Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 12th Oct 2009 18:25 UTC
Thread beginning with comment 388859
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 22:23 UTC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 13:38 UTC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 13:30 UTC, submitted by JRepin
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 22:06 UTC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:45 UTC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 15:53 UTC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
More News »
Sponsored Links



Member since:
2006-10-15
So what is believed to be the true motive behind this? I can imagine:
1. Apple wants to make money off of their hardware, and wants to lock users in to that; or
2. Apple truly wants to tailor the experience and demands the hardware to do it.
My guess would be that it's a combination of both of these. If Psystar succeeds (doesn't matter much to me whether they do or not), Apple could easily just increase the price of the software.
I'm sure they'd rather not have to offer rebates (although automatic rebates through the Apple store and maybe other sellers would be easy enough), but they could offer rebates online based on some sort of hardware serial number or something.
I don't care much for Apple's practices, but it almost seems like a reasonable argument to me that the software is cheaper because they make their money off of hardware. Would people be opposed to paying the "real" price for the software if they were using it on non-Apple hardware?
Does this mean that, long term, Apple would end up selling their hardware cheaper and software at a higher price? There are a million ways they can work around "the problem," and it would all depend on whether their goals are to make money or lock down the experience. And whether the "fix" is reasonable would depend on the goal of the end-user to pay a subsidized price for an OS or if they're just having fun with their PC.
I mostly agree that software licenses are a painful joke, but I don't mind admitting that Apple probably has some point. After all, many would argue that OS X is superior to Windows, yet it seems to be sold heavily discounted compared to Windows.