This post is about shedding some light about the fallacy about another Mac ad and the cost of upgrading to Snow Leopard. I will go over the how the $29 upgrade works and show you it’s really Apple who is trying to hide behind the EULA and NOT Microsoft. I will also try and show the “real” comparison of Windows 7 upgrade vs the Mac Os X upgrade cost.
In one of its brilliant “I’m a Mac” ads recently, Apple lampooned the complexity of Microsoft Windows with a dizzying display of fine print that eventually filled up the screen and covered up both characters.
I thought of that ad when I saw Apple’s recent announcement that it was going to make its next Mac OS X upgrade, Snow Leopard, available as a $29 upgrade. That sounds so much better than the broad range of prices that Microsoft is going to charge its customers for Windows 7 upgrades. Too bad the $29 upgrade is not that simple. In fact, according to my analysis of Apple’s own sales figures, 57% of Apple’s customers who bought and paid for new Macs in the past five years are ineligible for those cheap upgrades.
That hasn’t stopped casual observers and even some seasoned analysts from falling for Apple’s ruse. Michael Gartenberg, for example, issued this critique in response to Microsoft’s announcement of Windows 7 pricing:
Apple showed the way. Snow Leopard is also not [a] major update but rather an enhanced version of Leopard. With an upgrade price of $29, that’s about where MSFT should be for the Home Premium version of 7…
Yes, $29 for an OS upgrade sounds like a great deal, if you qualify. But do you? I looked at the fine print for this offer, and was shocked—shocked, I tell you—to discover that the majority of Mac owners don’t qualify for that pricing. In fact, a significant number of Mac owners won’t be able to upgrade to Snow Leopard at any price.
According to Microsoft, roughly 90% of Windows users purchase the operating system preinstalled with a new PC. And if you ignore the Hackintosh crowd, 100% of Mac owners purchase OS X with a new Mac. Any PC purchased with Windows XP or Windows Vista since October 2001 qualifies for a discounted upgrade to Windows 7, for a price as low as $50. But only a select group of Mac owners qualify for those $29 upgrades. A large number will have to pay $169 for the privilege of installing Snow Leopard, and another large group of Apple customers won’t be able to install Snow Leopard at all.
So where do you stand? Find the date when you bought a new PC or Mac and look in the table below. The Windows 7 numbers represent the cost of a Home Premium upgrade, which will be available for the next two weeks for $50 and then will be set at an estimated retail price of $120 after the OS ships on October 22. The upgrade cost is $0 from June 26, 2009 to January 31, 2010, thanks to Microsoft’s Windows 7 Upgrade Option program.
| PC/Mac purchase date | Windows 7 upgrade cost | Snow Leopard upgrade cost |
| October 2001 – Jan 2006 | $50 – $120 |
Not supported |
| Jan 2006 – Sep 2007 | $50 – $120 | $158-169 (Intel only) |
| Jun 2009 or later | $0 | $0 |
Both Microsoft and Apple have announced technology guarantee programs for new PCs or Macs ordered before the new OS comes out. The Mac program starts on June 8, Microsoft’s program on June 26.
Apple’s core market for the $29 upgrade is its most loyal group of hardware buyers, who’ve already paid their “Apple tax” at the highest marginal rate. You qualify for that $29 upgrade price if you are one of the 15 million or so people who spent $1000 or more for a new Mac in the past 21 months. (Yes, I’m leaving out the Mac Mini, which sells for under a grand but represents a minuscule fraction of Apple’s sales—less than 7% according to one analyst’s rough estimate.) Any Mac purchased after October 1, 2007 satisfies the upgrade criteria: an Intel-based system running Mac OS X version 10.5 (Leopard).
That leaves out a huge number of Apple’s customers.
From January 2006 through September 2007, according to Apple’s financial reports, 11.1 million people purchased new Macs. All of them came with OS X Tiger installed. If you paid Apple $129 for a copy of Leopard at some point along the way and your system has an Intel processor, you qualify for the right to pay Apple an extra $29, making your total upgrade cost $158. If you own one of those 2006-2007 PCs and are still running Tiger, the upgrade to Snow Leopard will cost you $169, which is the price of the Mac Box Set.
If you purchased a new Mac before January 9, 2006, you can’t upgrade to Snow Leopard at any price. That’s because systems built before that date were based on the PowerPC processor, which is not supported by Snow Leopard. According to Apple’s own numbers, more than 8.2 million customers bought Macs in 2004 and 2005. All are now officially orphaned by Apple. And that number understates the true count. Apple didn’t complete its transition to the Intel platform until August 2006, and its likely that some older PowerPC-based machines were still in the sales channel in early 2007.
Apple has been selling its OS upgrades for $129 since the introduction of OS X in 2001. Microsoft has been similarly consistent with its pricing throughout Windows’ lifespan. If Windows 7 didn’t exist, how much would Apple be selling Snow Leopard for? (Hint: The correct answer has three digits.)
Apple’s $29 pricing decision is a clever one. They’re counting on gullible reporters and analysts to make oversimplified comparisons with Windows 7, and they’re hoping to goad Ballmer and Company into reacting with a slashed price of their own. If Microsoft is smart, they won’t take the bait.
Zahnster says
The problem with this article is you’re comparing the Windows 7 upgrade to the Snow Leopard upgrade like they’re similar, but the reality is they’re very different things.
The only reason that Windows is releasing it’s version 7 for a lower price is because their previous OS sucked. Nobody would spend a dime on Vista, and Microsoft has to make up to it’s customers in a big way. The pricing plan for them is simply an apology to the community.
On the other hand, Snow Leopard is a OS level upgrade (64 bit for everyone!) to an already solid operating system. I don’t know where you’re getting your facts from about OS stats, but I find it doubtful that the “majority” of OS X users aren’t on Leopard.
The rest of your article is typical “macs are expensive” crying. Yes, they are, they are specialized computers with a specialized purpose. They are designed for professional computer users, people who earn their livings through their computer and have the money to spend on keeping their systems up to date and powerful (you have to spend money to make money). I’m a Mac user in the web development industry, and I don’t think I have one friend who is still running with a PowerPC. In fact, I don’t know anyone running 10.4 either. Everyone’s on 10.5, and thus eligible for the $29 upgrade.
I will agree that the $29 upgrade price is a bit deceiving, and I do thank you for pointing out the deceptive marketing behind it (I’m not here to claim Apple is perfect), I only wish you had reported on that without getting all whiney about the Apple upgrade structure.
Jared Heinrichs says
It’s nice of all to see that you work for apple so obviously this post might hurt you more than other. Take from your website (Currently, you can find me working on a remote contract for a certain fruit logo’d company headquartered in Cupertino, CA)
As you said yourself the price of $29 is deceiving. That was the purpose of the article. I wasn’t the one that made the I’m a Mac commercial and said that the Windows 7 pricing was deceiving. I don’t think that their prices are deceiving so I wrote this article. I just like to let people know “the real” apple. Everything apple does (unless it is to announce a new product) is deceiving.
Did you know just before Steve Jobs got sick again Apple quietly put on their website that they recommended that you install an antivirus program. Then the news broke about Jobs health and they took it down because they feared bad publicity.
The fact that Apple rarely admits to security vulnerabilities until they have them patched is just shady. The only thing in recent memory they were up front about was the whole “nvidia chipset bug” that was plaguing most laptops that were built with it. (Actually to apple’s defense they were the 2nd computer manufacturer to extend the warranty of any product that could be affected. Sony was the worst culprit)
I am just sick of the I’m a Mac commercials and its deceptive ways. The post was just to “poke” apple like it was poking the PC. Did you know there was someone that was able to http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/windows-7-runs-on-a-pentium-ii-with-96mb-ram-20090622/“> install Windows 7 on a Pentium 2.
Again the strong point with Microsoft OS’s is freedom to do what you want and not be tied down by an iron clad fist known as apple.
I also have to disagree with you on Vista. Other then not running well on older hardware the system runs fine for the most part. I’m a network admin over 1000 computers. The statistics from our call logs indicated that the Windows Vista machines had never gotten spyware or viruses. The end users were also able to find things much easier because of the built in search.
As for myself I can’t wait for the official release of Windows 7. I am already running it on two machines and they have never run better. In fact an apple fanatic at work was so sure that Photoshop would runs better on his Mac then my laptop that he bet me. Boot times of Photoshop were much faster. Once the program had been opened on the Windows machine that gap between the Mac and the PC increased two fold.
For me the killer feature for business in Windows 7 is XP Mode and more importantly their VPN anywhere technology where you are connected to the office where ever you have an port 80 internet connection. No worrying about PPTP or other technology that might be blocked by some coffee shop router etc. When apple starts looking after the enterprise needs I might look at products a bit more favorably.
Got to say I love the websites you’ve made. I’m going to see the Blueman group up in Winnipeg in Oct.