Why no upgrade prices for iWork / iLife 05 to 06?

[iball]

I think the iWeb app is pretty neat for what it does.
But the iPhoto "homepage" needs some serious work...I guess all that work went into iWeb.
As far as dotmac, well...umm...it's nice and all, but I don't know if it's $99 nice.
If you're a heavy net user who loves updating a webpage and giving all your friends the URL (even printed on business cards) then I could see where $99 a year would come in handy.
But for the average joe? Nah.

[chevy]

I agree that iLife and .Mac should be sold together as they really operate together. But that's just my opinion.

What about a model where one pays a fixed yearly level and get for that:
iLife
.Mac
Latest system
Exclusive iTunes songs

[ScottW]

I think that Apple should allow you to publish to ANY web server of your choice and not just .mac. Heck, I'd pay $99 a year just for that privilage. ha!

[fryke]

You can publish yourself by exporting to HTML in iWeb, I hear. Although some features are missing then, it should basically work alright. But I agree... The ties between iLife '06 and .Mac are kinda sneaky.

[Lt Major Burns]

the problem with .mac is that it should be free. cut it down, and offer it for free - as part of buying a lovely expensive mac you get ilife, the best suite of applications you can buy, and os x, the best os you can buy. then you have to pay £30 for Quicktime pro and £70 for some webspace and .mac. those things could quite easily be standard, and then everyone would be plugging their .mac website they made with their apple mac....

[fryke]

Well, I guess from Apple's view it's a little different. They don't make much money from iLife, since they give it away with new Macs. They sure sell some as upgrades, but the real kick for them is .Mac. And if they have over a million users, why stop getting that 100 million dollars a year? That's quite a lot of money, and since you're implying that the services would still have to be brought on, their costs would not only be 100 million dollars higher per year, but also what they have to pay for traffic (and they do!) and servers etc. would increase, since "free" would attract a _lot_ of users, wouldn't it. "Ads", you might say. But that would - for me - kill the appeal of the good service. (I'm not currently a .Mac user, though, and don't plan on becoming one.)

I guess they could give away a "light" version of .mac of some kind with iLife (and also new Macs, of course). It could allow you to have one E-Mail account (makes sure you'll want to keep .Mac afterwards), a bit less of disk space etc. They could make it work 6 months or something... But again: It would probably cost them too much.

[Shookster]

"Ads", you might say. But that would - for me - kill the appeal of the good service.

Adverts would turn a lot of people off. It's not the image that they associate with Apple.

[fryke]

exactly what i meant.