The Cost of Apple Discipleship

2007 is going to be a good year for Apple. A very good year. Apple in 2007 will ask you to dip into your pocket a bit more than usual. Do you get your money’s worth from Apple products?

Apple Protection Plan
Most people would rather pay a premium and get a higher quality product. Generally they assume higher quality equals longer life. One of the big disappointments in life is paying for quality but getting crap. It does create a feeling of getting stooged.

Apple has something called the AppleCare Protection Plan - a fancy name for a three year warranty. I’m always cynical when I see extended warranties. If the product is good enough, why only give it a twelve month warranty? Why not give it a three year warranty outright? Looks a bit like profiteering from where I sit. Otherwise it’s an admission that the product won’t last three years without failure of some sort. Why spend good money on a computer that the vendor is betting will be having problems by three years of age? If you’re going to have trouble anyway, why not just buy a cheap computer? No wonder people choose cheap PCs over Macs.

iPod shuffle
Excuse my cynicism, but has Apple managed things nicely to make you replace your shuffle every year or so? The battery in the white iPod shuffle is not replaceable. Ours has conked out after a little over a year. Apple recognize this fault and will replace your iPod shuffle if this happens - for a small service fee that is so close to the cost of a new shuffle it’s not worth it.

On this one hopefully Apple’s acknowledgment of the problem means batteries in subsequent shuffles will have a much longer life. But I won’t hold my breath. After all, in an interview with NBC, Steve didn’t seem at all concerned about the idea of people buying a new iPod every year, saying “You know, you keep on innovating, you keep on making better stuff. And if you always want the latest and greatest, then you have to buy a new iPod at least once a year.” Try as I might, I can’t read anywhere between the lines that that bothers him.

Leopard
What do you think Leopard will cost? US$129? Probably. It will have been two years since you bought Tiger so you wont mind, will you? Until you discover you’ve got to fork out more than that again to take advantage of its new features, in particular Time Machine. Time Machine will require a separate disk or volume. Some people will already have a second hard drive but many others will find themselves having to fork out $100 or more for a new one.

Also, if you want to take advantage of Boot Camp and run Windows, that could cost you another $199 or more.

.Mac
I personally think .Mac is worth having. A lot of people talk about how they can get the same services elsewhere (although I haven’t heard of any that will sync your Keychain), but it’s the all-in-one convenience of .Mac that keeps me coming back.

However, I do agree that it’s no longer justifiable to charge for it. Maybe the first time, but an annual subscription is just milking us.

iWork and iLife
Add these two to your annual cost of Mac ownership. Although they are optional and I didn’t upgrade to iWork ‘06 because there were insufficient features in the new version to justify it - which in itself raises the question about being charged for it.

So what could it cost to own a Mac in 2007 (in US dollars)?
- Leopard: $129
- External HDD: $100
- Windows XP Home: $199
- iWork 07: $79
- iLife 07: $79
- .Mac: $100

That totals $686 and of that, Apple will be pocketing $387.

Apple makes great products (that should come with three year warrantees), but it does stretch the budget and friendship when it so regularly cajoles the loyal customer into forking out their hard earned for yet another “necessity”.

Some people will argue it’s optional, and so it is, but that doesn’t and shouldn’t justify it. Although some years more than others, the cost of discipleship is often too high.