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Some Perspective
In the wake of a really good Keynote from the Apple crew yesterday, Pricing has emerged in the UK for OS X Lion at £20.99 inc VAT...An incredible price even by Apple's Standards and of course licenses to at least 5 machines through the Apps Store Policy...Thanks!
But the old argument of the Pricing of the Windows OS has again emerged and 'Apple Fanboy' as I am, I can't stand by and watch the Big Softie take another whipping without stepping in. And that's what it is...senseless, ill-educated bullying.
Lets compare Apples with Apples (please excuse the obvious pun) and focus on the market of computers and their OS.
Apple Make Computers and provide an OS for it. They are slick and lovely and lickable but pricey
Microsoft Make an OS and provide no hardware. They make no profit on anything other than the that OS.
The hardware that OTHER people make is generally not slick or lovely and if you licked it, the taste would be bad (Alienware excepted and that really is overpriced). Also, Microsoft provide the Manufacturers with an OEM copy of Windows at a VASTLY reduced price and also have to deal with cracking and copyright theft of their product
Apple don't. Where else are you going to use OS X if not on the machine they just sold you? A Hackintosh? Apple make, distribute and now largely sell the hardware which means that they are making a significant markup on the computer you just bought. Enough to ensure that the OS they give you is covered in terms of direct costs and that future evolutions are also subsidised as well. And lets not forget that you can't buy old versions of their OS fromt he shelf and as cheaply. On top of that, typically the new OS will fail to support Macs which are older than 3 iterations (further topping up the Development fund then!)
Add in, that when Apple sell you additional parts at purchase (not after sale) they will charge you typically twice the RETAIL price for RAM and up to 3 times the RETAIL price for hard drives so their budget with which to underwrite their OS, looks even rosier.
Like I said, I'm a Mac User and until something shakes the ground wildly, I think I always will be, but Apple's Business Model and OS Pricing has NO Comparison to that of Microsoft and taking the cheap shot of knocking the price of their OS should be well beneath the standards of any self respecting Mac User.
Shame on you
Ewen
@EwenRankin on twitter - @BritishTechNews on Twitter
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Ewen Rankin