I have no idea why Apple made the decision that it did to charge money. But it does say a few things...
They don't like grey marketeers because the price is equivalent the world over despite economic differences.
They want to be able to legally enforce the license. Some legal agreements demand that people pay a token fee so that there is an exchange on money even if it is no where near the value of the agreement (Paying a token $100 for a mansion)
The large fee does imply that they have worked out a system of handling feedback from users that requires real humans looking over the feedback.
They are using the fee as some sort of barometer to test public opinion on what they should charge for the release version of Mac OS X.
The price being in the range of what a small development company would charge for a game or basic product gives them a benchmark to convince developers that there is a paying market for Mac OS X and to start porting their apps before the OS arrives.
The $30 fee obviously didn't make any sort of dent in Apple's pockets this quarter (look at their earnings short fall). Perhaps they wanted to squeeze every dime they could out of people, but there are plenty of other reasons why a $30 price point for a beta makes a lot of sense.
They don't like grey marketeers because the price is equivalent the world over despite economic differences.
They want to be able to legally enforce the license. Some legal agreements demand that people pay a token fee so that there is an exchange on money even if it is no where near the value of the agreement (Paying a token $100 for a mansion)
The large fee does imply that they have worked out a system of handling feedback from users that requires real humans looking over the feedback.
They are using the fee as some sort of barometer to test public opinion on what they should charge for the release version of Mac OS X.
The price being in the range of what a small development company would charge for a game or basic product gives them a benchmark to convince developers that there is a paying market for Mac OS X and to start porting their apps before the OS arrives.
The $30 fee obviously didn't make any sort of dent in Apple's pockets this quarter (look at their earnings short fall). Perhaps they wanted to squeeze every dime they could out of people, but there are plenty of other reasons why a $30 price point for a beta makes a lot of sense.