Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Enough
Originally posted by ITR 81
90% of all Freeware becomes payware.
Why would someone give it away if it no long benifits him or her?
Apple either should charge for it or end the iLife completely.
If you think you pay too much for a Mac and the OS then why did you even buy a Mac in the first place?
The fact that freeware often becomes payware means that we should be happy about it happening in this instance?
No, apple should continue to "give it away" because it isn't really free and never was. They have always charged for it, and we have always paid for it, indirectly, through overpriced hardware and OS updates. What apple gets (and has always gotten) out of it is a hook to get people to buy computer systems. The problem is, now apple is charging for it directly but not lowering the price of those other things (hardware and OS) that used to indirectly fund iapps. Essentially, we're being charged twice.
I bought a Mac because I prefer it to anything else out there. But everyone has a limit. I wouldn't pay $3000 for an ibook given the PC alternatives out there, and neither would most people. Now, I'm not saying this will make me leave apple; it's not that severe.
But the next time I buy a new system, I will definitely think about how much upgrades are going to cost me in the future. When that cost is $0, that's a plus. A point in Apple's favor, if you will. Well, that's a point that Apple lost today. In my book, they're still way ahead of the other options. But it's a definite step in the wrong direction.
Originally posted by mullmann While it is appropriate to have high-standards for products we want to endorse, and unfortunate that Apple failed to meet yours, you've paid nothing for that so-called crap software. If it weren't doing what I wanted, I would agree that it would be nice to get it that way without further cost -- except that it has cost you nothing whatsoever to this point. If you're trying to make the case that you've been ripped off, it doesn't seem makeable.
It HAS cost me to this point. When I paid for a powerbook in September, and when I paid for Panther in October, I was paying for iapps. This is what I was saying above. The iapps were never free. We have always payed for them - it's just that the cost was built in to other things, like hardware. But now, the hardware costs just as much *and* the iapps cost separately. If apple lowered the costs on other things, because they decided that the iapps should support themselves, that would be one thing. That's not the case here.
