upgrade pricing (fka: No longer bundled on MacBooks?)

[Forrest Corbett]

On Jan 13, 2006, at 3:20 PM, Niels Meersschaert wrote:

> Hmmm... it's roughly 1/3 the cost of a full license to upgrade.   
> That's a pretty reasonable ratio.  Especially when you consider  
> other popular apps.  Office is roughly 2/3 the price of a full  
> license to upgrade.  OS X, iWork & iLife are 100% of a full license  
> cost.

Standard full is $79.95. Upgrade is $29.95. That's 37%. Pro full can  
be found for $135.94. Upgrade is $49.95. That's 36.7%. There are many  
ways to get MS Office for less than that, so their pricing is very  
abnormal. I pay about $40 per upgrade. iLife is pretty much upgrade  
only, since it already comes with new macs (and has for several  
years.) OS X is pretty much the same.

Part of my frustration on this matter is that I paid full price for  
OG3 a little over a year ago. A few months later I got a new Mac  
which came with OG3. Now I own three copies, fully paying for one.  
Anyone who owns a newer Mac has the same upgrade option as someone  
who paid full price for it.

Other apps are much less expensive to upgrade. For example, Photoshop  
CS2 is $599 new, but the upgrade is only $149. That's about a quarter  
of the new price. Macromedia's upgrade pricing was about the same  
when OG4 shipped. They also offered deals (as does Adobe, on  
occasion) for upgrading if you own multiple titles from them. BBEdit  
is $199, $49 for the upgrade.

That said, it does seem like their upgrade pricing isn't as bad as I  
remember it being when OG was released. Crossgrades are even less  
appealing. I still think it's far from "great," however. "Great"  
would be like BB's 50% upgrade from a free app.

-Forrest