On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 1:52 PM, Arno Hautala <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 12:34, objectwerks inc <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> I am betting that thumb drives SW distribution is in the same order of >> magnitude as optical media distribution. When you consider how many free >> thumb drives I have received (even as junk mail by snail mail) as marketing >> devices (Nissan sent me a 1GB one not long ago to show off some new vehicle) >> they cannot be that expensive and I bet the equipment necessary to "produce" >> the recorded device is cheaper than the stamping of optical media. > > There is no chance that thumb drives are cheaper to produce and > distribute than it is to burn and distribute a DVD. My wife's Applecare DVD was shipped in a regular paper envelope. It had clearly been folded at some point, as the DVD was in 2 pieces. Apple can either invest in heavier more robust packages or plan to replace some percentage of DVD's. I'm sure they have done the optimization calculation but doubt they factor in the inconvenience to customers. I expect USB thumb drives are more likely to survive mailing. > Even the bulk prices that I've seen for a 4GB drive are around $7. > Let's say Apple can get a ridiculous discount and drop that to $2. I > can buy a 100 pack of DVDs for $30. That is going to go down further > for bulk orders, but it's already at $0.3 > > And I seriously doubt it's cheaper to assemble USB media than it is to > press a disc. But it is not so easy to serialize pressed disks. Furthermore, USB's can be updated in the field. With DVD's if you need to rebuild a 2-year old system you need a whack up updates. > Sure, a 1GB drive might be around $0.5 for a large bulk order, but > there's no way they've got anything on optical. Any company that > decides to follow Apple and ditch optical media is not going to > consider USB distribution when they can offer network as a primary > avenue. Optical drives are not as reliable as the rest of an iMac. If Apple stops selling optical drives they can save on warranty costs, and let other vendors get the support headaches. It makes sense for Apple to drop branded products in favor of 3rd party "commodity" accessories. -- George N. White III <[email protected]> Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia _______________________________________________ MacOSX-talk mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk
