To: Steve Jobs and Apple Computer, Inc.
On Wednesday, July 17, 2002, you spoke about Mac OS v10.2 in your keynote address at Macworld New York. The public and technology media was informed shortly thereafter that Apple would not be offering an upgrade price for existing users of the Mac OS X operating system. By our signatures below, we express our anger and outrage at this decision.
Many of us agree that some form of upgrade fee is warranted for to recompense Apple for time and money spent developing of the many new technologies packaged into 10.2. Few here believe it should be free. But we feel that by charging full price, you are doing great damage not only to your customers but to your own company. We point out the following problems:
* People feel the price differential is unfair. Upgrading from 9.x directly to Jaguar will cost a user $130. Someone who upgraded from 9.x to 10.0.x to 10.1.x, and now wants to upgrade to Jaguar, could end up spending well over $280. Existing OS X users, by their use of the OS, helped Apple work out bugs and discover which features had the highest demand. Why should you penalize them for their loyalty and "early adoption" mindset, which was a clear asset to you?
* Many of us wonder why you were not advised this could be a very unprofitable move. The psychological impact of asking former users to pay full price for an operating system they have already bought will be enough to hurt Jaguar sales a great deal. We respectfully suggest Apple would see greater economic profit by offering an upgrade fee, because resulting sales in that area will no doubt be more brisk than those from selling 10.2 at full price alone. In other words, a moderate discount for existing users could vastly increase the number of sales.
http://www.petitiononline.com/nopay129/petition.html
In case you are wondering, yes I did sign it and I did give a valid email address (but they will protect it for you). Worth signing if you are even thinking about OSX. $129 for a .2 upgrade is lunacy. If you are going to charge that much then at least have the audacity to bump the version number to 11.0.
