If iOS updates are free shouldn't OS X's be as well?

[HarryAinslie]

TBH, i don't mind paying just under £15 for a whole new operating system!

I'm pretty sure you will, just like me, get your money's worth of usage out of it!

 

[nutmac]

At only $20 (USD), Apple is practically giving it away. I personally wouldn't mind OS X subscription plan ($100/year) that includes 25 GB iCloud storage ($40/year value), OS X ($20), OS X Server, and all under $100 OS X apps (Apple Remote Desktop, Aperture, Compressor, GarageBand, iMovie, iPhoto, Keynote, MainStage, Motion, Numbers, Pages).

 

[shenan1982]

10.8.1 to 10.8.2 is an update, and it's free.

10.8 to 10.9 is not an update, it's a totally new OS.

 

[Gregintosh]

I think updates should be free from now on and encourage people to have the latest. Plus, not that many changes these days. I installed mavericks and couldn't tell the difference other than the crashes from it being a beta. The other changes were super minor.

Plus, a lot of the "updates" are just apps which apple could as easily distribute through the App Store (like Maps and iBooks).

I think they didn't announce the price at the conference because they are debating if they should make it free or not.

Plus, unlike older days when the hardware and OS upgrades were the only revenue centers, these days Apple makes a ton from their 30% cut of app, movie, and iTunes sales. Buy $100 worth of apps throughout the year and Apple already made their $30. (Granted its not all profit since they pay the system maintenance but you get the point).

 

[Liquinn]

I think updates should be free from now on and encourage people to have the latest. Plus, not that many changes these days. I installed mavericks and couldn't tell the difference other than the crashes from it being a beta. The other changes were super minor.

Plus, a lot of the "updates" are just apps which apple could as easily distribute through the App Store (like Maps and iBooks).

I think they didn't announce the price at the conference because they are debating if they should make it free or not.

Plus, unlike older days when the hardware and OS upgrades were the only revenue centers, these days Apple makes a ton from their 30% cut of app, movie, and iTunes sales. Buy $100 worth of apps throughout the year and Apple already made their $30. (Granted its not all profit since they pay the system maintenance but you get the point).

I'm still running Lion on my Macs apart from my G5. I'll probably wait for 10.10/10.11 to upgrade my OS.

 

[HenryDJP]

I think updates should be free from now on and encourage people to have the latest. Plus, not that many changes these days. I installed mavericks and couldn't tell the difference other than the crashes from it being a beta. The other changes were super minor.

Plus, a lot of the "updates" are just apps which apple could as easily distribute through the App Store (like Maps and iBooks).

I think they didn't announce the price at the conference because they are debating if they should make it free or not.

Plus, unlike older days when the hardware and OS upgrades were the only revenue centers, these days Apple makes a ton from their 30% cut of app, movie, and iTunes sales. Buy $100 worth of apps throughout the year and Apple already made their $30. (Granted its not all profit since they pay the system maintenance but you get the point).

In other words, people shouldn't be paid for the work they do, according to you.

 

[Gregintosh]

In other words, people shouldn't be paid for the work they do, according to you.

That's silly talk. The money for the programmers and developers who work at Apple comes from Apple, which in turn earns that money from many sources. It is silly to think that they must charge for every output individually.

In mant companies, The salesman is the one who brings in the money at a company, even though a company employs accountants, front desk, janitors, etc. none of whom charge clients for what they do. Their salary comes from the company as a whole being successful.

Hotels often give away toothbrushes and other toiletries free of charge when you buy the rooms. Someone has to pay for those too, but yet the hotel doesn't charge for them individually. Blu Ray player makers often put out updates to their devices without charging extra either. There's many other examples of how companies do things for free to delight their customers, with those efforts being paid for by past revenue or higher future revenues from repeat business or other indirect sources.

Just like at Apple, good programming work along with free updates would keep customer satisfaction high, and the cost of providing it would be paid partially from the hardware being sold and also from commissions from the App Store/iTunes ecosystems - which is a huge source of revenue that didn't exist just a few years ago when Apple used to charge $129 for an OS update.

The iOS ecosystem already does that. Mac OS X can too. Accounting tricks are just that, it would be just as easy for Apple to start deferring revenue from their computers and saying its "subscriptions" just as easily as they do for iOS devices.

With every iteration of Mac OS, previous generations stop getting support and updates anyway (or get crippled updates only which lack many features -- often it seems arbitrarily as through hacks people can enable those features) so in a way a purchase of a Mac computer is only really good for a few years anyway. Through this quicker "forced" upgrade process, Apple will continue to keep revenues high from loyal users, and something as simple as free OS updates (even for major upgrades) helps build the loyalty that keeps the money coming.

 

[A Hebrew]

I think the big thing for Apple's decision on charging for OSX but not iOS is the fact that they rely so much on iOS hardware revenue that they want nothing to get in the way of it. Get people locked into the idea of updating always and once their device gets 'out dated' in 2-4 years they need new hardware.

 

[Meyvn]

I think the big thing for Apple's decision on charging for OSX but not iOS is the fact that they rely so much on iOS hardware revenue that they want nothing to get in the way of it. Get people locked into the idea of updating always and once their device gets 'out dated' in 2-4 years they need new hardware.

They want nothing to get in the way of it, true enough. It's also the case that Apple knows people typically keep their mobile devices for a shorter (or much shorter) period of time than they keep their PCs. PCs are also a shrinking market rather than a growing one, and Apple has settled into their role in the PC market, so I think they're more aggressive about growing in mobile, both in total numbers user base (which they've been steadily doing) and in market share (which they're hungry for more of). And, as we've often seen, Apple likes to lord their comparative lack of OS-version fragmentation over Android. Charging for iOS updates going forward (on iPhones at least) would take that selling point away from them.

The way the (US especially) smartphone market is structured allows Apple to bring in higher margins, too. So that helps defray development costs. With OS X I suspect Apple charged for Lion and ML because they just didn't want to leave money on the table. That being said, I still wouldn't be surprised to see Mavericks come down even further in price, or shift to free. It would serve as a competitive advantage, as MS cannot give away Windows*.

*Though it would be interesting to see, if Apple does this: what if Samsung, or some other Wintel PC manufacturer, follows suit and pay for Windows upgrades on their users' behalf as a selling point?

 

[dba415]

I guess I called it.