Quote:
Originally Posted by
RichL 
Charging for OS updates is
not the norm for consumer devices.
Let's take a look:
Cell phones - always free
PDAs - always free
Consoles - always free
Apple TV - always free
iPod classic - always free
iPod touch - $10 a time
It's the
iPod touch and not the iPhone that's the
abnormaility.
I paid for the v2.0 because it added a feature (the app store) that, to me, was worth the money. However, most of the v3.0 features are really only useful to iPhone users. I won't be upgrading.
While I admit it's not a slam-dunk, i think you are being a tad disingenuous here.
I was talking "computers" (Apple is formerly and still primarily a computer company), not "consumer devices. Cell phones (traditionally or traditional models at least), and the iPod classic are not really in this category for starters. You do have a point with the Apple TV. I didn't think of that device when I made my comments and it now makes me wonder if they are going to do some kind of content subscription model with that eventually. In any case, despite the fact that the Apple TV *is* a computer, most of it's users probably don't think of it as one.
Things like iPods are right on the bubble in that we never used to really think of them as "computers" per se, but now (especially with the iPod touch we do. Also, having owned many many PDAs I can tell you that OS upgrades for them as a category are most definitely not always free. It's such a big category that covers so much history and so many devices that you can't rally say much about that at all, at least not in such general terms.
The comparison between the iPod touch and an iMac that I made is (IMO) much, much closer to reality than the examples you gave, in that both of these things actually run OS-X, but with one running a modified, slightly dumbed down variety. Clearly it won't be long before the horsepower of these mobiles and the OS they run is virtually identical to the desktop machines as well.
My argument therefore is more that since the iPod touch is the first device in a new mobile computing platform, (that doesn't use the subscription model like the iPhone), if Apple allowed the updates to be for free, it would most definitely reflect on their desktop line.
Especially now people are getting used to lower and lower prices for OS updates (a new development being pushed almost entirely by Apple BTW), if they start giving them away for free, it won't long at all before people start to wonder why they have to pay for an OS update at all.
Concomitant to that, I would argue that it's just rude for people to complain about this given the incredible amount of work that goes into the update, the ridiculously *low* price that Apple is charging, the fact that Apple is in fact leading the way to lower and lower prices all the time, the fact that the last time people complained the price was cut in half, the likelihood that the price might be lowered even further, and the fact that Apple purposely leaves their servers open so people can basically rip it off and distribute it for free on teh Internets (if you're that kind of person that likes to rip stuff off.
I understand why people are confused by the whole thing, but just because a lot of stupid people cry like babies about it doesn't make me feel sympathetic.
\.
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