Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Offers Discounted Mac OS X 10.2
WCityMike writes "Apple's decision to offer no upgrade fee to existing Mac OS X users caused a great deal of unrest amidst Macintosh users, but Amazon may have made the argument a bit moot by offering a $50 mail-in rebate, thus bringing the price down to $79 for all users. Check out their listing for 10.2, or the mail-in rebate form. I wonder if, when Apple notices all its orders are coming in through Amazon, they'll get the point?"
Definitely a very smart move by Amazon - they're bound to get a lot of Mac users' repeat business. Wonder if any other online retailers will follow suit?
I wonder if, when Apple notices all its orders are coming in through Amazon, they'll get the point?
What is the point? That people like to save money? I'm assuming that there is someone at Apple who doesn't live in a bizarro world 24 hours a day, and therefore already knew that.
I'm a little more concerned about the editors at this site, who are given thousands of stories to choose from every day, and regularly choose the ones that look like they were written by Signal 11.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
The rest of us will have to pay full price :-(
I just bought a Mac G4 5 days ago from a Apple authorized dealer and it comes with OS X v10.1. :-(
Looking at the Mac uptodate webpage I cannot see any link that allows me, as a european customer, to upgrade to v10.2. There are only links for US and Canadian customers.
Does anyone know where I can get the upgrade from?
I feel really left out
Dude, trolling the Apple users isn't sporting. It's like shooting fawns at a salt-lick while shining fog lights in their eyes.
Of course, even $79 is too much to charge someone who already paid for the OS with the prices Apple charges for proprietized, two-year old, commodity hardware.
Dude, Apple hardware is way more than two years out of date! Microsoft stopped selling One Button Mice like ten years ago! Those apple geeks are such tools, cuz they don't have enough buttons! Get it? It's a pun, on buttons! Ha ha ha! I kill myself!
I am technologically superior to you, cuz my computer can play games! I've learned a lot more about computers that way than I ever would have learned if I used an apple.
Also, I get to fuck around with my drivers. That means that I get to click on the icons, while I curse! This, too, has made me learn a lot about computers. Like, you have to curse at them, and sometimes you have to hold down the right mouse button to get at the hidden property pages. Those looser apple geeks could never do that!
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
That's terrible. Nothing like punishing your early adopters and *paying* beta testers.
/so/ many good things about OS X, but if I have to pay $129.95 evey six months to keep my OS up to date, I think I'll be sticking with Linux, where up2date and ISOs are free for home users who don't require support.
Recently I had been hearing
(What happened to Apple being a hardware company?)
*throws food to the troll* Option click does everything the right mouse button does... and you can buy a different mouse from a 3rd party if you wish. None of my Mac-using friends have ever needed to do so.
If you use the current Amazon $5-off coupon, the net price comes down to $74. The promotion code is CHNKBKAMZNLT.
Quartz Extreme is probably pretty neat, but I'm satisfied with my current graphics performance. So besides that, what am I getting for $129, an IM client? No thanks.
if only because I've got an AppleLoan and was planning on using a bit of it for 10.2...but then again I'm a student so I get it for 70 (or whatever) anyway.
Actually, that brings up an interesting point: with the rest of that loan I'm probably going to by a refurbished LCD iMac. I save $150 off list (or 100 off education pricing) getting it refurbed, but am I still elligible for the $20 upgrade or does it need to be a NEW computer purchase? I'd rather pay 20 than 70 any ol' day.
Triv
Students (and Education Faculty) can still get it for $69 through Apple with the educational discount. And you don't have to mail in a rebate either. I will purchasing my copy this way.
Not only do you have to feed your personal info to Amazon by placing the order, but to get your rebate, you need to feed rebate.com as well.
Even if you use a throwaway email address and a 555-1212 phone number, that'll still probably mean more junk snailmail coming to my house.
An aside: I was at Sam's Club the other day and was told that I had to get an updated membership card. When the girl was doublechecking my info, she asked, "I have '555-1212' as your current phone number. Is that right?" I said yes and she just continued on. I'm debating on whether she knew what the number was or not.
That wasn't even a troll, it was a pro-Mac person making fun of the stupid Windoze trolls.
Don't you know anything?
I'd not get extremely worked up over SpyMac's website. In my experience, they are perhaps the most inaccurate and outlandish of the Mac rumor sites. Or hadn't you heard of the "iWalk" fiasco? :-)
I misread this and spent half an hour looking for details on when and how Apple decided to let 10.1 users upgrade to jaguare for nothing :)
--
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
why is it such a big deal to have to pay for an upgrade to your software.
no one gets all up in arms when microsoft charges for the next version of windows, why this? is it because, unlike microsoft, they didn't change the revision number enough, but chose to call it 10.2 instead of 11 (as ms probably would have called it).
it's a brand new version of the os with thousands of programmer hours put into it, yeah, it's not open source or free or anything, but give me a unix with a useable graphical interface that i don't have to mess around with to get it to display fonts correctly or recomplile my kernel or the windowing system to support my graphics card and i'll gladly pay for it too.
and yes, i use a mac. and yes i'm going to buy it.
I haven't bought anything from Amazon since they sued to enforce their "one click" patent. Although I'd love the $50.00 off I can't do it. I hope someone else matches them.
MarkX
Generic hardware at speed x is $500.
Apple hardware at speed x is $2000.
SO, apple users have already paid $1500 just to use OS X.
-or-
Apple users have paid $1371 for a shiny case if OS X only costs $129.
For that price the case better be easy and cook breakfast in the morning.
Pay the full price to Apple directly. They have a great OS and really really need the money for their hardware development team.
Apple has to get the money to convert to Sledgehammer/Nvidia from somewhere.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
I think you mean Control-click.
With any luck, CompUSA wil start giving out copies of 10.2 like they did with 10.1. Yet I don't really see the point of Amazon.com doing this because they're support of Mac software has always been so limited in the past. I myself have had to just order through the developers instead of Amazon.com ;)
And if I CompUSA doesn't give out free copies of 10.2 I can always get a Student Discount.
MacOSRumors predicted dual G4 laptops in 1999, and it ain't happened yet, and it probably won't. Funny that it's been actual YEARS that Mac users have been complaining about the speed difference with PCs and nothing's improved yet - what a faithful bunch.
But you're right, Apple is getting draconian recently. Very scary. I bought a Mac last year (a TiBook complete with grinding DVD and peeling paint special effects) specifically because Apple claimed they weren't like Microsoft, only to find that they may be long-lost twins, and the other Mac users I know are completely oblivious to it. Luckily I'm running a stripped down YellowDog 80% of the time. :-)
Apple needs to leave this 20th Century old school corporate BS behind and embrace the new way of business - listen to customers, create quality products, give freedom with your product, don't treat the customer like a criminal. They should elect Doc Searls to the Board of Directors. It honestly seems that most executives at most companies don't have a sweet clue. They really suffer from "us vs. them" syndrome when it comes to customer support.
Positive change like this just makes sense, but Apple was the creator of the modern tech bubble, and they will have a very hard time leaving it behind. The lure of easy money has a very strong appeal.
BlackBolt
The reason it pisses me off personally is that my new iBook is less than 2 months old by the time 10.2 comes out.
Also: Why do they put "software upgrade coupons" in with the computer if you don't get any benefit of it?
Finally: why do I have to pay the full price and can't get an upgrade price? Heck, even M$ offers upgrade pricing.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Someone mod him up for being insightful: swearing at your computer like a ignorant teenager will make it work! This guy is a l33t hax0r for sure.
Mac OS 10.1 is still on sale from Amazon.com for $129.00. Shouldn't Apple have asked retailers to lower this to $109.00 or something? This way if I buy OS X today, I can upgrade to 10.2 for the same price as never buying 10.1. I don't see why they wouldn't want to do this. This way, they keep selling 10.1 until 10.2 is available. If I wanted OS X today - and I was still running 9 - I would be foolish to buy 10.1 because 10.2 would end up costing me $129 + $19!
Apple could continue to sell 10.1 and offer people their upgrade incentive without making it cost more money to make the change in 4 weeks.
It could help to reduce the OS X.1 stock, IMHO.
How is Amazon sellign software at a loss going to "send a message" to Apple?
As if somehow Jaguar is "supposed" to be $79 and Amazon is "just showing Apple!"
The fact is Jaguar is worth the upgrade price. Apple has charged for its software for half a decade now and charging for Jaguar is to be expected-- and STILL a good deal.
I've been running the 6C106 developers release and this has to be one of the biggests upgrades in apple history in terms of big and little things that are different. I'm not goign to violate my NDA, but I will say that Jaguar is worth paying for.
that the company that invented the concept of "We don't see a need to ever turn a profit" is using it as a loss leader means nothing-- just that they want more people aware of the fact that they sell Apple computers.... and that they realize (even if most people don't) that these "rebates" are more often than not never redeemed. Either because they are too hard, or people are lazy or both.
I can guarantee you that Amazon is not getting jaguar for less than $100. They are taking a loss to get your business, and knoing that they won't really have to take the loss because most of you will eat the $50, leaving their average selling price around $100.
This has nothing to do with Apple. The only thing this issue brings up is that Apple users are apparently rather cheap, just as Linux users are. Or at least the people who whine online are cheap. So it goes.
IF you don't want to upgrade, then don't. Wait a year and Jaguar will be on sale for $10. If you do upgrade you'll find the value is there in the product and it was worth it. But its a free country and its your choice. Just don't expect something for nothing-- that is not a right you have.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
...instead of paying $80+ for bug fixes?
Bug fixes on Windows have always been free!!!
... probably the same group of people that run macosrumors.com.
The registration is not enforced. Just don't be connected to the net when you go thru the process and then, it will say "you can register by doing such and such".
Registration is valuable-- you get discounts, and good info from Apple.
Making the registration easy is great for the average person-- they don't have to mess with it.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
The little bugs in OSX are driving me batty. I love my fp imac, don't get me wrong, but there's two issues that are really driving me nuts - not automatically reconnecting to my 802.11b network after reboot, and losing my icon sizing/folder preferences after reboot. In either case, it doesn't matter if the reboot is a crash or a restart. If those are fixed, plus the new features, it might be worth my $79. maybe.
Perhaps getting this rebate deal is part of the undisclosed license fee for one-click. Maybe Apple is cooperating.
Although apparently not on your OS upgrade.
~~~
My TiBook rejoins my AirPort just fine after reboot - try making a new wireless-only Location in System Preferences > Network Preferences and leaving that as your default. Disable the modem and ethernet as even being options.
And if you haven't added the little AirPort icon to your menu bar, it's fabulous. It'd make rejoining not that annoying if the new Location doesn't fix your problem.
Why is everybody saying 10.2 is worth the upgrade price? 10.1 WAS NOT COMPLETE, all current 10.1x users should be able to have 10.2 at a discounted price (and I do mean ALL, even non-US countries).
But everybody seems to ignore that fact, instead comparing the Jaguar upgrade price to that of Microsoft's, again ignoring that their upgrade are for already COMPLETE versions of the OS.
And Apple expects to gain more than 5% marketshare. I'd question their statements that they actually have that much right now.
AC comments get piped to
This guy is a l33t hax0r for sure.
I am, l33t, seriously. You probably use a mac, so you havn't learned how to use a computer properly yet. You guys have all sorts of stuff like "Application Bundles" and "One Button Mice" and "Microkernels" that insulate you from the real stuff you gotta do when you use a compter.
You see, us folks who use a real operating system, like DOS or Linux, have learned all the stuff you gotta do when you use a computer -- do you have any idea how much stuff you really have to do to hook up to the internet, or to burn a VCD, or download music to one of them mp3 players? It's a lot of stuff, believe me. And all you bozos with Macs have never bothered to learn how to do that stuff, and you think that you can just get by letting Steve Jobs or someone learn how to do that stuff for you. Think of how lost you're going be someday, when you don't have a computer that does that stuff for you, and you have to do it by hand, like us smart people are able to do!
Anyhow, I've learned a lot from installing device drivers under Windows. I'm pretty sure I could even write a device driver, because I've learned so much from downloading and clicking on the icons. And, like, writing a device driver is the hardest thing there is to do on computers. A guy names Linux Torbaldes wrote a device driver once, and it became so famous that it turned into the Unix operating system! And, seriously, one of my friends told me that he invented Unix just to learn how to write a device driver (this was before you had to click on the devices to make them work, which is why sometimes Linux gets the mouse stuff a little wrong, cuz he didn't need it as much then).
Option click does everything the right mouse button does... and you can buy a different mouse from a 3rd party if you wish.
Really? Wow. So, the stuff I said about the mouse was totally absurd, then? I had no idea. Perhaps I'll have to completely re-evaluate everything I wrote in my post -- perhaps a few of the other things I wrote were also factually incorrect? I sure hope not.
Oh, and on a more serious note -- go buy a decent optical mouse with a wheel. It'll cost you $20, and you'll soon wonder how you ever got by without that thing.
...In your mind anyway.
You have been going to the same bar for several years. The service isn't the fastest, but it's filled with scenesters, and you think that it makes you look cool by association. You have a certain loyalty because they don't kick your ass at this bar (like all those mean sports bars).
If you walk into this bar one day and pay the normal price for a drink, but get a warm glass of piss..being the pseudo-intelligent, pretentious scenester with communist leanings that you are, you will drink it anyway, and comment on the pleasant saltiness.
The next day when you go into the bar, plop your money on the counter and get your Zima, you are going to be pretty fucking happy.
Apple only wants to sell to "real countries" >;]
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of THESE!!!
As of now (9:00 PM Tuesday), the link to the rebate form is broken.
Anyone else have this problem?
As below, so above and beyond, I imagine drawn beyond the lines of reason. Push the envelope. Watch it bend.
Maybe if Mac hardware weren't so over priced people wouldn't bitch so much. It's not like people are buying this software to run on hardware Apple never sees a dime from the sale of. Apple gets you coming and going; when you buy the hardware and later when you upgrade the OS.
It's not like Apple supports their hardware for very long anyways. OSX doesn't even support hardware made less than two years before it came out (Lombard DVD player, for instance)! Add to that the serious design flaws that Apple refuses to take responsibility for (G3 powerbook hinges, power connectors with inadequate strain relief, all sorts of cracking and other plastic problems) and it adds up to a lot of pain when shelling out for OS upgrades.
Still, it's the best operating system you can buy and that's certainly worth something.
burris
Discounts? What discounts? Oh, you mean those now worthless coupons that I got with my copy of OS 10.1 that claimed to give me a discount on the next version?
Good info? A bunch of Apple marketing drivel is all you ever get from them, chock full of such good grammar as "blazingly fast" and such ad-ese.
The software development costs are a small fraction of the retail package price, so arguments that it is "worth it" based on functionality are almost meaningless.
What it comes down to is that Apple needs money again to make the stock holders happy, and they have something that a sufficient number of people are going to buy, whether its is earth-shatteringly different or merely a so-so upgrade. And the reason why Apple gets to set the prices is because Mac users have already sunk costs into their machines--they aren't going to switch because of a $120 upgrade. But if Apple does that too often, they risk losing customers.
There is nothing wrong with any of that. We knew that Apple and other companies work that way when we bought our Macintoshes.
I'm probably not going to upgrade: my Mac does exactly what I want, and I see no point in paying money and risking that it will get slower or stop working altogether.
This has nothing to do with Apple. The only thing this issue brings up is that Apple users are apparently rather cheap, just as Linux users are. Or at least the people who whine online are cheap. So it goes.
Rational agents in a market economy are "cheap". That's what makes market economies efficient. It's the people who are not "cheap" that create problems for the market. Like people who keep paying millions of dollars to outfit their companies with slow, insecure, unreliable, buggy software despite the costs. If those people behaved rationally and were "cheap", certain big computer companies would actually either have to shape up or get out.
what am I getting for $129, an IM client?
...off the top of my head...
There are a lot of ways to answer that, but for me
1. Windows file sharing and browsing
2. GUI for the ipfw firewall
3. Sherlock 3
4. Printer sharing (finally)
5. Shareable internet connections including wireless
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
Apple had historically charged for .0 and .5 releases of their operating systems (7.6 notwithstanding). With OS 8, we got 8.1 then paid for 8.5, got 8.5.1, and 8.6. With OS 9 we got 9.0.1, 9.0.2, (9.0.3 shipped on very few machines) 9.0.4, 9.1, 9.2, 9.2.1, and 9.2.2 for FREE.
.5 release as we expected them in the past. Granted we used to pay $99 for the point releases, but the development costs for X are surely higher than that. $129 for a very sweet, very fast OS? Sure, I'm buying - providing that my next machine doesn't already ship with it.
OS X we paid for (some of us paid for the public beta), that purchase got us 10.0.1, 10.0.2, 10.0.3, 10.0.4, 10.1... all the way to 10.1.5. 10.2 is the feature-equivalent to a
OS X 10.2 is recompiled against a whole new compiler and set of libraries (gcc 3.1) which necessitates a full round of testing and development, it adds new features, like hardware accelerated compositing engine, IPv6, new networking software (Rendevous/ZeroConf), new printing software (CUPS), new UI interfaces (like spring loaded folders, a popular request), handwriting technology (Ink), as well as improved SMB browsing, remote disk access, and performance improvements.
Now the real question; do you want to argue over a point release?
I would think a point release adds drivers, enhanced stability, enhanced security, or enhanced reliability. A major (not point) release would add features (check) and change the way the OS is used (check), while a point release doesn't change anything except fix 'issues'.
GPL Deconstructed
If you are a student or have any sort of educational affiliation (or know someone who does...) you can get it for $69 at the apple education store. No rebate hassles to worry about, and $10 further off to boot.o utingpa ge.html
http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/r
Several of the retail Apple Stores have Jaguar installed on some of their machines for trials.
"The problem is, I don't think there's a practical way for Apple to give a discount to people who bought 10 already."
Four words: Dated. Cash. Register. Receipt.
If Steve Jobs had said, "Jaguar costs $129 for the full retail version, or $59 if you bought a new Mac or MacOS X 10.1 after March of this year," there would be a lot fewer people upset.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
"I'm not even pissed about the Jaguar price gouge or the cost of .mac anymore, I'm pissed about the new rumor that Apple's folding all the iApps into .mac! iMovie is mentioned specifically on Spymac and elsewhere."
Trusting SpyMac automatically proves you're an idiot.
And the only place with even less cred than SpyMac is MacOS Rumors...--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
"Bug fixes on Windows have always been free!!!"
Sure, but that's only because Microsoft subsidizes those costs by installing spyware and DMR-lockout code along with those "bug fixes." Then they sell your personal info to the spammers, and the next thing you know, your mailbox is flodded with junk mail about Norwegian bestiality rape anime hentai videos or somesuch.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
I can download ISO images of several flavours of Linux and few of BSD - that *is* FREE.
Less is more !
Glad to see that the American Spirit is still alive.
Until then the rest of the world cares about getting a second-hand from US. Which is exactly the perfect model Americans try to build.
Is it a great business model of the company selling the most expansive desktops?
They would rather free OS X ISO images. At least I would use OS X on a couple of boxes then.
Less is more !
Back when I was running SuSE, a new release came out every few months. You didn't hear people bitching about the upgrade cost, especially considering that SuSE didn't put ISOs online. I have used every version since 6.4, and have always wanted that one new feature.
$129 is annoying, but is not that big of a deal.
The middle mind speaks!
Note to self: Be careful with fingers.
A little off-topic but having everything to do with the coupon, I noticed Adobe Photoshop Essentials 2.0 on the coupon, yet after a long search on Amazon I could not find it. I know it's almost out. Is Amazon trying to get rid of their 1.0 copies, ya think? Or are they just slower to pre-announce with software?
This now concludes our broadcast day.
And now the rebate mysteriously disappears! Whadda?
From MacMinute: "Overwhelming demand caused Amazon.com to retract its $50 rebate for Mac OS X 10.2. Amazon.com caught the attention of the Mac community earlier this week when it rolled out the exclusive rebate, but pulled it yesterday afternoon without notice. 'Customer response exceeded our wildest expectations so we're not continuing the rebate at this time,' Ling Hong, an Amazon.com spokesperson told MacMinute. 'But obviously all the pre-orders that we received during the time that the rebate offer was posted on our site will be honored.' Hong said all orders place up until 7:00 pm PDT yesterday will be eligible."
Yeah, those wacky loons also predicted that Apple would start charging for the "free for life" email addresses and webpages.
Anyway, I like your webpage. The "GO MAC!!!!!!!!" section is especially enlightening.
I hope you realize that SOMEONE needs to prod Apple to get them to move off their fat butts and get competitive on something other than the "lickable" GUI.
Nobody ever learned anything from success, and Apple is learning even less from being repeatedly told that they're a success by zealots who gloss over their many many flaws. Apple needs you to be honest with them. They have a tendency to do bad things. All corporations do. You need to stand up and let them know when they screw up or get too draconian. You have to hold them to the standards you expect from them. Otherwise they will sink into becoming another Microsoft, but one with a monopoly on both the hardware *and* the software you use.
If you really love Apple, complain to them daily. Use constructive criticism to force them to improve. An Apple orchard can't grow good fruit without YOU doing some weeding.
Stinking Man