Steve Jobs' Idea For an Ad-Supported OS

milbournosphere writes "It looks like Steve drew up an idea for an ad-supported OS. A patent was filed back in 2009 detailing how it was done. From the article: 'Rather than charge the normal upgrade price, which in those days was $99, he was thinking of shipping a second version of Mac OS 9 that would be given away for free — but would be supported instead by advertising. The theory was that this would pull in a ton of people who didn't normally upgrade because of the price, but Apple would still generate income through the advertising. And any time an owner of the free version wanted to get rid of the advertising, he or she could simply pay for the ad-free version. Steve's team had worked out the preliminary numbers the concept seemed financially sound.'"

Comments

Mac OS 9?

[XxtraLarGe]

Forum post says Mac OS X. I don't think he'd get many takers for Mac OS 9, even if he was giving it away without ads.

Bad summary

[broken_chaos]

The summary is confusing and inaccurate. The patent was filed in 2008 (not 2009), and the reference to MacOS 9 was referring to a piece in a book ("Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success" by Ken Segall, according to the linked article) that suggests that the idea for the patent originated in 1999 (not 2008 or 2009) with Steve Jobs -- back when OS9 was heading towards release, making the reference to OS9 actually make sense.

All this gleamed from clicking the sole link in the /. post, spending 15 seconds skimming it, and having a very basic knowledge of recent OS history. Proofreading, please?

Already done - equaled fail

[future assassin]

There were companies in the late 90's and early 2000 that were doing this with PC's and free internet. How soon we forget. Eudora or Opera anyone?