You're assuming that Apple prices its computers at marginal cost. It does not. In fact, Apple makes a tidy profit (See: $1 Billion dollars last quarter). N is only disabled on OS X. If I recall, people had N working on Windows in Bootcamp with proper (FREE) drivers.
When Apple went shopping for wireless networking cards for their Macs, they paid extra to get the N capable hardware. Then, since they sell all their Macs well above marginal cost, regardless of whether they told you, YOU PAID FOR IT.
Right there's where your logic is failing you.
You bought a machine that said it was b/g compatible, not n. That machine was whatever price it was. De facto, then, the sold price was fair for a computer with b/g capabilities.
Were it advertised with 'n' capability you would have paid $X extra. That's $X more Apple could have charged, but did not. Ergo, like it or not, Apple is "out" $X.
Alternatively, if Apple had provided "b/g" hardware instead of 'n' hardware, it could have saved $Y. Ergo, like it or not, Apple is "out" $Y.
No matter which way you look at it, unless $Y is negative, there is a cost that Apple ate.
Example 1: Since they're not selling at (or even very close to) marginal cost, technically, if you want to get all economical here, the price of their "g" computers IS too high. You could (at the time) get similarly specced N computers for less. According to your logic, no one bought these Macs.
Completely incorrect (last sentence, not the rest). Reread what I posted. Because the b/g price is higher than some comparable 'n' device, Apple sold
fewer Macs. For those that bought b/g Macs, they saw the value of the b/g equipped Mac as greater than the value of the hypothetical 'n' equipped PC. There's obviously more to the buying decision than the particular wireless connection, else an eMachine with an 'n' PCI card would own 100% of the PC market.
Listen: you can, with a lot of work, draw a nice, pretty curve of price versus demand. This is high school economics territory, and one of the few basic principles taught there that really holds up under heavy scrutiny. If X people will buy a b/g Mac for $Y, then X+n people would buy a b/g/n Mac for the same price (assuming additional features increase value, which is a safe assumption here). If X people will buy a b/g Mac for $Y, then X+n people will buy a b/g Mac for $Y-m.
Example 2 just didn't happen. Apple doesn't lower their prices to be in line with competitors. They don't really HAVE competitors. OS X would have to be installable on any PC for Apple to have the level of competition to make your example work.
Apple holds a micro-monopoly, aka lock-in. I think we can all agree about that.
At a larger level, however, they are not in a monopoly or even industry control position. Even within the micro-monopoly, people will buy fewer of a product that they don't necessarily need when the value is less. While some people may
truly need a new Mac right now, the vast majority will wait for a few more months or years before buying if the value is not seen as significant. Again, the fact that Macs were advertised as supporting only b/g and other makers were selling 'n' hardware, meant that Apple sold fewer computers, either as a result of a buying delay or as the result of a wholesale switch. If I buy a new computer on average once every three years, and this time I wait for three and a half years to buy a computer, Apple has lost 1/6th of a computer sale from me. That may not seem like much, but it's significantly more than the cost of 'n' hardware.
Again, I'm not sure why we're arguing about basic high school economics here. Modifying the value of a computer will affect either its sales (if you leave price constant) or its price (if you aim to keep sales constant). Unless you are a monopoly on a utility-style required service, that is pretty much always true (and even in utility monopolies there is some price/demand response).
In fact, you lead me to a good point. If Apple had the level of competition other PC manufacturers do, then we wouldn't be in this mess. It would have been advertised as N from the get-go.
As I've shown several times, Apple had major financial incentives to advertise their pre-n hardware. The reasons they did not are another topic, but IMHO center around a focused market message and the risk of shipping networking hardware that for a long time looked like it might be made obsolete when the final standard came out.
Historically, firmware updates have added new functionality and have been FREE. See: previous Apple firmware updates (Bootcamp was mentioned earlier, you chose to ignore it), generic PC firmware updates, iPod firmware updates (which have added a LOT of functionality - my iPod gets better battery life than was advertised when I bought it - I guess I owe Apple $2!), internet router firmware updates... To name a few.
Which was my original point. Firmware updates being sent out for free are all well and good, but there are two differences here:
1. This is
activating hardware that offers significant functionality and was not used before, and cost Apple to provide versus the alternatives.
2. The regulatory climate (SOx as well as Apple's current life under a microscope) has changed over the lst year and
especially over the past month. I think that's well-accepted, although no one much likes it.
The first point is the one people seem to be missing altogether. This is NOT (as I did address, although apparently not thoroughly enough) like supporting BIOS calls via firmware. There was no BIOS chip shipped that Apple chose to enable via firmware; they amended the firmware code to include BIOS emulation on the current, well-used, advertised, and sold, hardware. Similarly Dell BIOS upgrades are software-only. Similarly the iPod update is software-only.
This is a hardware update. The fact that the hardware is already sitting in your machine unconnected is irrelevant (meaning, it could be seen as such in a court of law ... like I said, this is gray area). It is a hardware upgrade which Apple paid for in a previous quarter, which Apple never recognized as sold, which Apple is now providing to you. If they "sell" you this hardware upgrade now, all is on the up-and-up. If they say that the hardware shipped previously, then they have to restate their earnings for previous quarters and deal with shareholder lawsuits. That's how Apple sees it.
We're not even talking about free software updates yet.
If you understand what I said about firmware versus dormant hardware above, then perhaps you'll also understand why "talking about free software updates" would be a very short conversation. If hardware versus firmware is oranges versus tangerines, this would be oranges versus papayas. There's no comparison to be made.
+ d to find out what a rebuttal is.