The Apple giveth, and the Apple taketh away . . .
Sometimes, it’s expensive being a Mac user. Sometimes, it’s surprisingly cheap. Alex Kidman tries to make sense of Apple’s pricing policies.
Apple’s got a funny relationship with money. A bit over a decade ago, the company wasn’t doing so well – losing money hand over fist, even with $150 million dollars of Microsoft’s stock investment money to play with. These days, the company that’s famous for its no-comment policy on just about anything (“Apple does not comment on unreleased products/exact Australian sales figures/That mysterious “training facility” just inside the Mexican border”) is practically gleeful in reporting quarter after quarter of pure profits.
And as Steve Jobs dances around in his ever-expanding money pit, Apple dances around with its consumer pricing, giving with one hand and taking with another.
The Apple giveth: Macbook generosity
The revisions announced last week of the Macbook and Macbook Pro line. Sure, over time, technology gets better, and you get more for your money, especially in the case of the Macbook Pro, which now has the funky multi-touch interface. I wonder how many Macbook Air purchases were cancelled the minute it was revealed that multi-touch was coming to the Pro?
The Apple Taketh Away: The Henry Ford Problem
The Macbook news is great – as long as you like White Macbooks. Fans of the Black model will still be slugged with a $300 premium that essentially buys you 90GB more hard drive space and . . . black paint.
The Apple Giveth: iPods
Apple’s sliced tiny chunks off the prices of most of its iPod line in the past four weeks, along with releasing the 2GB version of the iPod Shuffle. It’s a nice touch from a value perspective, although I do still maintain that any sales of the Shuffle are a triumph of marketing over common sense.
The Apple taketh away: iPod Touch
Unless, of course, you’re an iPod Touch owner. There’s been no price drop for the Touch, which at this stage more or less is the Australian version of the iPhone . . . at least for now. Early iPod Touch adopters have already been slugged earlier in the year with a $24.99 early adopter’s tax, for features that were either already in the iPhone – or given free to iPhone users.
Then there’s last week’s iPhone SDK announcement. It had all sorts of exciting news nuggets within it, including Exchange and ActiveSync compatibility for iPhones, and the ability to finally get to grips with the SDK itself for a relatively nominal US$99.
iPod Touch owners can get excited too, as the new SDK includes the ability to build iPod Touch applications. That makes sense from a hardware perspective; the iPod Touch is essentially an iPhone with the “Phone” bit snipped off at birth.
There’s just one catch – a “nominal fee” to upgrade your iPod Touch. Where have I heard that before?
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