02/08/2008, 9:50am, EST
Friday, February 8th
Analyst: Accountancy to blame for Touch fee
The $20 fee charged for the complete iPod touch upgrade is a necessary evil of accounting, claims financial analyst Charles Wolf of Needham and Company. The upgrade brought with it applications already on the iPhone, such as Mail, Maps and Weather, prompting many to wonder why Apple would charge for something that would be so easy to put on the Touch, particularly given Apple's history of releasing free updates.
The free version of the v1.1.3 software, which mainly improves security, even contains the extra apps as a part of its 165MB download. But, says Wolf, "It's an accounting requirement that if you upgrade a device that's not on a subscription, you have to charge." This is why the iPhone's enhancements have all been free, and why forthcoming Apple TV ones will be as well -- although any fees for the device are one-time only, it has been classified as a subscription product under SEC filings. No such classification has been made for iPods.
The Touch fee also has a precedent in the form of another software update, which permitted Macs to connect with Apple's 802.11n base stations. That upgrade only cost $2 however, and it is not clear why the company would have to charge a full $20 for changes to the Touch. Analyst Ross Rubin of NPD suspects that it may be a means of recovering the costs of developing the software in the first place. "Think of it like iLife," says Rubin. "It's free if you buy a new Mac, but if you already own a Mac, you have to pay for an upgrade."
Filed under: iPod, Investor, Apple
Other story tags: iPod touch
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And this is why Apple won't be adding (at least for free) in Time Machine backup to an AEBS (even though they said it would work in the leopard advertising), because they'll have to charge for it.
And where is the line drawn on these things? Would Apple have to charge for adding any extra feature to it's OS? Wouldn't even the simplest thing, like adding support for some RAW image format, be upgrading the capabilities of both the OS and your mac, and thus requires a fee?
Hell, isn't even updating iWork or iLife to work on Leopard adding capabilities to the software that wasn't present beforehand?
For instance, Apple could charge a dollar.
Bartman
- Apple could add Time Machine support to AEBS, not because it was claimed to be there, but because the failure to work with AEBS can be classified as a bug, more than anything else. Either way, they won't, most likely. The direct attached drive of Time Capsule is a better solution.
- Why aren't they charging $1, or $2 for the new features? There's something called 'perceived value'. You'll learn about it when you start leaving your mom's basement.
2. It's not iLife. It's an iPod. It would be like comparing Tang to and Orange.
3. The term "necessary evil of accounting" is neither necessary nor accounting.