OS release.
Your "two brains" article is a concise confirmation of what I've
been telling people for some time. It's well-written; I'll link to it
in my dual CPU article the next time I update it.
Thanks for the kind words. There's a lot of misunderstanding about
dual processors. Some people think it always means twice the power,
when that's rarely the case. Others think its just a gimmick, which it
can be when the OS and applications don't support it. And that was
generally the case until two years ago, when OS X finally
shipped.
Today we need to help OS X users understand that a dual 1.25 GHz Power
Mac G4 won't generally offer 2.5x the power of the single CPU
1 GHz machine - and also that it will generally offer more than
the 25% improvement predicted by clock speed. Unfortunately, it's one
of those "your mileage may vary" things that depends a great deal on
what programs the end users has, so we can't predict how much better
two CPUs will be than one, only that they will be better under
OS X.
I've sent a note to Rob Art Morgan of Bare Feats and suggested he
investigate, but I don't know how much access he has to hardware since
relocating from Hawaii to the mainland. If he does have the opportunity
to run some comparisons, I know he'll do a bang up job.
I've got plenty more email on the Jaguar/Panther article, but enough
for one day. Look for more in tomorrow's mailbag.
Letters sent may be published at our discretion. Email addresses will
not be published unless requested. If you prefer that your message not
be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for
length, context, and to match house
style.
Dan Knight has been publishing Low
End Mac since April 1997. Mailbag columns come from email responses to his Mac Musings, Mac Daniel, Online Tech Journal, and other columns on the site.
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Next generation 'Books are expected to include Intel's next generation Montevino processor, but wireless power and wireless USB could give Apple a leg up on the competition.
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Apple's Safari browser is fast, lightweight, and compatible with pretty much any website that doesn't require users to run Windows and Internet Explorer 5.5 or later.
Best iBook G3 deals, Low End Mac Deals, 07.08.
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Best Mac OS X 10.0-10.3 deals, Low End Mac Deals, 07.07.
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