[dba-Tech] Apple Just Ended the Era of Paid Operating Systems

Hans-Christian Andersen hans.andersen at phulse.com
Fri Oct 25 01:23:40 CDT 2013


I have to agree. Unless you buy a new machine, the cost of upgrading Windows is unaffordable to many (or most) people (while the latest OS X is free, previous upgrades only cost $20-$30, which is much cheaper than with Windows). But that was the business model of yesteryear for Microsoft where it was more important to nudge customers to buy the latest and greatest hardware instead of valuing the whole ecosystem of the platform.

Apple can do what they are doing, because they are the alpha and the omega - they sell the hardware and the platform. Microsoft does not have this, so they have to balance their interests with the interests of hardware manufacturers and their profit motives.

I'm not saying one way of doing things is good while the other is bad though, because every corporation including Apple has one primary motive - making money for themselves and their shareholders.

However, in this case, there is a clear benefit to the consumer for not having to pay for every release of the operating system and that only seems right considering how much more money consumers needs to fork over to buy the latest and greatest Apple laptop or desktop.

- Hans


On 2013-10-24, at 11:06 PM, Jim Lawrence <accessd at shaw.ca> wrote:

> Hi Hans:
> 
> That seems to be the way of things these days. There is simply no way any program of significant size can be built that is not encroaching on someone's patent. If the OS is giving away for free the patent trolls are helpless.
> 
> I guess the costs of upgrading from XP to another platform has been so prohibitively expensive that it has been one of the major influences causing very slow adoption of recent versions of Windows. 
> 
> For example the price of Windows 7 Pro runs from $75 to over $200, plus shipping and handling. This may not be much for a single product but if you have fifty plus desktops to replace for it starts to add up.
> 
> Jim
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Hans-Christian Andersen" <hans.andersen at phulse.com>
> To: "Discussion of Hardware and Software issues" <dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com>
> Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2013 10:47:04 PM
> Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] Apple Just Ended the Era of Paid Operating Systems
> 
> 
> Well, technically Apple started down this path with iOS a while back, but I think they realized it made sense to do it for the desktop. If you make your users pay for the OS on your machine, then you get fewer users updating to the latest software, which then becomes a pain for software developers and the architects of OS X. It makes sense for their business model and it makes sense in this internet age, where most things come through to us via a browser. The importance of the OS has become very secondary. It's just a user interface to launching a browser :)
> 
> However, I kinda remember hearing a while back that Apple was forced to charge a small amount for iOS updates previously to avoid legal problems. Perhaps anti-trust issues or maybe patent laws or something like that. Maybe they've figured a way around that. I don't know for certain that this was the case though.
> 
> - Hans 
> 
> 
> 
> On Oct 24, 2013, at 10:33 PM, Jim Lawrence <accessd at shaw.ca> wrote:
> 
>> Hi All:
>> 
>> Whether Apple was the one that ended it or not is debatable but the era of the for profit OS is being squeezed to virtually nothing. 
>> 
>> http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/apple-ends-paid-oses/#!
>> 
>> Jim
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