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You paid for the hardware and the OS that shipped with it. Developing a new OS version costs Apple non trivial amounts of money - development, deployment, testi

You paid for the hardware and the OS that shipped with it. Developing a new OS version costs Apple non trivial amounts of money - development, deployment, testing, bandwidth, support etc. and they used to charge for them up until just a few years ago. Something's got to fund it - things like pushing more of Apple's online services, gathering user data etc provide some ROI to Apple.

geofft 11y ago
You might be paying for the hardware and two or three OS versions. It's in Apple's interest to keep everyone upgrading, so they might as well just put the average expected OS upgrade cost into the hardware, and rely on planned obsolescence (which is pretty easy as computer hardware keeps improving) to keep that expectation relatively low. Sure, a few users will upgrade hardware all the time and a few will never upgrade, but that doesn't throw off the economics too much. (I also feel like analyzing specific pricing decisions is missing the forest for the trees of "If you're not paying for it, you're the product." It mostly applies to whether an entire business model is free, e.g. Facebook. Several years back, Microsoft used to give out free memory-card-to-USB adapters for the original Xbox, intended for keyboards for MMORPGs, but also useful for jailbreakers. I requested one. Did I become the product?)
manicdee 11y ago
Are you intentionally ignoring the fact that Apple rakes in 95% of profits in the mobile sector? Each thousand dollar phone is making many times its manufacturing costs in profits. I expect that there is a large enough margin on phones sold to fully fund R&D not just for iPhones and iOS but the Apple Car, its OS and battery technology, and whatever other projects are in the works. Apple makes their money selling premium ITC. They don't need to sell your personal details.
mahyarm 11y ago
They have to improve their products continuously to be competitive in the marketplace. Apple's competitive advantage is fundamentally in their software, not their hardware. They innovate in the hardware space and physical design space, but all of their competitors will make copies of their hardware advantages after a few years. To keep on being competitive, their entire experience has to be superior. And what is harder to copy properly is the software experience. Engineering cost wise, it's cheaper to just keep the software train rolling than to have older versions persisting that you have to continuously support. That is why they don't charge for it, because it's cheaper for them if you upgrade sooner and become part of the marginal few they can ignore if your a straggler. And 'free' has far higher adoption rates than even $1.00.

geofft 11y ago

You might be paying for the hardware and two or three OS versions. It's in Apple's interest to keep everyone upgrading, so they might as well just put the average expected OS upgrade cost into the hardware, and rely on planned obsolescence (which is pretty easy as computer hardware keeps improving) to keep that expectation relatively low. Sure, a few users will upgrade hardware all the time and a few will never upgrade, but that doesn't throw off the economics too much. (I also feel like analyzing specific pricing decisions is missing the forest for the trees of "If you're not paying for it, you're the product." It mostly applies to whether an entire business model is free, e.g. Facebook. Several years back, Microsoft used to give out free memory-card-to-USB adapters for the original Xbox, intended for keyboards for MMORPGs, but also useful for jailbreakers. I requested one. Did I become the product?)

manicdee 11y ago

Are you intentionally ignoring the fact that Apple rakes in 95% of profits in the mobile sector? Each thousand dollar phone is making many times its manufacturing costs in profits. I expect that there is a large enough margin on phones sold to fully fund R&D not just for iPhones and iOS but the Apple Car, its OS and battery technology, and whatever other projects are in the works. Apple makes their money selling premium ITC. They don't need to sell your personal details.

mahyarm 11y ago

They have to improve their products continuously to be competitive in the marketplace. Apple's competitive advantage is fundamentally in their software, not their hardware. They innovate in the hardware space and physical design space, but all of their competitors will make copies of their hardware advantages after a few years. To keep on being competitive, their entire experience has to be superior. And what is harder to copy properly is the software experience. Engineering cost wise, it's cheaper to just keep the software train rolling than to have older versions persisting that you have to continuously support. That is why they don't charge for it, because it's cheaper for them if you upgrade sooner and become part of the marginal few they can ignore if your a straggler. And 'free' has far higher adoption rates than even $1.00.