Jaguar
Note: if you don't have a Mac, this entry will be irrelevant to you.
For those who haven't heard, earlier this month Apple announced that the next version of OS X (version 10.2, code-named Jaguar) would be released on August 24, and that it could be pre-ordered. Apple customers would've been very happy about that, had Apple not also announced that the new version would cost $129, and that there would be no discounted price for people upgrading from earlier versions of OS X.
Needless to say, this has caused a furor. There was an online petition floating around somewhere that got something like 70,000 "signatures" (for whatever that's worth) in the first couple of days. All sorts of people were upset:
- Loyal high-end Apple customers who paid for the OS X public beta a couple years ago and felt that 10.2 wasn't enough of an upgrade to be worth paying for
- New Mac owners who purchased their computers in the last year and thus had OS X pre-installed, but now will have to pay full price for a relatively minor upgrade
- People who manage labs full of Macs, and now will have to pay $130 to upgrade each one of them
And so on. Me, I've been lucky: in fifteen years of using Macs, my timing has always been such that I've never had to buy the OS. I've either gotten a new computer that came with a new version of the OS, or been attached to an organization (school, work) that had a site license. So I figure it's not that big a deal for me to fork over the money, and I think that 10.2 will be the first really consumer-ready version of OS X; illicit reports from people in the beta program suggest that most of my biggest user-interface problems with 10.1.5 will be addressed in 10.2.
But I still feel mildly betrayed, because I've been encouraging friends to hold off on switching to OS X, to wait for 10.2, and now anyone who took my advice will have to pay for it. (Of course, those who went ahead and switched will also have to pay for it; I suppose that's at least as bad.) I can certainly understand charging for a major OS release, and I know that Windows OS upgrades are plenty expensive. But it does seem to me that this release, while it adds a lot of cool new stuff and fixes a lot of problems, isn't really worth $130 to most people. Which is particularly unfortunate when Apple is in the middle of trying to get people to move to OS X—this is not going to help their adoption rate.
So if you're upset about the price (and the lack of discount pricing), call Apple and let them know. The Apple Customer Relations number is 800-767-2775. You can choose the "all other calls" option, and tell the operator who answers that you want to comment on the lack of upgrade pricing for OS X. Be polite; nobody you talk with will have any power in making marketing decisions. Let them know specifically what you'd like to see them do (a free upgrade to 10.2 is unlikely; a discounted upgrade for current OS X owners seems much more plausible to me). The customer-service person I talked with said they'd been fielding a lot of complaints; she sounded kind of weary of the whole thing, and made it clear (obliquely) that she thought it was silly that they're not offering a discounted upgrade price. She said to keep an eye out in case there were announcements of a policy change; she definitely didn't promise anything, but she also didn't say there was no chance that things would change. So, we'll see.
In the mean time, Amazon has rendered the whole question somewhat moot, because they're now offering a $50 rebate if you order 10.2 from Amazon. Of course, one reason companies like rebates is that they give the impression of a discount without always having to actually provide the discount; most people either forget to send in the rebate form or forget to cash the resulting check. But still, this means that if you follow through, you can get a legitimate copy of 10.2 for $80 instead of $130; still a significant price for some people, but much more reasonable, I think.
Also, the education price for 10.2 from Apple is $70, so if you're a student or a professor or something, you could take that route.