Thursday, October 9, 2003

Mac OS Upgrades The bitch engines are in full swing, now that Apple has officially announced Panther's $129 release in a few weeks. Russel Beattie has a nice piece that congratulates Apple for moving to a OS subscription model. While it isn't billed as such, Mac users should just accept that Apple will produce a new upgrade every year for the foreseeable future. Intuit has been revving Quicken annually for ages now, and I suspect that the upgrade cycle for most users is every two years. I think Apple is banking on the same cycle... you bought 10.0, then you bought 10.2, or if you bought 10.1, you skipped 10.2, and will now buy 10.3, and so on. What's interesting about this OS model is how it may mesh with the hardware upgrade model. Like the automotive industry, I think the computer industry is hoping that computer users will buy a new machine every 3-4 years. If that is true for Apple, then that means most users are only buying one OS upgrade, about two years after they bought their new computer, before they upgrade to new hardware (which includes the latest OS). One final note about the numbering scheme of Mac OS, in case this wasn't obvious. Some users complain about the high cost of a "dot release". The moniker 10.x should really be read as Mac OS 10 version x. It isn't a "dot release", but a whole new version. Panther is really Mac OS X 3, akin to Photoshop 8 or Quicken 2003. 9:45:50 AM    trackback []