Looks like Apple's pushing...

[Trip]

I want your thoughts on this. Within the past 3 months we've had quite a few releases of new products from Apple. Sure they're great news for all mac lovers! But is what Apple doing really for the fans? Or is it moreover for the company?

My personal opinion is Apple is probably trying to please the mac world and also get new users introduced to the Mac by all of these new machine/software releases. But i think for some reason their doing it in a way that makes them look money hungry.

Just my 2 1/2 cents.

 

[sjb2016]

As you said, I like the fact that Apple is updating its products regularly as well as introducing new software. However, I have to disagree with the money grubbing criticism. If they were just grubbing money, they would certainly not be adding features to hardware and then lowering the prices on said hardware (see iMacs and Powermacs). Also, consumer software like iLife can be downloaded for free (except for iDVD) and this certainly isn't a way to make money. Apple has to pay for the bandwidth I'm using to download. Just my thoughts. Interesting question though.

 

[symphonix]

Apple are doing the best they can for their customers: driving technology forward, improving their products, and trying to give us more choice for software. They offer most of their consumer software for free, and they are working on creating lower-cost alternatives to some of tehir high-end professional software, such as Final Cut Express.
Unlike certain other companies (such as Microsoft), they have never entertained the idea of paying a subscription for software. And they always make sure that every Mac sold comes with all the software that it is ever likely to need, so nobody should be forced to go out and buy more software unless they need it for very specific tasks.
In the case of .Mac, Apple simply found that they could not set their price point much lower than $99US p.a., so they decided instead to provide subscribers with more capacity and more features to add value to the service.
The iLife apps remain free, except for iDVD, and paying such a small price to allow DVD-Authoring is not unreasonable, especially since all the SuperDrive macs came with iDVD anyway.

Only by making their products better can Apple keep its customers happy. I think they've struck a very good balance between what they provide and what they charge for it, and nobody is forced to buy anything unless they want to. If your SuperDrive mac came with 10.1, it will still do everything it was designed to do without spending any more money.

 

[JetwingX]

i don't understand the poll