Tim Flight

Seems like it was just a few months ago I purchased iWork and iLife ‘05. (Oh wait, it was). And now somehow I feel compelled to spend another $80 for each of those packages to get the new updates. Here is what I think about it.

.Mac
I’m resigned to the fact that .Mac costs $100 per year. I don’t use much of it, I do have a .mac email address but it isn’t critical for me. The iDisk is nice, but I’ve got plenty of remote storage elsewhere I could use. I don’t think I’ve ever used the webmail service, nor the web addressbook, nor any of the bookmark sync services. I published some photos to a webpage once a couple years ago, but have not otherwise used the homepage stuff. The discounted Version Tracker Pro subscription was nice though.

iLife
Some of the new iLife features look interesting. In iPhoto I have used the book feature before so the updated templates could be nice. The new editing tools might save me a trip to Photoshop. I rarely do any work in iMovie. iDVD burning directly to my external DVD burner would be handy, but you can already burn to an image and then burn that image to an external burner. So the one iDVD project I make per year isn’t really worth the time.

GarageBand has been opened once or twice on my computer. While I could try to get into Podcasting, most of my blogs probably are not suited well for it. Who knows, maybe i’ll start podcasting to “stay ahead”. The only reason I may purchase iLife 06 is because of the number of friends I have that will be getting it that will be asking me for help with it.

iWork
Pages looks like a great application. I purchased iWork last year and opened Pages once. If if ever needed to make a flyer I’d use Pages. But I never need to do anything the app is great for.

Some of the new features in Keynote look great, but I never give presentations anymore. I’d use it for the new graphs.

Mac OS X
I’m glad Apple has slowed down the “one major OS release per year” phase so now we can plan on spending about $130 every 18-24 months. I can live with that.

QuickTime Pro
Yup, I just had to have the full screen view from directly within QuickTime Player. $30.

So now here is my annual Apple budget.

• iLife - $80
• iWork - $80
• .Mac - $100
• OS X - $87 (130/1.5)
• QT Pro - $30

Suggestion:

Only Apple could possibly convince me to spend #377 on software every year…. Software I already own but just want the upgrades. Don’t get me wrong, the software is great and nobody is forcing me to purchase it. But throw me a bone.

At least with OS X Server you can purchase maintenance packages that allow you all of the upgrades for three years at a discounted price. Couldn’t Apple offer a similar package for consumers?

Here is my suggestion, not that Apple is listening. Offer a package called .Mac Pro. $199 annually. With it you receive all of the regular .Mac stuff plus any updates to iWork, any updates to iLife, QuickTime Pro, and throw in ProCare too.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 19th, 2006 at 10:50 pm and is filed under Computer Technology. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.