Apple Now Selling OS X Lion on $69 USB Stick

As usual a bit overpriced, but the idea is worth exploring IMO.

Well, coming from Jane, I can forgive this piece of news right here .

$69? Pretty kinky.

Hmmm. $40 for a piece of plastic that costs $7? I'm not shure it's a good deal.

It is totally worthy, it has Steve Jobs signature on it.
/sarcasm

@gti88 - last time I checked companies are in business to make money. How about Apple sends the digital file to you and you go ahead the copy them to a USB stick and sell it back for $36.00. I am sure your time is not worth anything, I am sure your storage to store the products come for free and I am sure the electricity and shipping costs are all free for you too.

And if you missed that last part, Apple will allow you to bring your computer to the store and download it from them for no additional cost.

compared to any of the $100+ windows 7 installs i don't know how much we can really complain....

hm.....remind we why there's no DVD version of this again
*sarcasm*

except that Apple releases "UPDATES" every year while a MS OS will last at least 5+ years ... sometimes 10. Look at XP.

or are you too stupid to understand this ?

Another revolutionary magical product made with magic powder from Apple !

Paid about $170 for Windows 7 ultimate, but saved a lot more not buying an overpriced pos at an apple store.

My guess is that they want to prevent users from buying the USB version once and passing it around to all their Mac using friends.

Pirating OS X is still insultingly easy (there is 0 copy protection), but "casual piracy" is more difficult/expensive now.




Leaving an OS unchanged for 5years is not a good thing. A lot of people bought Macs because Mac OS 10.4 felt so much more modern than ancient Windows XP.

btw: The usual release cycle of MS Windows versions is about 2-3years.
Windows XP was the exception.
(Remember XP being released just 1 year after ME?)

Try about every two years for OS X.

Also they offer "Upgrades" every two years. Service packs aka "updates" occur every few months.

Yeah, and they are free. MS is much cheaper long run. And I use Mac's so not taking a fanboy approach here.

They should work the bugs out first..

A Mac user who bought one of the first generation Intel Macs in 2006 with Mac OS 10.4 had to pay $190 until now to always get the newest OS version. ($130 for 10.5, $30 for 10.6, $30 for 10.7).
A Windows user who bought a PC with Windows XP back then had to pay at least $250-290 over the same period of time (Vista Home Premium upgrade was initially $160, later reduced to $130, Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade is $120), a lot more if he wanted professional versions.
Windows 8 is expected next year and it's not going to be cheap either.

Now, Apple is a hardware company and their software is subsidised by their hardware business, but you can't accuse Apple of overpricing compared to Microsoft, when Microsoft consistently had much higher profit margins for over a decade.

Thanks Mr Jobs. But I dont buy stuff from camouflage artists. You hardware is crap, you operating system is crap, and I am too smart to be seen with your junk.

You really can not compare service packs to OS X updates. Service packs are generally more of an internal, behind-the-scenes upgrade that is supposed to fix bugs and improve performance and such. OS X updates such as lion also have many new features. I didn't notice any difference when i downloaded SP1 for this win7 machine, but my brother-in-law downloaded lion and just from a few minutes I can see updates and new features. Sure, they are not ground-breaking, but this isn't a totally new OS after all; it's only $30.

Pantenting OS on a USB stick in 5...4...3...2...

Need too look at your Windows again. Microsoft doesn't want a 5-10 year release cycle, they want a 2-3 year release cycle of their major operating systems. Hence why they pushed out Windows 7 so quickly after Vista, and why they are pushing out Windows 8 so quickly after Windows 7.

Windows XP, of course, was an exception, and has lasted significantly longer than Microsoft ever wanted--largely because Windows Vista had a less than stellar release.

Leopard was released in 2007, like Vista. Leopard costed me $120, and an OEM version of Vista costed me about $200. Snow Leopard was released in 2009, along with Windows 7, and costed me $30. The OEM copy of Windows 7 costed me $180. Lion was released last month and costed me $30 again, Windows 8 is due to be released early next year and will probably cost me AT LEAST another $100.

So Mac OS X over the past 5 years has costed me $180. Windows will cost me at least $480, probably more, over the same period of time. That $300-$400 difference in software more than makes up Apple's extra hardware cost. Keep in mind that there was a $300-$400 difference for an OEM copy of Windows, and a retail copy of Mac OS X. If you wanna factor in the price for retail copies of Windows, then your looking at a $400-$500 difference, easy.

So when people claim that MS is cheaper in the log run, I strongly disagree. The only way Windows can be cheaper than Mac is if you build your own Windows system, which very few people on this planet actually do. But, it is why I own Mac laptops and Windows self-built desktops.

And where are the direwolves? The winter is coming...

You meant a digital copy of OS X and not actual retail. Do you have the manual and box for Lion? Of course not...

But if the church told you to jump over the bridge you probably wouldn't do it, but if Apple's religion told you to do so you probably would. Make me laugh...

Not forgetting you can make a USB installer device for free as Apple provide a free utility for doing so.

It comes with an Apple Logo! Of course I'd pay twice as much for Software on a USB 2.0 stick with an Apple Logo, who wouldn't!? ;-)

Valid point but I haven't bought an operating system on an actual disk, Win or Mac, since Windows 2000, so getting a box and a manual is less important to me as it is to some people I suppose.

But, now that Apple's version of "retail disk" is now a USB drive, I guess we can consider the $69 the retail price for Lion. Even then, the OS upgrades for Windows is still a good $300 more than it is for Mac.

And I am by no means a part of this "Apple religion", I simply use their laptops, and their operating system. Never owned an iPod, and feel no need to get an iPhone, iPad, iMac, Mac Mini, etc. etc. All I'm saying is that, in the long run, I found it was about the same price to own an Apple laptop than it is to own a comparable Windows-based laptop.

I'm sure people will buy it just for the Apple USB stick.

Well, I just updated 10 Macs and created two USB Lion install sticks in my household for $29.99 total.