Jaguar vs. .mac

[simX]

Originally posted by mr_mac_x
First off, get out of Newzworld's shoes-they don't fit you. I doubt that we completely understand his position and we're not in one ourselves to criticize him or his past actions.



But say you also want to get .Mac to continue the services that you already bought with Mac OS X. Now you've paid $308. Or, what if you bought Mac OS X but never got around to signing up for iTools? Now you're paying $358. And that's getting mighty close to azosx's number.

And this is why I'm OK with Jaguar. I think that $258 over almost two years is fine (especially towards my favorite company).

But (and I'm sorry I can't find my OS X box to quote from) when I bought OS X, the box said something about 'OS X enhances the internet with iTools,' not 'OS X includes a free trial offer of iTools, and at an undisclosed time we'll kill it and make you pay loads of cash for .Mac.'

My $.02

.Mac/iTools is not something that I am obligated to pay for when buying OS X. OS X is completely functional without .Mac. I prefer to continue my membership to .Mac, however, and so I will fork over the money to do so.

Point being that OS X has not cost near $400, and still will not be anywhere near that number once I get Jaguar. OS X + .Mac will be $308, still nowhere near $400. If I wasn't an iTools member, then it would be $358.. but for OS X AND .Mac.

 

[hulkaros]

Come on guys! If you REALLY like Apple and its products you should go and buy BOTH Jaguar and .Mac without asking/throwing too many questions

At least what you buy, even for the sum of $230, is WORTH every single cent of it unlike many things that we buy in our times (Wintel products anyone?)

Do yourselves a favor and support Apple by buying that Jaguar and dotMac products and even better buy a second or even a third Mac!

 

[mr_mac_x]

Originally posted by simX
.Mac/iTools is not something that I am obligated to pay for when buying OS X. OS X is completely functional without .Mac. I prefer to continue my membership to .Mac, however, and so I will fork over the money to do so.

Point being that OS X has not cost near $400, and still will not be anywhere near that number once I get Jaguar. OS X + .Mac will be $308, still nowhere near $400. If I wasn't an iTools member, then it would be $358.. but for OS X AND .Mac.

From the OS X 10.0 Box
Designed for the Internet Age
Built using many of the same technologies that power the Internet itself, Mac OS X gives you the power to get connected faster and easier--and do more when you get there--with best-of-class Internet applications such as Mail, Internet Explorer, and iTools.

iTools is included in OS X just as much as Mail or Internet Explorer is. OS X and iTools are two peas in a pod, two sides of a coin. And I bought that pea pod/coin.

 

[Izzy]

yikes...I forgot that iTools was on the MacOSX box...

that does make that bad taste in my mouth seem worse...

 

[toast]

I'd like to get jaguar for cheaper so I can buy RAM for my G3/500 RAM128 iMac ! RAM would make OSX faster.

I'm bored with throwing money at Apple. It looks like encouraging them to go their way, and I hate, HATE the .mac way. They've gone nuts on this one.

 

[McMickey]

Hmmm let's see what did I pay, what will I pay and what do I have to pay?

I use Mac OS X 10.1.5 at this moment....
10.0....free....it came as 10.1.3 with my iBook...$ 0,00.00
10.1....free....it came as a system upgrade CD with a new G4...$ 0,00.00
10.1.1..free...
10.1.2..free...
10.1.3...free...
10.1.4....free..
10.1.5....free...(i know it gets boring )
So total cost of using X so far..............$ 0,00.00
Upgrade to 10.2.....€ 169.00 (about $ 169.00)
So for this little amount of money I own Jaguar...The best running/looking/compatible/awesome system I've seen!!
Hmmm sounds like a pretty good deal to me!!
I problably won't have to pay for Jaguar cuz I'm getting a new Mac (I'm have patience... )
.mac?? I didn't use iTool...got my own domain..no pay there..
Conclusion:
I paid zip, will pay zip and have to pay: zip!!
Instead I think I'll buy some more Apple Shares!!!

 

[Sighter]

I dont know for you guys but I purchased my first Mac "LC-630"
to be able to work with it. Do jobs, creative stuff (I'm a fotographer / Cameraman)
Well, I dont know for you but here's the way I see it:

The Mac is a really cheap tool for working or a really expensive toy.

If you just own a Mac for entertainment I wish to remind you this...

- Go get a Car just for fun and let me know about your expenses
- Buy a VTT
- Get yourself a Pool...Hihihihi

Of course everything will seems expensive everytime you have to pay
if your Mac is not bringing any revenue at home for you... Then, if thats the case,
remember that Entertainment IS expensive and that a computer for the only
purpose of entertainment is a really expensive toy...

BTW, anyone knows the price of Windows XP Pro ???? Hehehe!

-Sighter

 

[Snowball]

but in the Terms of Service agreement or whatever they call it there was a clause that said something like "Apple reserves the right to discontinue iTools at any time for any reason without prior notice. By clicking Agree you consent to these terms."...so they were never legally obliged to keep iTools free for 10.1/earlier users. I think it is actually pretty incredible the way in which they worded everything to avoid possible future legal issues.

 

[gibbs]

simx- so what if azosx made a math mistake. Most of his points still seem to stand to me. He wasn't even making a flame about it. If you go up and read the paragraph that you quoted before it begins with "I can understand..."

I have to say that azosx gets a lot of flaming on this board and he takes it pretty damn well. I tend to believe that azosx has some fairly well developed opinions and I agree with a lot of his comments on this thread, AND on other threads.

simx- I am not here to flame you or criticize you, but I do think you can be a little easier on someone without sounding so harsh or angry during a discussion. I know you can.

[flame guard on]

 

[simX]

gibbs --

I appreciate your comments.

What I don't appreciate is people like azosx who vastly overinflate the situation, making things like the price of OS X seem outrageous (when it is, in reality, perfectly acceptable), and things like Apple's dismal hardware seem outrageous as well (when in fact Apple has some very awesome offerings).

I, too, feel for people who simply want mac.com e-mail addresses and now they cannot get it. But I think Mac users, in general, seem to be a little high on their horses about price. Maybe it's because the Mac is more expensive up front (but for me it's always paid off in time and money saved later). And yes, iTools was advertised as a selling point for Mac OS X.. and that may piss off some users too.

Whatever it is, I think that people need to give Apple a break, and maybe even try out .Mac. Existing iTools users can get a year of .Mac for only $50, which seems to be a steal for what you get -- that's like $4.15 a month, whereas you might be charged more than that just for webhosting at other places!

I was very disappointed with Apple when they announced that they will charge for .Mac, and I STILL think that they should allow free mac.com e-mail accounts. But I will give .Mac a try and see how it goes.. who knows, Apple might have some compelling .Mac feature in half a year that will kill .Net entirely.

The only reason I jumped on azosx here is that it's pretty hard to mistake $258 for $400, and all that does is heat people's emotions up even more. The reality is that Mac OS X will have costed only $258 after people buy Mac OS X 10.2, and that's not too shabby for a stable and innovative (I don't see Microsoft or other platform including Rendezvous out of the box) operating system.

And when you only take a vastly overestimated price into account and not the compelling features of Jaguar, you get what's called "misconstruing the truth", and "sensational journalism".

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

I'm going to have to go with simX on this whole thread. MANY people have been manipulating the truth and making this out to be some sort of money-grubbing fiasco headed up by Apple, which is simply NOT the case.

Yup, get used to it people -- as of now, there's no "upgrade pricing" for Jaguar, and that's perfectly ok and normal. I understand nobody likes spending their hard-earned cash, but hell! It's only $129, and Phil Schiller summed it up and proved that it was within Apple's histrical pricing scheme. So it wasn't a big surprise unless you've been under a rock for some time now.

My main concern is that all I've been hearing since the keynote ended was bitching about the pricing of Jaguar and .mac. Look at the threads here -- people are starting silly petitions to try and get the price of Jaguar reduced. Gimme a break! I understand that people who just purchased 10.1 feel a little shafted, but hey, that's corporate America and it's not a surprise, nor is it underhanded or devious in any way.

Where are the threads about how kick-ass the new 20GB iPod is? Where's the threads about how bad-ass the iMac 17" is? Hell, Apple lowered prices on BOTH those things by about $100, yet the only thing that people find important is how they're going to have to SPEND about $100 to get Jaguar. I know it's the latest-and-greatest thing, and that's why I think Apple was justified in charging full-price for it.

That's it. I wanted to write more but I'll just get more and more upset about how people are threatening to abandon Apple for this so-called "stupid" move. Fine, if you're going to be that way, leave. Apple doesn't need you anyways, and if you think by abandoning Apple over $130, well, rest assured you'll lose more than that amount of money going to the dark side. It's amazing that people will let Microsoft rape them for thousands of dollars, yet think Apple is bending them over because of $130.

 

[ksv]

I'm not upset about the 10.2/.Mac pricing, and no one should be. Apple did a mistake when they didn't offer ".Mac lite" or anything like that, but give them some time.

However, I am concerned about Apple in general, and how their strategies become more and more microsoft-ish. They charge for absolutely everything, and it doesn't lead to anything good for the customers. It's just so clear that Apple are losing profit on the hardware side and has to make it up with charging money for everything else.
It will probably only result in customers (especially users new to computers) not upgrading to the latest versions of Mac OS X. That's bad for both sides.

Apple has a serious problem, and they can't hide it.

 

[Snyper M]

As I haven't had to pay for any of my OS's yet, just got the computer last year. I'm fine with the educational cost of Jaguar. Seeing as I barely have a job it seems this summer a full priced 129$ would hurt a bit more, but in the whole scheme of things it's not a ton of money.

As for .Mac. I woudl really love to see a reduced pricing for email only as i'm sure many of you would. Most of us use that as our primary email and changing it now would be rather inconveninent. I wouldn't mind paying 10$ for email a year as I mean that seems to be practical, hell macosx.com is doing it and I may go that route.

Trtufhully at the very least I just want pop/web mail no need for imap. I'm sure apple could do this for free, or at least damn close. Or they could simply offer complimentary email redirection for current itool mail accounts. If they offered features I felt were worth the 100$ a year and that I could feasibly afford, then I'd waste not a moment in ordering it.

So in short we need a cheap mail only solution as it seems that's all most poepel are upset about, or at the very least a mail redirection service.

Just my thoughts.

 

[simX]

Originally posted by ElDiabloConCaca
Where are the threads about how kick-ass the new 20GB iPod is? Where's the threads about how bad-ass the iMac 17" is? Hell, Apple lowered prices on BOTH those things by about $100, yet the only thing that people find important is how they're going to have to SPEND about $100 to get Jaguar. I know it's the latest-and-greatest thing, and that's why I think Apple was justified in charging full-price for it.

ElDiablo: My thoughts exactly. See this thread.

 

[mit4]

As a fan of WinXP (but a bigger fan of OS X), I have to correct this:

I have no problem paying $129 for Jaguar. In light of the competition, that's a TINY fee. Look at upgrades for Windows -- they run much higher than that.

This is just false - Windows XP Home is $99 and you can get it for even cheaper in some places. XP Professional (only adds minor features like Remote Desktop which Apple sells as a separate $300 product) is $199.

Overall, I still think OS 10.2 is a better deal. But let's compare apples to apples when it comes to cost. And MSN is still free for the time being!

 

[hulkaros]

Originally posted by mit4
As a fan of WinXP (but a bigger fan of OS X), I have to correct this:



This is just false - Windows XP Home is $99 and you can get it for even cheaper in some places. XP Professional (only adds minor features like Remote Desktop which Apple sells as a separate $300 product) is $199.

Overall, I still think OS 10.2 is a better deal. But let's compare apples to apples when it comes to cost. And MSN is still free for the time being!

Yes, let's do compare apples to apples:
Windows XP Home costs $180
Windows XP Home Upgrade costs $85
Windows XP Pro costs $250
Windows XP Pro Upgrade costs $170

You are WRONG completely believing that XP Pro offers what Apple offers with Remote Desktop! You better check Remote Desktop offerings first and not just try to figure things out! Remote Desktop is a long story all by itself, one that we will leave it for another time, maybe

As for Mac OS X.2 (aka Jaguar) is closer to XP Pro in features and in some areas it surpass it, easily! There is no way that XP Home compares with Jaguar in features... Hell, it can't compare with XP Pro to begin with! So, if you want to compare REALLY apples to apples, Jaguar costs $40 less than XP Pro, so there!

As for MSN, surely you messed things up! You mean Hotmail is free and some of MSN services are free but they don't offer similar services to .Mac, yet! An example could be that EVERYTHING you pay for .Mac has one major advantage over currently MSN services: They tie-in with Jaguar or if you prefer are built-in... Another one is that you DO NOT see any ads, including Apple's whereareas you cannot say the same thing about MSN now, could you?

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Originally posted by ksv
They charge for absolutely everything, and it doesn't lead to anything good for the customers.

I think this is just wrong altogether. Apple does NOT charge for everything. In fact, they don't charge for the majority of their iApps, and haven't charged for email and backup space until now.

Apple may or may not be losing money, but it's unfair to accuse them of charging for things that should be free... you don't get to make that decision -- Apple does, and I think they've done a fine job of charging customers for the things that are worth paying for. And they don't charge a ridiculous amount of money, either -- in fact, it's relatively cheap. Hell, it's cheap even without being relative... or comparative. Apple's OS and .mac are just cheap, comparatively or not.

Don't want .mac? Don't buy it. But don't criticize Apple for giving it away for free for a long time then deciding to charge a NOMINAL fee for it ($100/year = $8.33/mo., however, it's $50 right now... $50 = $4.17/mo.). That's DIRT cheap. Jobs never said you'd get free email for life. You didn't sign any contracts that said you get it free for life. However, you DID agree that Apple could change the terms of your iTools subscription whenever they wanted. And they did. They did it in the best interest of the company and the customers. Everyone should have seen this coming... if you didn't, I'm sorry. What, would you rather Apple have raised prices on their desktop systems? Or laptops? Or howabout this: let's follow Microsoft's lead and charge $200 for an OS! Or impose ridiculous anti-piracy schemes that NO ONE likes so they can be sure they get paid for EVERY licensed copy of the OS out there! OR EVEN THIS -- LET'S REQUIRE USERS TO PURCHASE UPGRADES, EVEN IF THEIR CURRENT COPY WORKS JUST FINE!

It's cheap, it's cool, and it's useful. What's all the bitching about?

 

[gibbs]

simx- point read and understood. I can see why you feel that way.

I personally dont care much about .mac at all. I am dissapointed in one size fits all pricing scheme, because it is a classic example of bait and switch, whether you like the switch or not. Obviously a lot of people don't.

I only care about Jaguar, and the speed really. Almost everything else in OS X I already really appreciate.

 

[ksv]

Originally posted by ElDiabloConCaca


I think this is just wrong altogether. Apple does NOT charge for everything. In fact, they don't charge for the majority of their iApps, and haven't charged for email and backup space until now.

Apple may or may not be losing money, but it's unfair to accuse them of charging for things that should be free... you don't get to make that decision -- Apple does, and I think they've done a fine job of charging customers for the things that are worth paying for. And they don't charge a ridiculous amount of money, either -- in fact, it's relatively cheap. Hell, it's cheap even without being relative... or comparative. Apple's OS and .mac are just cheap, comparatively or not.

Don't want .mac? Don't buy it. But don't criticize Apple for giving it away for free for a long time then deciding to charge a NOMINAL fee for it ($100/year = $8.33/mo., however, it's $50 right now... $50 = $4.17/mo.). That's DIRT cheap. Jobs never said you'd get free email for life. You didn't sign any contracts that said you get it free for life. However, you DID agree that Apple could change the terms of your iTools subscription whenever they wanted. And they did. They did it in the best interest of the company and the customers. Everyone should have seen this coming... if you didn't, I'm sorry. What, would you rather Apple have raised prices on their desktop systems? Or laptops? Or howabout this: let's follow Microsoft's lead and charge $200 for an OS! Or impose ridiculous anti-piracy schemes that NO ONE likes so they can be sure they get paid for EVERY licensed copy of the OS out there! OR EVEN THIS -- LET'S REQUIRE USERS TO PURCHASE UPGRADES, EVEN IF THEIR CURRENT COPY WORKS JUST FINE!

It's cheap, it's cool, and it's useful. What's all the bitching about?

Personally I don't care because I'll get a free copy of 10.2 anyway, and I already have a better email account than the @mac.com one.
Yup, their prices are completely acceptable too, but for many users they aren't, and that's the point. Apple is losing custiomers on this. Many users (especially schools, universities, organizations and new users) will probably not update simply because it costs too much and becuase they don't see the worth of it.

I'm not presonally upset about the prices, just pointing out that what Apple is currently doing has to be done in an other way.
Just look at all the online petitions and the price per Apple share, and you'll see what I mean.

 

[simX]

Originally posted by ksv
Personally I don't care because I'll get a free copy of 10.2 anyway, and I already have a better email account than the @mac.com one.
Yup, their prices are completely acceptable too, but for many users they aren't, and that's the point. Apple is losing custiomers on this. Many users (especially schools, universities, organizations and new users) will probably not update simply because it costs too much and becuase they don't see the worth of it.

I'm not presonally upset about the prices, just pointing out that what Apple is currently doing has to be done in an other way.
Just look at all the online petitions and the price per Apple share, and you'll see what I mean.

While I won't delve into the discussion about whether or not Apple is losing customers for charging so much, and about the online petitions, I would like to point one thing out:

Apple's stock has never been one to follow normal rules. Jobs does a keynote at MacWorld, Apple's stock goes down. Apple releases awesome new products, it's stock goes down. It's weird but true. I think it's in part due to all the rumors that always fly around before a product expo, so people get their hopes up, get disappointed about Apple's product offerings (like the .Mac and Jaguar fees overshadowed the awesome features in Jaguar and .Mac, and I STILL don't see anyone raving about the new 17" iMac and new iPods) and so Apple's stock goes down.

Apple's stock price has nothing whatsoever to do with the state that it's in. Apple is in a great position right now with Mac OS X and their hardware offerings, and it's stock price just doesn't reveal that.