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1. #COST OF UPDATE OS X ON MAC MAC OS X#
2. #COST OF UPDATE OS X ON MAC UPGRADE#
3. #COST OF UPDATE OS X ON MAC ANDROID#
4. #COST OF UPDATE OS X ON MAC SOFTWARE#

It recently acquired phone maker Nokia and sells its own tablets. Yes, even Microsoft is moving towards the vertical stack.

#COST OF UPDATE OS X ON MAC SOFTWARE#

Free hardware is difficult to pull off, so software gets the nod: buy our hardware, get our software for free." Given the proven magic of ‘free’ in the minds of consumers, it's better to put all the profit in a single basket. "A company that makes both the hardware and the software for a device can choose where to put its profit margins. "The $0 price is linked to the trend towards vertical integration," says programmer and longtime OS X watcher John Siracusa. A company that makes both the hardware and the software for a device can choose where to put its profit margins' >'The $0 Mavericks price is linked to the trend towards vertical integration. Apple's iPhone profits come from hardware and service sales, not the OS. Google, for example, subsidizes its mobile OS by selling online ads, and, in theory at least, by selling Motorola-branded hardware. In the rapidly developing smartphone and tablet markets, tightly-coupled stacks are once again dominant, so OS makers can subsidize their operating systems with profit from the products integrated into them.

#COST OF UPDATE OS X ON MAC ANDROID#

Phone and tablet makers can load Android on their devices for free. Like Microsoft, Google supplies operating systems to outside hardware makers, but unlike Microsoft, it doesn't charge them for the software. Upgrades to Apple's iOS platform - which powers the company's iPads tablets and iPhones - have long been free, as have new versions of Google’s Android mobile OS. Smartphones and tablets have left traditional computers in the dust, and their operating systems and apps are overwhelmingly free. Part of what's going on here is that the low-cost mobile ecosystem has changed the way people think about operating system software.

>As the mobile world takes off, it's only natural that the desktop and laptop world would move towards the free model as well

#COST OF UPDATE OS X ON MAC UPGRADE#

And just last week, Microsoft announced that, much like Apple, it would not charge consumers who upgrade their machines to the latest version of Windows, version 8.1. Microsoft - the king of the operating system in the '80s and '90s and on into the aughts - still charges PC makers who sell the Windows OS preloaded on their desktop and laptop machines, but that business is shrinking, thanks in large part to the continued success of Apple. After four releases that cost $129, Apple dropped the operating system’s upgrade price to $29 with 2009’s OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and then to $19 with last year’s OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

#COST OF UPDATE OS X ON MAC MAC OS X#

Prices of Apple's Mac OS X have long been on the wane. Now, as Apple just confirmed, the prices of OS licenses are headed towards zilch. Eighteen years ago, the tech industry's dominant company made nearly half its revenue selling OS licenses.

The desktop operating system is dead as a major profit center, and Apple just delivered the obituary.Īmid a slew of incremental improvements to its iPad tablets and MacBook laptops, Apple today announced some landmark news about its oldest surviving operating system: It will not charge for the latest big upgrade, Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks, breaking from a tradition that goes back 16 years and shining a light on a long-unfolding reversal in how tech profits are made.