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 th

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...