I think Apple is justified in charging for Jaguar as a full upgrade. OS 10.1 was just a fix to the buggy original release of OS X. Apple should have named Jaguar OS 10.5. Apple has put a huge amount of resources into the development of this software and will be including iSync and iCal at no additional cost. It really seems like a full upgrade to this fledgling OS, not unlike the jump from 8 to 8.5 or 9 to 9.5. I think this will be the first really mature build and it really shows how much potential the new operating system has for future growth. People hurt the most by this are those who purchased X, but still boot into OS 9.
I think .mac is a huge mistake. Apple will loose much more than half of its iTools users. The short notice puts a lot of people on the spot who will need to migrate to a new email address. Two and a half months is not enough time. This will be a major inconvenience for Apple?s customers. Most people just use iTools for the email address and Apple should acknowledge this and offer a stripped down version with just email to hang on to these folks and not antagonize them. It is not clear to me how a family with four iTools accounts could retain all four email addresses and set up a single .mac account for $130 that includes the whole family. It does not seem possible to retain the original email addresses, the way the transition is structured. I can?t believe that they did not think this out before the announcement. This will be a big mistake in the long run, even if it adds to the revenue stream come September.
