Apple vs. Microsoft: Yet another upgrade pricing fiasco
Once again, Apple shows Redmond how it should be done on pricing upgrades, especially ones with plenty of internal fixes. Will Windows users feel grateful when Mac users get their upgrades for half to a quarter of the price? Or is it another sucker moment?
At the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco on Monday, Phil Schiller, senior vice-president of worldwide product marketing, laid out the complex upgrade pricing for the next version of Mac OS X, called Snow Leopard: $29. And $49 for a 4-seat "family" license, which brings the cost per seat down to $12 and change.
A longtime developer sitting next to me said before the keynote that the pricing might be essentially free, which in the world of OS upgrades was $19. I thought it actually could be freely free, meaning zero.
Still, $29 will get most Mac OS X Leopard users to upgrade right away, which is what Apple wants (the more-reliable version will reduce support costs) and what developers will also want since they will likely offer versions that take advantage of the rewritten OS.
But what of Microsoft? Here's what Mary Jo Foley at All About Microsoft has uncovered on upgrade pricing:
But wait: There’s more. Starting June 26 there also will be a presell program kicking off at Best Buy, via which Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade copies can be ordered for $49.95 and Windows 7 Professional Upgrade copies for $99.99. (Note: These are upgrade license prices, not the price for a brand-new retail version of Windows 7. Microsoft still hasn’t released officially any Windows 7 price lists. )
Microsoft also confirmed the company is taking pre-orders from its volume licensees for Windows 7, but wouldn’t confirm that they are allegedly charging them $77 per copy for their Windows 7 upgrades.
Here's the rub: both Windows 7 (whatever the flavor) and Snow Leopard are glorified maintenance upgrades. They will improve reliability and user experience but most of the changes are under the hood. And many of the changes are fixes for major bugs or features that couldn't be accomplished when each was released.
So, Mac consumer customers will end up paying at less than half as much for the bug fixes than their Windows counterparts. Or for those of us with a few Macs around the house, a quarter of the price.
For small business customers, the difference will be much greater since Apple has only one price and one SKU. The Windows 7 Pro upgrade will be $70 more than the individual Mac price and $87 more with the family-pack price.
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