Oh jesus tapdancing christ, it's twenty f-ing dollars. I'm a full time college student, part time freelance artist, and even I see $20 as nominal. I mean, seriously, if you can't handle $20 for a software bundle, I think you need to find a better job, or y'know, don't spend all your money on personal technology.
I'm looking forward to the release.
I paid £200 for the iPod touch. I did not get told it would be bumped to £226 just to keep it updated. I chose the touch over the iPhone to avoid incurring after-sale fees.
And just because I'm not happy about paying it, doesn't mean I can't afford it. It's the principal of it.
Anyway, that said, I sure do want to play Touch Fighter...That looks awesome.
Oh jesus tapdancing christ, it's twenty f-ing dollars. I'm a full time college student, part time freelance artist, and even I see $20 as nominal. I mean, seriously, if you can't handle $20 for a software bundle, I think you need to find a better job, or y'know, don't spend all your money on personal technology.
It's not much, but I do question its necessity, and there's a principe of the thing, it seems like Apple's getting into the habit of nickel-and-diming its customers. Apple's iPod update to let people play games and added better search functionality did not cost anything, but things seem to have changed in the last couple years. The game update allowed people to buy games from Apple. The iTouch update should be able to allow people to buy software from Apple. It seems pretty odd this time around to have to pay money to get the opportunity to pay for software. It would seem that Apple would want to keep the barriers to entry low.
Who came up with the "accounting" justification first? Did Apple themselves provide this explanation first? Or did some news website throw it out there, and Apple ran with it? As I understand, those "accounting laws" do not specify how much a company has to charge. So if Apple honestly did want to offer the update for free but wasn't allowed to, then why don't they do the next best thing? Offer the update for something like 20 cents instead of $20. If Apple can do that, then their "accounting" rationalization might be more believable.
They, Apple, must charge something that will come close to covering their costs. This is to protect investors. If Apple did not do this then some state or teachers retirement fund could sue Apple for giving away work. The only way to get software for free is for very small jobs, too little time invested to be worth getting compensated for, or a bug fix. Added functionality will always cost unless of it took someone a few hours to complete. I don't know where the threshold is but it would be something like this at least 10,000 people would be willing to pay for the added functionality and at $5.00 a pop, that would just about cover the costs. So you can see the cost to the company would be large enough to register on the time/cost meter, unlike adding a new template to iWork that thousands of people may use but it only took a few hours to complete. Small tasks like a new template would also not get an account number to track the time internally to Apple and would go under a general code or cost center. Usually general time is used when people are between projects and or bored.
Who came up with the "accounting" justification first? Did Apple themselves provide this explanation first? Or did some news website throw it out there, and Apple ran with it? As I understand, those "accounting laws" do not specify how much a company has to charge. So if Apple honestly did want to offer the update for free but wasn't allowed to, then why don't they do the next best thing? Offer the update for something like 20 cents instead of $20. If Apple can do that, then their "accounting" rationalization might be more believable.
If you'd like to single-handedly take on eliminating Sarbanes-Oxley, be my guest. The business world would thank you.
If you'd like to single-handedly take on eliminating Sarbanes-Oxley, be my guest. The business world would thank you.
At first, I thought it was SOx but upon looking into it it seems unlikely. Now I think it's just a way to cover the costs of development and, of course, to make a profit. iPhone users are paying it for to their carriers who pay Apple. I see nothing unreasonable with charging customers for anything beyond bug fixes.
If you'd like to single-handedly take on eliminating Sarbanes-Oxley, be my guest. The business world would thank you.
Again, those "accounting laws" don't dictate how much a company has to charge. And Apple's story is "Oh, we'd like to give it away for free but the big bad government says we have to charge for it". But again, there seems to be no rule regarding how much to charge. So if Apple is really serious about wanting to give it away for free but being forced by the government to charge, then shouldn't Apple have just charged the absolute minimum amount "required" by law and not a penny more? So basically, Apple says since they can't give it away for free then they will charge $20, as if there was no other option in between. It would be better if Apple just came out and admitted that they want to make a profit from selling the update.
I paid £200 for the iPod touch. I did not get told it would be bumped to £226 just to keep it updated.
Who held the gun to your head and forced you to update it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Haggar
Apple's story is "Oh, we'd like to give it away for free but the big bad government says we have to charge for it".
Do you actually have a quote from an official Apple source that can verify that Apple themselves have claimed this?
I think it is clear that:
1.) SOX requires Apple to charge at least something.
2.) Apple could charge less than $20 and still be SOX compliant.
3.) Apple are charging $20 rather than something less in an attempt to make a profit (don't know if they did or not because I don't know how many bought the upgrade), and I fail to see the problem in a company trying to sell a product for a profit.
Who held the gun to your head and forced you to update it?
Do you actually have a quote from an official Apple source that can verify that Apple themselves have claimed this?
I think it is clear that:
1.) SOX requires Apple to charge at least something.
2.) Apple could charge less than $20 and still be SOX compliant.
3.) Apple are charging $20 rather than something less in an attempt to make a profit (don't know if they did or not because I don't know how many bought the upgrade), and I fail to see the problem in a company trying to sell a product for a profit.
More than likely they are charging close to their cost once they figure out how many people are likely to pay for it. Again 10,000 people at $5.00 per copy is $50,000 some things cost more than others especially if there is wide spread testing and QA and security testing as well. The costs can add up fast when many people from many different divisions are working on the same project at the same time. Here you can see iPhone, and OSX, and Quicktime divisions as well as QA, Security, Marketing, Sales. The executive group are creating a group that will review the apps as well as act as police if they run amok. So $20 is not bad when you add up all, and I only scratched the surface, of who could be involved and see how many people could have been working on this. Oh yea I guess that would also include the Xcode team as well, the team that actually wrote the SDK.
No, it's 99 bucks one time even if you don't publish something.
Then as many as you do..... no charge.
I just finished watching the keynote. While the event notes taking by AI and otehrs were ambiguous it's clear when you watch it that it's $99 to become an iPhone developer and then apps are free to host. Mea culpa.
While this will lead to a lot of free apps that, like on OS X, some will be of excellent quality it will also lead to a very poor apps too. I hope Apple will be weeding these out or storing them in a shitty shitty bin bin.
Who held the gun to your head and forced you to update it?
Well there's a clever comment
Not
I bought the iPod touch armed with the knowledge that 3rd Party Apps were coming to both it and the iPhone. I bought the device partially because I wanted the apps. So you see, it's not about holding guns to people's heads, it's about not making things plain to customers ahead of time. Steve did not mention that it would cost extra for me to add 3rd Party Apps in his SDK letter way back when.
I bought the iPod touch armed with the knowledge that 3rd Party Apps were coming to both it and the iPhone.
But you have no idea what those 3rd party apps are going to be so how do you know you are going to want/need them?
Did you buy the iPod touch just to be cool and have the latest gadget, or because it actually performs a function that you require?
And where did Apple ever say that:
1.) No updates to the iPod touch OS would be required to run 3rd-party apps?
2.) That if an update were required, that it would be delivered for free?
Again, when the update comes, who is going to force you to buy it? No one. You cannot run away from the fact that either the update will be worth to you what Apple charge for it, in which case you can buy it and be happy, or it won't be worth it and you won't buy it. Of course in the second case it sounds like you'll also sulk because you don't have the latest and greatest even though you don't really need it.
Steve did not mention that it would cost extra for me to add 3rd Party Apps in his SDK letter way back when.
Did Steve mention that it would be free to upgrade your Touch after doing massive updates to the codebase Of course not; you made a bad assumption. They are going from version 1 to 2. I certainly don't expect that 10.6 will be a free upgrade for me. And before you start saying that OS X point updates are more complex, remember that they cost more than a dinner for 2 at iHop.
3rd-party apps will cost as much as the developer charges. No more, no less.
I fail to see the problem in a company trying to sell a product for a profit.
Except that Apple has never mentioned profit as a reason for charging for either the 802.11n enabler or iPod Touch updates. Every time the issue of charging for these updates comes up, the response from both Apple and Apple defenders is "accounting laws" and nothing else. If "accounting laws" is truly the only reason for charging, then the decent thing to do would be to charge the absolute minimum amount required by law and not a penny more. If Apple is trying to make a profit, then they should just come out and say it, rather than hiding behind legalese.
Again, those "accounting laws" don't dictate how much a company has to charge. And Apple's story is "Oh, we'd like to give it away for free but the big bad government says we have to charge for it". But again, there seems to be no rule regarding how much to charge. So if Apple is really serious about wanting to give it away for free but being forced by the government to charge, then shouldn't Apple have just charged the absolute minimum amount "required" by law and not a penny more? So basically, Apple says since they can't give it away for free then they will charge $20, as if there was no other option in between. It would be better if Apple just came out and admitted that they want to make a profit from selling the update.
I believe you are correct. Apple can charge whatever they want. The problem from what I understand is that they're now required to report giving the software away as a "loss" in their financial reports. From Apple's perspective, having a line that appears to shareholders like a profit (or breaking even) is better than one that looks like a loss any day of the week (even if that decision loses them money overall). In other words, lets say Apple estimates it's $20/iPod touch user to develop/distribute the software, then if they charge $20, they don't have to report giving the software away as a loss (otherwise, they'd have to report giving the software away as a loss). But suppose by charging $20/device only 25% of users upgrade and Apple ends up losing ~$30/device in lost sales through the App Store (not likely, but suppose). Since those non-sales aren't real, they don't get reported anywhere.
Except that Apple has never mentioned profit as a reason for charging for either the 802.11n enabler or iPod Touch updates. Every time the issue of charging for these updates comes up, the response from both Apple and Apple defenders is "accounting laws" and nothing else. If "accounting laws" is truly the only reason for charging, then the decent thing to do would be to charge the absolute minimum amount required by law and not a penny more. If Apple is trying to make a profit, then they should just come out and say it, rather than hiding behind legalese.
Apple is ALWAYS trying to make a profit. Just keep that in mind, no matter what the level of benevolence appears to be. They make a profit or the shareholders run away like sheep on fire.
To me the reason for that has always been what I think obvious.. they aren't going to release iChat for the iPhone until the day release iChat 4.0 for Windows, and that "will" happen this year.
Comments
How much are they?
NTSL charges $1000 for TBT (true BREW testing).
http://brewforums.qualcomm.com/showthread.php?t=3921
I think Qualcomm charges $400 for a digital certificate.
Higher upfront cost, but you get to keep more of the revenue share.
Oh jesus tapdancing christ, it's twenty f-ing dollars. I'm a full time college student, part time freelance artist, and even I see $20 as nominal. I mean, seriously, if you can't handle $20 for a software bundle, I think you need to find a better job, or y'know, don't spend all your money on personal technology.
I'm looking forward to the release.
I paid £200 for the iPod touch. I did not get told it would be bumped to £226 just to keep it updated. I chose the touch over the iPhone to avoid incurring after-sale fees.
And just because I'm not happy about paying it, doesn't mean I can't afford it. It's the principal of it.
Anyway, that said, I sure do want to play Touch Fighter...That looks awesome.
thanks
Oh jesus tapdancing christ, it's twenty f-ing dollars. I'm a full time college student, part time freelance artist, and even I see $20 as nominal. I mean, seriously, if you can't handle $20 for a software bundle, I think you need to find a better job, or y'know, don't spend all your money on personal technology.
It's not much, but I do question its necessity, and there's a principe of the thing, it seems like Apple's getting into the habit of nickel-and-diming its customers. Apple's iPod update to let people play games and added better search functionality did not cost anything, but things seem to have changed in the last couple years. The game update allowed people to buy games from Apple. The iTouch update should be able to allow people to buy software from Apple. It seems pretty odd this time around to have to pay money to get the opportunity to pay for software. It would seem that Apple would want to keep the barriers to entry low.
Who came up with the "accounting" justification first? Did Apple themselves provide this explanation first? Or did some news website throw it out there, and Apple ran with it? As I understand, those "accounting laws" do not specify how much a company has to charge. So if Apple honestly did want to offer the update for free but wasn't allowed to, then why don't they do the next best thing? Offer the update for something like 20 cents instead of $20. If Apple can do that, then their "accounting" rationalization might be more believable.
They, Apple, must charge something that will come close to covering their costs. This is to protect investors. If Apple did not do this then some state or teachers retirement fund could sue Apple for giving away work. The only way to get software for free is for very small jobs, too little time invested to be worth getting compensated for, or a bug fix. Added functionality will always cost unless of it took someone a few hours to complete. I don't know where the threshold is but it would be something like this at least 10,000 people would be willing to pay for the added functionality and at $5.00 a pop, that would just about cover the costs. So you can see the cost to the company would be large enough to register on the time/cost meter, unlike adding a new template to iWork that thousands of people may use but it only took a few hours to complete. Small tasks like a new template would also not get an account number to track the time internally to Apple and would go under a general code or cost center. Usually general time is used when people are between projects and or bored.
Who came up with the "accounting" justification first? Did Apple themselves provide this explanation first? Or did some news website throw it out there, and Apple ran with it? As I understand, those "accounting laws" do not specify how much a company has to charge. So if Apple honestly did want to offer the update for free but wasn't allowed to, then why don't they do the next best thing? Offer the update for something like 20 cents instead of $20. If Apple can do that, then their "accounting" rationalization might be more believable.
If you'd like to single-handedly take on eliminating Sarbanes-Oxley, be my guest. The business world would thank you.
If you'd like to single-handedly take on eliminating Sarbanes-Oxley, be my guest. The business world would thank you.
At first, I thought it was SOx but upon looking into it it seems unlikely. Now I think it's just a way to cover the costs of development and, of course, to make a profit. iPhone users are paying it for to their carriers who pay Apple. I see nothing unreasonable with charging customers for anything beyond bug fixes.
If you'd like to single-handedly take on eliminating Sarbanes-Oxley, be my guest. The business world would thank you.
Again, those "accounting laws" don't dictate how much a company has to charge. And Apple's story is "Oh, we'd like to give it away for free but the big bad government says we have to charge for it". But again, there seems to be no rule regarding how much to charge. So if Apple is really serious about wanting to give it away for free but being forced by the government to charge, then shouldn't Apple have just charged the absolute minimum amount "required" by law and not a penny more? So basically, Apple says since they can't give it away for free then they will charge $20, as if there was no other option in between. It would be better if Apple just came out and admitted that they want to make a profit from selling the update.
$99 fee to publish applications? even for "free" applications?
this is against nature of free software
Yeah, but it will help weed out the crap apps (crapps?).
I paid £200 for the iPod touch. I did not get told it would be bumped to £226 just to keep it updated.
Who held the gun to your head and forced you to update it?
Apple's story is "Oh, we'd like to give it away for free but the big bad government says we have to charge for it".
Do you actually have a quote from an official Apple source that can verify that Apple themselves have claimed this?
I think it is clear that:
1.) SOX requires Apple to charge at least something.
2.) Apple could charge less than $20 and still be SOX compliant.
3.) Apple are charging $20 rather than something less in an attempt to make a profit (don't know if they did or not because I don't know how many bought the upgrade), and I fail to see the problem in a company trying to sell a product for a profit.
Who held the gun to your head and forced you to update it?
Do you actually have a quote from an official Apple source that can verify that Apple themselves have claimed this?
I think it is clear that:
1.) SOX requires Apple to charge at least something.
2.) Apple could charge less than $20 and still be SOX compliant.
3.) Apple are charging $20 rather than something less in an attempt to make a profit (don't know if they did or not because I don't know how many bought the upgrade), and I fail to see the problem in a company trying to sell a product for a profit.
More than likely they are charging close to their cost once they figure out how many people are likely to pay for it. Again 10,000 people at $5.00 per copy is $50,000 some things cost more than others especially if there is wide spread testing and QA and security testing as well. The costs can add up fast when many people from many different divisions are working on the same project at the same time. Here you can see iPhone, and OSX, and Quicktime divisions as well as QA, Security, Marketing, Sales. The executive group are creating a group that will review the apps as well as act as police if they run amok. So $20 is not bad when you add up all, and I only scratched the surface, of who could be involved and see how many people could have been working on this. Oh yea I guess that would also include the Xcode team as well, the team that actually wrote the SDK.
No, it's 99 bucks one time even if you don't publish something.
Then as many as you do..... no charge.
I just finished watching the keynote. While the event notes taking by AI and otehrs were ambiguous it's clear when you watch it that it's $99 to become an iPhone developer and then apps are free to host. Mea culpa.
While this will lead to a lot of free apps that, like on OS X, some will be of excellent quality it will also lead to a very poor apps too. I hope Apple will be weeding these out or storing them in a shitty shitty bin bin.
Who held the gun to your head and forced you to update it?
Well there's a clever comment
Not
I bought the iPod touch armed with the knowledge that 3rd Party Apps were coming to both it and the iPhone. I bought the device partially because I wanted the apps. So you see, it's not about holding guns to people's heads, it's about not making things plain to customers ahead of time. Steve did not mention that it would cost extra for me to add 3rd Party Apps in his SDK letter way back when.
Well there's a clever comment
Not
I bought the iPod touch armed with the knowledge that 3rd Party Apps were coming to both it and the iPhone.
But you have no idea what those 3rd party apps are going to be so how do you know you are going to want/need them?
Did you buy the iPod touch just to be cool and have the latest gadget, or because it actually performs a function that you require?
And where did Apple ever say that:
1.) No updates to the iPod touch OS would be required to run 3rd-party apps?
2.) That if an update were required, that it would be delivered for free?
Again, when the update comes, who is going to force you to buy it? No one. You cannot run away from the fact that either the update will be worth to you what Apple charge for it, in which case you can buy it and be happy, or it won't be worth it and you won't buy it. Of course in the second case it sounds like you'll also sulk because you don't have the latest and greatest even though you don't really need it.
Steve did not mention that it would cost extra for me to add 3rd Party Apps in his SDK letter way back when.
Did Steve mention that it would be free to upgrade your Touch after doing massive updates to the codebase Of course not; you made a bad assumption. They are going from version 1 to 2. I certainly don't expect that 10.6 will be a free upgrade for me. And before you start saying that OS X point updates are more complex, remember that they cost more than a dinner for 2 at iHop.
3rd-party apps will cost as much as the developer charges. No more, no less.
I fail to see the problem in a company trying to sell a product for a profit.
Except that Apple has never mentioned profit as a reason for charging for either the 802.11n enabler or iPod Touch updates. Every time the issue of charging for these updates comes up, the response from both Apple and Apple defenders is "accounting laws" and nothing else. If "accounting laws" is truly the only reason for charging, then the decent thing to do would be to charge the absolute minimum amount required by law and not a penny more. If Apple is trying to make a profit, then they should just come out and say it, rather than hiding behind legalese.
Again, those "accounting laws" don't dictate how much a company has to charge. And Apple's story is "Oh, we'd like to give it away for free but the big bad government says we have to charge for it". But again, there seems to be no rule regarding how much to charge. So if Apple is really serious about wanting to give it away for free but being forced by the government to charge, then shouldn't Apple have just charged the absolute minimum amount "required" by law and not a penny more? So basically, Apple says since they can't give it away for free then they will charge $20, as if there was no other option in between. It would be better if Apple just came out and admitted that they want to make a profit from selling the update.
I believe you are correct. Apple can charge whatever they want. The problem from what I understand is that they're now required to report giving the software away as a "loss" in their financial reports. From Apple's perspective, having a line that appears to shareholders like a profit (or breaking even) is better than one that looks like a loss any day of the week (even if that decision loses them money overall). In other words, lets say Apple estimates it's $20/iPod touch user to develop/distribute the software, then if they charge $20, they don't have to report giving the software away as a loss (otherwise, they'd have to report giving the software away as a loss). But suppose by charging $20/device only 25% of users upgrade and Apple ends up losing ~$30/device in lost sales through the App Store (not likely, but suppose). Since those non-sales aren't real, they don't get reported anywhere.
Except that Apple has never mentioned profit as a reason for charging for either the 802.11n enabler or iPod Touch updates. Every time the issue of charging for these updates comes up, the response from both Apple and Apple defenders is "accounting laws" and nothing else. If "accounting laws" is truly the only reason for charging, then the decent thing to do would be to charge the absolute minimum amount required by law and not a penny more. If Apple is trying to make a profit, then they should just come out and say it, rather than hiding behind legalese.
Apple is ALWAYS trying to make a profit. Just keep that in mind, no matter what the level of benevolence appears to be. They make a profit or the shareholders run away like sheep on fire.
AIM? Why not iChat?!
To me the reason for that has always been what I think obvious.. they aren't going to release iChat for the iPhone until the day release iChat 4.0 for Windows, and that "will" happen this year.
Fantastic event. They addressed the gambit.
Totally agree. Highly surprised how much they took on board. Next up, copy & paste. Although that may not come until they release Mac touch.