New Powerbooks: Upgrade option for Tiger?

I'm planning to order one of the new G4 powerbooks next week (the ones released at the end of Jan.).

Apple seems to be ramping up consumer attention to Tiger these days and I'll definitely want it when it comes out. As is expected, they can't announce a concrete release date. 1st half of 2005 could be tomorrow, could be June 30.

...so, as you can imagine, I don't want to pay for a licence that I'd get for free if it were available now.

I will be buying Tiger to install on my G5 powermac, but it seems unfair to need to buy a second copy of it for the new powerbook once Tiger's released. Why unfair? It will ship with Panther, which would cost $130 to buy off the shelf right now. If I buy Tiger and install on the same machine I'm getting almost no value from the Panther license.

I called Apple and asked if there would be an upgrade program similar to the ones the OEMs offered just before Windows XP came out (I'd bought a Dell at the time with WinME that had a free upgrade to XP once released). I was told that Apple sales had been given no information about such an upgrade program. Furthermore, I was told that it's likely that new machines may not ship with Tiger even when it's released.

Can anyone who dealt with this dilema for the Jaguar-->Panther release offer any insight?

Thanks,
Joe

Dave, You perceptively answered the question I hadn't actually asked but wanted an answer for. 😀

We software users often expect everything without paying for anything. When it comes to OSes though, unlike other software licenses I believe that one should never have to pay for multiple same-version OS licenses when it's not humanly possible to interact with more than one at the same time.

Do you think Apple may change its model this time around, given that highly available broadband internet access now makes it possible for them to effectively serialize OS licenses?