Dan Knight wrote: > I, too, am an Apple shareholder, but I think I need to remind Kenneth > Stevens that Apple is one of very few computer companies that is > profitable these days. From my perspective, .mac smacks of desperation. > > It amazes me that Apple thinks the same people who bitch about no > discount for upgrading from OS X 10.1.x to 10.2 wouldn't also bitch about > paying $100 -- or even $50 -- to keep an email account in service when it > had been free. >
Actually, Apple doesn't think that. The number of people bitching and whining about paying for the OSX 10.2 upgrade were all pretty much the same cheap b******d's who were kvetching about iTools and .Mac. Apple has sold a bucketload of 10.2 boxes (100K their opening weekend at $129 per, that's revenues of 12.9 million right there, easily surpassing the 5M they've gotten from .Mac so far.) Once you look at it, the 10.2 upgrade was the same as paying for the 7.5-7.6, 7.6-8.0, 8.1-8.5 and 8.6-9.0 upgrades, it really fits in with long established Apple pricing. > Apple got 4-5% of iTools users to sign up for .Mac at $50/year, putting > $5 million in Apple's coffers and generating untold ill will. I'm > guessing the value of the ill will outweighs the value of the income. Only among the people kvetching about it, and if they're too cheap to pay $50 /year for the service, if it means that much to them, they're certainly too cheap to be buying new Macs. It's hardly desperation. I really doubt that the .Mac services are all that lartge of a compnent of their strategy. They got 5M in revenue, dropped a huge number of freeloaders, allowing them to cut costs and improve service on the .mac domain, at the cost of the ill will of a few people. Good business decision...sometimes the customer *isn't* always right. > As an Apple stockholder and mac.com email user, I wish Apple had given > the two million plus iTools users a $10/year email only option. At that > price I and maybe 500,000 others would stick with it, adding $5 million > more to Apple's bottom line and creating good will -- Apple, a company > that listens. That would have probably been a better option than cutting them off completely, but I wonder if it would have been cost-effective. > I love my Macs and both types of Mac OS, but I'm not particularly pleased > with the way Apple runs their business. They show a low regard for their > customers when they offer a new version of the OS with no upgrade option > and turn a free service many had used primarily for email into a high > cost service. ROFL!!! Go buy a peecee and see how most computer users are treated. MS is charging full ticket for XP, and their 'home' product doesn't even freaking work with enterprise systems. They want their main cash cows, business users, to cough up $200 for the XP upgrade. Moreover, if you don't get on the wagon now, you're gonna be off any upgrade pricing at all in the future, with MS. Their new site licensing calls for subscribers to pay for every computer that can possibly run an MS product, whether or not it does. -- Bruce Johnson University of Arizona College of Pharmacy Information Technology Group Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs -- G-Books is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- Check our web site for refurbished PowerBooks | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> G-Books list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-books.html> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-books%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
