Will iTunes remain free?
<a href="http://www.thinksecret.com/news/freeiapps.html"; target="_blank">http://www.thinksecret.com/news/freeiapps.html</a>; says:
[quote] Think Secret has been told by a number of sources within Apple and outside the company that it was only after receiving negative e-mail and reading online message board traffic critical of Apple's decision to charge for brand new versions of iPhoto 2, iMovie 3, iDVD 3, and the already-available iTunes 3, that Jobs decided to distribute iPhoto and iMovie at no charge. <hr></blockquote>
I may be dumb, but does this imply that iTunes will become a commercial app? Or will the rule apply only to iDVD 3? iTunes 3 is still freely downloadable at <a href="http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/"; target="_blank">http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/</a>; while iTunes home page reads: [quote] iLife - $49.00. Available January 25th from the Apple Store. iTunes 3 will be available as part of iLife along with iPhoto 3, iDVD 3, and iMovie 3. iTunes 3 also ships with every new Mac. <hr></blockquote>
As far as i can guage, iLife minus iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie amounts to iDVD.
Am I right to assume that you will get iDVD 3 for $50 packaged with free iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie? Which is free cheese and where is that mousetrap? I'm getting paranoid <img src="confused.gif" border="0">
[quote] Think Secret has been told by a number of sources within Apple and outside the company that it was only after receiving negative e-mail and reading online message board traffic critical of Apple's decision to charge for brand new versions of iPhoto 2, iMovie 3, iDVD 3, and the already-available iTunes 3, that Jobs decided to distribute iPhoto and iMovie at no charge. <hr></blockquote>
I may be dumb, but does this imply that iTunes will become a commercial app? Or will the rule apply only to iDVD 3? iTunes 3 is still freely downloadable at <a href="http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/"; target="_blank">http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/</a>; while iTunes home page reads: [quote] iLife - $49.00. Available January 25th from the Apple Store. iTunes 3 will be available as part of iLife along with iPhoto 3, iDVD 3, and iMovie 3. iTunes 3 also ships with every new Mac. <hr></blockquote>
As far as i can guage, iLife minus iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie amounts to iDVD.
Am I right to assume that you will get iDVD 3 for $50 packaged with free iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie? Which is free cheese and where is that mousetrap? I'm getting paranoid <img src="confused.gif" border="0">
Comments
On closer inspection of that Thinksecret article, it seems there was a coherent plan in place to charge for all iApps until Steve-o got the jitters about the deluge of complaint he was going to be on the receiving end of.
I think that iTunes is treated separately because it's most recent release has been out for a while, whereas iMovie 3, iPhoto 2 and iDVD 3 haven't been seen in the wild yet. This would imply that future releases of iTunes would be moved into the iLife charging structure.
Now, while $50 is not a huge pile of cash, I'd personally be a bit peeved at paying for iDVD, unless it's able to use an external DVD writer with my Cube! While I see the sense in "Office"-ing the iApps, not everyone will want all of them. Even installed with OS X, I bet a good many copies of iMovie have never been opened, and I'd be interested to know how many workstations have huge iTunes libraries...
Of course, this could point the way to a price-cut for OS X, but without the iApps included. Possibly this makes sense.
Some more interesting stuff from Nick DePlume:
[quote] It is not known how much Apple is estimating it will lose from giving away iPhoto 2 and iMovie 3 for free. At last week's keynote address, Jobs said 6 million people had downloaded past versions of iPhoto since it was released in January of 2002 and iMovie had been downloaded 12 million times since its first release in May of 2000. If just half of the 18 million total downloads of iPhoto and iMovie paid $50 for the iApp upgrade bundle, Apple would reap a profit of $450 million, before marketing, administrative and R&D costs. As it stands, if just half the 680,000 people who have bought iDVD since its rollout purchase the $50 upgrade after it is released on January 25, Apple would make a profit of $17 million, before costs. <hr></blockquote>