When OS X Leopard was released, my Mac was fortunately new enough to qualify for a special £5 upgrade, but the vast majority of users had to pay about $129. Snow Leopard was different; for an upgrade, Apple only charged about $30 (£25).

£25 for a piece of software, even one as important as an operating system, is much more realistic than a £100 pricetag. I think it is unreasonable to ask personal users for anything more than £60 or£70

High price tags force people to piracy, yet for many years companies like Apple and Microsoft continued using them. I suspect Adobe loses a small fortune over its £600 charge for Photoshop, because I imagine that most of their end-users actually acquired the software illegally. Adobe kindly charge students a discounted rate of only £150: how they expect a student to afford that amazes me.

High price tags force people to piracy.

I have no problems pay $10 or $20 for a decent piece of shareware, and I often buy bundles of discounted shareware, but I dislike being expected to pay a fortune for a commercially-developed program which has hundreds of features which I’ll never even need to use.

Microsoft try to offer users packages containing only software they’ll need, but this confuses many.

Only one package should be sold. That package should only include essential programs, with additional programs being sold individually if needed. Not only would this be beneficial to the average company, but would allow companies like Microsoft to accurately judge the popularity of software like OneNote based on the demand for it

The Apple iPhone was released today in the UK. I hadn’t got any hopes up as I knew how expensive the contract would be and I realised that the chances of unlocking an iPhone permanently are near zero due to the fact Apple fixes unlocks via. updates.

A good friend of mine was anticipating the iPhone launch but hadn’t been following developments of its release in the UK as much as myself. She didn’t know that including the contract, an iPhone would start at £900 (about US$1,900 or €1300) and whilst this does include 200 mins and 200 texts monthly for 18 months she thought it was still pretty costly.

It’s interesting how Apple Store UK fails to mention the contract on their homepage yet mentions a fairly generous pricetag of £269 and the phone’s 8GB of memory.

One of Apple’s key markets are students and teenagers who are surely unlikely to be able to afford to splash out a minimum of £35/month for a minimum of 18 months. I wonder what Apple’s motivations behind contracting their phones are… the consumer would no doubt be much happier if they were unlocked!

My friend realises that a price nearing £1000 isn’t worth it for any phone, regardless of how cool it is. When you add into this the fact that the iPhone lacks 3G it seems even more of a rip off…

I think it’s also worth noting how the British consumer is being charged more than Americans. The total cost for an American iPhone with a 2 year contract (entitling 450 mins and 200 texts) costs US$1900… a British contract for 18 months and less than half of that amount of minutes costs the same amount!

Apple need to remember who their market is, especially outside the land of freedom fries and other Americanisms, and not lose touch with the consumer by solely pursuing profits as they blatantly have done with the contracting of the iPhone. I won’t be getting an iPhone due to its hefty price tag in addition to its lack of 3G (whilst 3G isn’t widespread in the UK, it certainly can come in useful!).

Tags: apple, iphone, o2

Last week, I received my MacBook Pro (running OS X Leopard) and have ‘enjoyed’ setting it up over the past few days. Below are my initial thoughts, both positive and negative:

• iTunes is more tolerable than I thought it would be. Whilst it did frustrate me initially by copying all my music, I managed to find the setting which stops it copying all music into the iTunes music folder (preferences>advanced>detick ‘Copy files to iTunes music folder…’)
• The Apple remote is amazing for productivity. I can continue typing/clicking but skip through a song. I wish more non-Apple applications, such as VLC, supported it though.
• My major frustration is with Boot Camp. Unless I format it with the Windows installer (and not Boot Camp Assistant) I get Disk error. Press any key to restart and in fact pressing any key besides the power button renders no effect. Then, when i format it with the Windows installer (as either FAT or NTFS) it says that hal.dll is missing. If anyone could tell me how to fix this I would be eternally grateful! Oh, and I can’t get into recovery console as I’m using a streamlined OEM version of XP Home.
• Parallels Desktop is great… at least for everything besides 3D graphics. It doesn’t support DirectX 9.0 and consequently most 3D games won’t work. I find it laggy even trying to handle the pre-2000 Theme Hospital! It does integrate remarkably well with OS X, though, and I’ve set Publisher files to open in MS Office Publisher through Parallels.
• I’m extremely challenged when it comes down to choosing a graphics program. For several years, I’ve been a PSP guy but the main OS X graphics program seems to be Photoshop. I dislike the idea of paying several hundred pounds for a licence and decided to give Seashore a shot which to be honest I’m very disappointed with… and The Gimp 2.0 doesn’t like my MacBook Pro much!
• Time Machine is great – really great – but is fairly demanding on disk space having used nearly 50GB on my external partition… and that’s after excluding folders like Movies!
• I’m also very impressed with the degree in which Adium, Mail and the Address Book integrate. The OS X address book is so far beyond Windows’ Address Book I’m amazed. I’m actually using my Mac Address Book whilst I didn’t ever bother with the Windows one!
• iDVD is very impressive and puts Nero 7.0 to shame. It did, however, take several hours to encode a 100 minute long film.
• I’m fairy disappointed with the DVD drive. The lack of a hardware eject button makes some situations hell and I find OS X is very fussy with optical media. Roxio Toast refused to write much onto some dual-layer DVDs I bought from eBuyer.
• Mac games are very expensive! Sims 2 for Mac costs about £30 whilst the PC version costs £10… hence my desperation to get Boot Camp functioning!
• Installing software is splendidly easy… twice as easy as installing software in Windows and infinite easier than under Linux.
• Skype seems buggy, refusing to open on the first boot after its installation (resulting in many reinstallations of it).
• Stacks and Exposè are awesome!
• I love the compose key (⌥)which allows me to easily add accented letters and other foreign/obscure characters. Ubuntu had a similar feature and both are about equally as efficient.
• The ambient keyboard provides hours of endless fun by covering up the sensors and watching the keyboard light up. The sensors are in the speakers
• Despite what most people say, Firefox runs smoothly
• Transmission is the coolest torrent client ever… beating μTorrent by far!
• Photobooth is cool too. I like the ‘flash’ it generates by making the screen go white for a short burst of time!
• The ease to add podcasts into iTunes has finally got me listening/watching them!
• Mail produces a lot of false positives for spam.

If someone could help me with my Boot Camp problem and my DVD writer one I would be REALLY grateful. Just comment or email me at computerjoe@gmail.com .

Tags: apple, os x, leopard