Originally posted by merges
I am, frankly, amazed by the number of comments that imply Apple owes its customers for charging X number of dollars for its computers in the first place...
It's hard, out there in fantasy land, to imagine that Apple is a real company, with real people who come in at 8:30 or 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning, get a coffee, have meetings, write things (code, marketing copy, or otherwise), and go home to family in Silicon Valley (where, by the way, living costs are sky-high). These people are very bright and very talented, and they work hard to deliver to you the fine products you use today. And you know what? These people need to get paid to be able to support themselves and their families.
Oh, those starving basketball players! better not insinuate that they have no right to charge you for their stuff what may be twice in your minds! imagine that! you're sick, sick!
Oh, on top of that, Apple is a business with shareholders. It must make money.
You couldn't be more right.
Right now, Apple does give away a lot of great stuff. Terrific software, very useful, very usable, very cool. They don't give away everything though, and while the thought may not have occurred to some of you, this software costs a *lot* of money to make. Thousands upon thousands of person-hours go into making even the first small release of a small utility app. As you may have heard, time equals money.
and girls = money x time
therefore girls = money^2
and since money = evil^(1/2)
girls = (evil^[1/2])^2
therefore girls = evil.
OK, so apple should charge, because time is money. that doesn't make it a good idea, as many if not most people will just not use the software they can get alsewhere for free. why use safari when you can use chimera? honestly, even if safari surpasses chimera, it's never going to be worth 10$ more. chimera does pretty much everything that 99.9% of users need to do browsing the net.
Whether or not Apple decides to charge for any software that is currently free, keep in mind that if they don't make money, they can't afford to keep employing the same numbers of people. Less people is likely to hamper innovation; in other words, if you don't support Apple, monetarily, you will find yourself forced to support some other company that makes inferior products.
Apple's gotta make money to be able to employ the right people to be able to give you all the features you whine about and ask for (and fast too--can't wait longer than three months for a major new feature in the operating system, like videoconferencing; three months is *way* too long).
Support Apple.
yes, support apple. Apple's problem isn't whether they should charge for software; they need a larger user base. of course, the laws of supply and demand apply here. as in, if they supply for a price a piece of software that people demand be free, people won't buy it. there are and will be free alternatives, unless they try to go MS and monopolize.
[Side note one: Linux isn't even *close* to ready for prime time; one shouldn't compare it to Mac OS X or Windows.]
What? define your terms. linux is in prime time on the server market, and with people who *gasp* know what they're doing on a computer. RedHat and Linux-Mandrake, to name a few, are FULL-FEATURED OSes with perfectly valid comparisons to both OS X and Windows. the fact that its features may be more difficult (read: different) to sort out and so on than Windows' or OS X's, doesn't mean it's not ripe for comparison.
[Side note two: Have you ever wondered why Windows seems so cheap? I have. And I know the answer: Piracy.]
Windows is expensive. 300$ expensive. and it's really not provable that it is because of piracy. look at the record industry. i think that MP3 sharing arose because of gross overpricing. and nevertheless, sales remained healthy during the golden days of napster. when napster shut down, sales began to decline much faster than before. Microsoft makes, what, an 85% profit margin on Windows? i have heard that, can't confirm. they make a considerable amount. Bill Gates is personally one of the wealthiest men in the world; microsoft is not "about to go under because of piracy and thus must charge exhorbitant amounts for it's [uninnovative] OS." They have a monopoly and actively take great advantage of that fact.
[Side note three: You want the functionality provided by iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, Mail, iCal, iSync, Address Book, Safari, iDVD, et cetera, et cetera? But you don't want to pay Apple, say, $100, should they choose to charge that amount for all of those (and who knows what else is up their sleeve...)? Be prepared to fork out hundreds of dollars for that level of integration, support, and quality craftsmanship; and a lot of time troubleshooting and training.]
You know, i went to the OS X site lately, and the ENTIRE advertising pitch for it consists of:
UNIX based (that was free for them)
Quartz (ingenious, but not worth 129$)
the apps you mentioned. have you seen OS X ads in magazines? they have pictures of iChat, Sherlock, iPhoto, iMovie.... how are you going to advertise OS X when suddenly all the best reasons to buy it are sold separately? buy os x, and for another 100$, you can get all these apps that were free yesterday. hmm. good idea.
like i said, apple won't [shouldn't] do this.
