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Except that's not true anymore: "Apple has for the first time made this full iOS upgrade free to all of its iPod touch customers, rather than charging the cust

Except that's not true anymore: "Apple has for the first time made this full iOS upgrade free to all of its iPod touch customers, rather than charging the customary $10 fee that provoked groans in the past." (http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/reviews/entry/apple-ios-4.0-formerly-iphone-os-4.0/ http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/reviews/entry/apple-ios-4.0...) This leads me to believe that the whole accounting rules canard was just a way to make more money. Why did they start charging for XCode? Because you'll pay it.

raganwald 16y ago
I wouldn't be so quick to call it an accounting rules canard, there was a ton of analysis of the rule when the iPod Touch upgrade fee was first announced and there was very little doubt this was the case. And while I can be critical of Apple policies, I stop well short of suggesting that they would lie about an accounting rule. That's the kind of thing that gets people sent to jail, and certainly Microsoft would have held a press conference the next day explaining that Apple was lying. That being said, they haven't said that the XCode charge is a subscription accounting thing, so there's certainly no logical reason why you may not be correct in saying that they are charging for XCode because they can. I'm guessing otherwise, but this is armchair speculation. UPDATE: I was wrong about subscription-based accounting affecting how Apple accounts for expenses. Here's a link I found: http://www.macrumors.com/2009/09/23/standards-board-approves-changes-to-subscription-revenue-accounting/ http://www.macrumors.com/2009/09/23/standards-board-approves...
- hyperbovine 16y ago
  So said accounting rule changed then? Honest question. And in any case, if that were really true, why not charge a penny? Or the download cost? I don't buy it.
  - masklinn 16y ago
    > So said accounting rule changed then? Or Apple's accountants changed. They seem to be very strange people, and I say that in a bad way. > And in any case, if that were really true, why not charge a penny? Or the download cost? I don't buy it. If they think they need to charge for Xcode 4, they probably think amounts under that would be seen as non-compliant. Facetime was $.99 and shipped with new macs.
tedunangst 16y ago
Maybe iOS 4 doesn't offer new functionality? Where functionality is defined as "whatever the law says we have to charge people for"? The law is not particularly concerned with whether the major version number or the minor version number changed. It's all about what features changed.

raganwald 16y ago

I wouldn't be so quick to call it an accounting rules canard, there was a ton of analysis of the rule when the iPod Touch upgrade fee was first announced and there was very little doubt this was the case. And while I can be critical of Apple policies, I stop well short of suggesting that they would lie about an accounting rule. That's the kind of thing that gets people sent to jail, and certainly Microsoft would have held a press conference the next day explaining that Apple was lying. That being said, they haven't said that the XCode charge is a subscription accounting thing, so there's certainly no logical reason why you may not be correct in saying that they are charging for XCode because they can. I'm guessing otherwise, but this is armchair speculation. UPDATE: I was wrong about subscription-based accounting affecting how Apple accounts for expenses. Here's a link I found: http://www.macrumors.com/2009/09/23/standards-board-approves-changes-to-subscription-revenue-accounting/ http://www.macrumors.com/2009/09/23/standards-board-approves...

hyperbovine 16y ago
So said accounting rule changed then? Honest question. And in any case, if that were really true, why not charge a penny? Or the download cost? I don't buy it.
- masklinn 16y ago
  > So said accounting rule changed then? Or Apple's accountants changed. They seem to be very strange people, and I say that in a bad way. > And in any case, if that were really true, why not charge a penny? Or the download cost? I don't buy it. If they think they need to charge for Xcode 4, they probably think amounts under that would be seen as non-compliant. Facetime was $.99 and shipped with new macs.

tedunangst 16y ago

Maybe iOS 4 doesn't offer new functionality? Where functionality is defined as "whatever the law says we have to charge people for"? The law is not particularly concerned with whether the major version number or the minor version number changed. It's all about what features changed.