The Snow Leopard Report: How About Free?
June 26th, 2008

In that event, it would still be possible to make this a relatively cheap upgrade, and a price tag of from $9.95 to $29.95 would make perfect sense. It would be a wonderful gesture on Apple’s part, particularly since their customer base has afforded them huge profits over the years. Certainly, the bean counters would be sufficiently satisfied.

Seems they were listening to you after all…8/6/09…$29 upgrade.

@ Jake:

It’s not their way, alas. The only time they ever give you a discount if you buy a new Mac is AFTER they actually announce the shipping date. And they cut it close.

Peace,
Gene

I just shelled out a lot of money for a brand-new iMac (last week) so it would be nice if Apple would offer me a free upgrade or at least a big discount.

@Addicted:

I agree with you, but what you say does not apply to Snow Leopard, because the primary assumption, that it is basically a bug-fixing release with no new features, is false. There are several new features in Snow Leopard, including Exchange…

If that’s the case, then there should be two kinds of releases of the work being done:

1. Free Fixes – all the fixes rolled into Leopard (and other cats if possible) that are included in Snow Leopard
2. Discounted 10.6 – to reflect the smaller set of new features in the Snow Leopard release

That way, ALL the customers are happy and Apple makes money.

In response to: “Philosophical question: If Apple were to reengineer something under the hood, rewrite it to make it run faster, more reliably, use less memory, without changing the feature is that a bug-fix or a new product/upgrade?”

Depending on what part of the system you’re talking about, your question is a mix of fixes and features so there’s no clear-cut answer to that.

-Running faster is often an innovation of some kind but can also fall under ‘best practices’ – so that could be a feature.
-Reliability is something that should have been present from the beginning – that’s clearly a bug-fix.
-Better memory use is usually more best practices – so that would usually be a fix.

The core categories of code changes which should clearly be considered fixes (and not be charged for) are: Reliability/Stability, Predictable Functionality, Standards Compliance, Standard Optimizations, Supported Compatibility, and anything that has done damage to data or hardware. Basically, anything that has been stated or shown as a feature or function that doesn’t fulfill the promise in some way (a command, a button, a feature listed on the box).

Code changes that open up new possibilities (innovations in commands, compatibilities, functions, workflows, etc.) should be considered features and are fair game for charging for… particularly when those changes translate to the customer making monetary profits as a result of their use of these new features. These are changes that alter what the software is supposed to be capable of.

@John:

Software developers think in terms of “bugs” versus “enhancements”. A bug is a defect: something that is not working as intended. An enhancement is an increase in functionality. It doesn’t matter if the functionality is “under the hood” or not. If the release is simply a maintenance release, with only bug fixes and minor enhancements, the release number gets bumped like 10.5.1 to 10.5.2. The fact that Apple is talking about 10.6 versus 10.5 in itself indicates that Apple considers the changes major enhancements. It is customary to charge for major enhancements.

Philosophical question: If Apple were to reengineer something under the hood, rewrite it to make it run faster, more reliably, use less memory, without changing the feature is that a bug-fix or a new product/upgrade?

@Hoby:

I agree with you, but what you say does not apply to Snow Leopard, because the primary assumption, that it is basically a bug-fixing release with no new features, is false.

There are several new features in Snow Leopard, including Exchange support (huge for many), Quicktime X (I guess you could call this similar to a change from DX9 to DX10, which MS was banking on to sell a few more Vista copies), Better support for 64 bit (MS sold a completely different version of Windows which had only this difference from the 32 bit version it sold), many useful under the hood NEW technologies (Grand Central, OpenCL, ZFS support).

So as hopefully is a little clearerer, Snow Leopard is more than a glorified bug fix release. Also, after the “surprise feature” debacle with Leopard, I am quite confident Apple has kept at least a couple of features under the wraps, so they dont embarass themselves if these features are not complete in time.

I agree that a software publisher should exercise what the lawyers call “due diligence” in identifying and correcting bugs, and I think it is a generally understood thing in the software industry that the cost of producing maintenance upgrades is rolled into the original purchase price (even if some publishers, such as Adobe, sometimes fail to understand either of these points — don’t get me started on the sad story of Dreamweaver CS3!!). On the other hand, even on the basis of the little we know about it now it is clear that Snow Leopard is going to be much, much more than a bugfix upgrade.

I agree. Bug-fix versions should always be free or nearly free, even when they’re major version numbers or rewrites.

Software versions to charge for should provide new methods of process and new capabilities. There should be some obvious and compelling reason to pay for an update – a value that correlates to new possibilities for the customer.

Fixing faulty code has value too but only insomuch as it works to restore a product’s expected value from the damage any faulty code has inflicted upon its customers. It cannot be considered an additive value and should not be marketed as such.

First off, you are a little premature with this article. Let’s wait a year and see what features actually make it into Snow Leopard and then we’ll see if it will interest the man on the street.

Second, Steve’s comment may have been a little off-the-cuff. Perhaps he meant that there would be no big changes to the appearance of the OS. Under the hood it sounds like there will be a lot of changes which could be promoted as features. I’m excited.

Suppose Snow Leopard is released in September. Next year’s WWDC will see the release of the actual feature list and we can then take sides on how much Apple should charge for it.

I’d opt for a $50 upgrade vs $129. It’ll be a very tough sell for most users to pay the price for largely under-the-hood optimizations.

In a way I guess we’ve become a little spoiled by regular system upgrades with a lot of new features, and I think that’s good. Apple should provide us with new tools and better user interfaces if they expect us to pay $129 every couple of years. If Snow Leopard is essentially an under-the-hood system overhaul, then I agree with Gene that it should be cheap if not free. I remember paying $69 to upgrade to 7.6, which was essentially a fix for the incredibly unstable 7.5. It was worth it, because my system worked reliably again, but looking back I think I got taken. I paid for 7.5, and it should have worked reliably. 7.6 should have been a free upgrade, and so should 10.6 if reports of its technical focus are true.

In general the whole situation bothers me. Just the necessity of a release such as Snow Leopard is worrisome. It reminds me of Microsoft. Maybe Snow Leopard should be called Leopard SP1.

The first quarter sales of a new OS amount to a huge cash cow for Apple, so I don’t think they’d want to cheap out.

We’ll see.

Peace,
Gene

Gene- you overlook the obvious point that it will be free for most people. Operating systems are mostly distributed as an included feature when one buys a new computer. Most mac users don’t pay for upgrades, they get the latest OS upon making a purchase of the mac.

That said, it will be up to Apple to decide what to charge for an off-the-shelf copy. Since most of your audience are presumably mac power-users, it would seem strange for them not to be inclined to pay for an upgrade if it benefited them sufficiently. If not, then why the fuss?

Apple does have a pile of cash at the moment, so they could well decide to discount or give away Snow Leopard, but whatever the case I will likely purchase it at whatever price is asked, or wait a few months until I buy a new machine.

I think this issue of way overblown, and am surprised to see otherwise thoughtful commentators make a big deal about this. The much bigger deal is the fact that Apple is brave enough to make an OS with ‘no new features’. I wish more major developers would do the same.