I wouldn't call it a surprise if Apple didn't do this, but it's the same sort of thing Apple has done in the past, so it seems pretty logical, likely even.
I wouldn't hold out much hope for Powerbooks, though. But who knows, Apple might be in a giving mood...
In a more general vein, I do wish Apple would institute a bit of an upgrade program. $130 is reasonable, even for an upgrade, but it makes people feel a lot better if you give them at least a bit of a discount when they paid for the last version too. Even a $99 upgrade.
On the every other upgrade free thing, although Steve might've said something along the lines when 10.2 was announced, or it might've been speculation--I don't remember.
I thought, though, that the comment was about .5 releases of Classic being cheap, with full point releases being full price. I don't know if that's how it actually was, but if that isthe case then it would stand to reason that 10.3 is a full-price upgrade; Apple's doing all oh-point upgrades free now, and other than 10.0-10.1, which was huge but as much as anything bugfixes, it looks like every OSX "point" release is easily the equivalent of a Classic full version increase--the differences between 10.1 and 10.2 were way bigger than 8.0 to 9.0 at least.
I like the idea of free, but does anyone remember something like this, or I am I just delusional?