Uh-oh.... Anybody following WWDC?

[Richard Gaskin]

Judy Perry wrote:
> Yeah, but what about the money we have invested in PPC-native apps?  Do we
> get those all free?

Nope.  That's part of the Mac Tax we've all been paying for years.

Artificial demand is how Apple keeps itself and its vendors in sales. 
They can't do it just a 2.5% marketshare, and if you take iPods out of 
the picture their revenue position rather bites.

Apple can only stay afloat by selling the same product to the same 
customers over and over.  We pay an annual OS X tax of $139, even though 
the first two (arguably three) releases were of beta quality.  Sure, 
there are the occassional switchers.  But I doubt many of the 2 million 
Tiger sales went to them.

For vendors, Apple was the only major vendor who transitioned to USB 
without continuing support for legacy ports.  This created an artificial 
demand for new peripherals, and a lot of vendors who were leaving 
decided to stay to cash in.  Apple needs vendors, vendors need 
disproportionate sales to justify the disproportionate R&D.  It's good 
for everyone -- except the consumer who gets the bill.

So if we love the Mac platform enough to have endured these things for 
so long, is a third set of arbitrary paid upgrades really that much more 
expensive than the two we've already paid for?

Like a friend keeps telling me, "It's an economic democracy:  one 
dollar, one vote".  If we want to vote for Apple we pony up the cash.

If not, there's always Linux.  It's already available for both x86 and 
PPC. ;)


> I dunno...  I kinda like my dual G4 desktop

I still love my Power Computing box.  It still does what I bought it 
for, but that hasn't stopped me from buying newer computers in recent years.

I suspect you'll get far more than two years' life out of your G4. Just 
as with PPC, a switch to Intel doesn't mean your current Mac will 
suddenly stop working.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
  __________________________________________________
  Rev tools and more: http://www.fourthworld.com/rev