Apple to charge iPod Touch owners for new OS - again
Can you spare $10 for a cup of Cocoa?
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WWDC Apple will release version 2.0 of the iPhone operating system in early July, CEO Steve Jobs has revealed. Existing iPhone owners will get it for free - iPod Touch owners, however, will have to cough up $10.
iPhone 2.0 offers the ability to view and edit iWork documents - files from Apple's own Pages, Numbers and Keynote apps. More users, we suspect, will make use of the upcoming OS' ability to handle Office documents.
In addition, the new system software will revamp the IPhone calculator, adding a scientific mode that's activated by turning the device on its side. Pictures found on the web or sent by email can be saved - though the new iPhone OS' parental controls will ensure junior's not downloading images his folks would rathe he didn't see.
Messages can be moved into folders and deleted in groups. Contacts can - at last - be searched.
Jobs also heralded "fantastic" support for Asian languages, now with character recognition.
You can add the new AppStore to the list, and support for MobileMe, Apple's revamped .Mac online service now extended to the iPhone and Windows as well as the Mac, and given a BlackBerry-style push component.
All good stuff, but what has Apple left out? Glimpses into the OS afforded by the iPhone software development kit (SDK) suggest there's still no Copy and Paste, support for MMS and video recording.
Still, Touch owners aggrieved by the $10 upgrade charge may feel happier knowing that the update costs half of what the last one did but delivers more.
But you have to ask, is Apple really so ungenerous it can't take $10 on the chin? Especially, when it can afford to give the upgrade to iPhone owners for nowt.
COMMENTS
will post-11/7/2008 iTouch owners pay too?
I'm getting a 32GB iPod Touch when I go to the USA on 3 July (I'll probably wait until my last few days before I purchase it - more like on 23 July).
Given that the new software update (with the additional apps etc.) will happen on 11 July in line with the 3G iPhone launch, am I right in thinking new iPod Touch owners (ie. people who purchase post-11/7/2008) won't need to pay the $9.95 to download the new software?
It is all a scam
Apple are hiding behind this "Accounting" reason to charge touch owners for the upgrade.
Note, if they have to charge for the updates then:
1) Why do Iphone users get them for free????
2) Why do NO other company that I have come across charge either (Microsoft adds new features the whole time e.g. IE7 tabbed browsing etc but don't charge)
This is a money making racket, I for one did not upgrade the last time and probably won't this time.
W.
@Ben
Apart from being rude, you are partially right about both points you made.
The thing is, though, that the product had shipped with quite a few simple and essential features missing or crippled. It WAS natural to assume that those features would be added later via updates, just like it happened with other products from other companies (the several times mentioned Zune, for example). So people bought the (not that cheap) devices believing that they would get that stuff some day and Apple did nothing to say that they were wrong or that they would have to pay extra to be able to search through their contacts (in my opinion, it can be argued that the product WAS shipped unfinished even though Apple charged full price). So there are grounds for displeasure.
Also, reading this may easily make one never want to purchace an Apple product, and those people have full right to express themselves.
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