Re: they add a dot - you pay $129.99

In article <1hjrvyj.162jn2jjsr3ubN%not_in_use@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
not_in_use@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Peter Hayes) wrote:

ZnU <znu@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <1hjrnsl.bgqvi81klcr7bN%not_in_use@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
not_in_use@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Peter Hayes) wrote:

Sandman <mr@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <1hjrmad.1wgtzhy1ggruoeN%not_in_use@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
not_in_use@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Peter Hayes) wrote:

About the same as you pay for a dot. Except we get a new
OS. You get an "upgrade" - like the ones we get free.

Sarah, the usual underperforming troll newbie. :)

No worse than a certain Maccie that believes OS X is free.

Who thinks that OSX is free?

Have a look in the VMWare to announce virtualization for OSX thread

Oxford,

Message-ID: <44d7b2cc$0$42211$815e3792@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Uh, ok...

Sarah thinks service packs are free, which I agree with, and Oxford
thinks the copy of OSX that comes with your Mac is free, which is
semantics really. It's included in the price.

Isn't this exactly the same flawed argument that many Windows users
employ?

It's a little different. In the case of buying a Wintel box with
Windows, the vendor clearly had to pay Microsoft for that copy of
Windows. That makes things very clear-cut in the Windows case: yes, you
are paying for Windows.

Whether you get charged for OS X when you buy a Mac is, as Sandman says,
really a matter of semantics. Apple makes a certain amount of money from
selling a Mac, which goes into a big pool. Some money is drawn from this
pool to pay for OS X development.

I'll tell you what. Work out what happens if Apple stop funding OS X
development from revenue raised on copies of OS X supplied with machines
they sell and see what happens. The retail price of OS X would double or
treble, to match XP prices.

Do the math on this. Apple spent $534M on *all* R&D last year. That
includes computers, the OS, iLife, Final Cut Pro Studio, iPods, iTMS,
snazzy optical mice, etc. The OS is probably less than a quarter of that.

I don't know what the running total is for retail copies of Tiger, but
it hit the two million mark in six weeks... that alone probably covered
the R&D costs.

In this sense, there's some way in
which it could be said that some of the money you spend on a Mac goes to
pay for OS X... but at the same time, well, Apple almost certainly makes
enough money just from boxed retail sales of OS X to more than cover the
costs of OS X R&D, so they don't actually *have* to factor that cost
into the price of a Mac.

Boxed retail sales of OS X aren't likely to hold up much if the
incremental advantages of Tiger over Panther and the incremental
advantages of Leopard over Tiger are anything to go by.

Leopard looks like it will be a significantly larger upgrade than Tiger.

I certainly didn't get my money's worth upgrading to Tiger, plus the
extra $$ for QT7 pro. Will Apple pull the same QT trick with Leopard?

It will probably depend on where the QuickTime upgrade cycle falls in
relation to the OS X upgrade cycle. If the next paid version of
QuickTime ships prior to, or concurrently with, Leopard, Apple isn't
going to bother to support the old version in Leopard. If it ships after
Leopard ships, obviously you'll have the option to buy Leopard but not
upgrade.

Whether whatever model Apple uses internally to figure out what a Mac
should cost takes some assumed value for a copy of OS X into account,
and what that value might be if it does, is also unknown.

But there **is** some assumed value, perhaps around $30, which is
commensurate with the alleged cost of XP to the large PC OEMs like Dell.

You've got no idea if Apple's pricing model works like that.

So is, of course, the processor. But if you could order a Mac
without a processor, that would affect the price, but it's unlikely
that the lack of OSX would affect the price.

That's the same policy as Microsoft - order an OEM PC minus OS and
the price doesn't change.

But you *are* paying for a copy of Windows if you get one. The fact
that Microsoft has the market power to make you also pay for a copy if
you *don't* get one in some circumstances doesn't change this.

Try ordering a new Mac without OS X and see how far you get. The
policies of Apple and Microsoft have the same effect.

It's still irrelevant.

Not saying I agree with Oxford.

If someone believes that OS X is free then they'll believe that
downloading it from bit-torrent isn't theft or piracy. Sad, really.

Free when you buy a Mac is not the same thing as free under any
circumstances. Apple is running a promotion right now where students
can get free iPods when they buy Macs... that doesn't mean they can
also go steal iPods from Apple retail stores.

So? Is iLife also free?

When you buy a new Mac... maybe. It's the same deal as with the OS.

--
"Those who enter the country illegally violate the law."
-- George W. Bush in Tucson, Ariz., Nov. 28, 2005
.

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