Apple Now Selling OS X Lion on $69 USB Stick
I am Lion, hear me roar.
Back in July, Apple launched the newest version of its OS X operating system, Lion. The software debuted in Apple's Mac App Store and racked up a million downloads in the first couple of weeks of availability. However, downloading is not your only option; Apple announced that it also had plans to release the latest iteration of its OS on USB stick this month.
Well, today is the day. Apple is now officially selling a $69 flash drive containing OS X Lion. Yes, that's more than double the price of the regular digital version that launched last month. However, considering the drive is aimed at those who lack the bandwidth to snag the 4GB digital version (price: $29), the $70 USB stick may well be cheaper than the overage charges they'd incur for downloading that large file.
If you've got slow internet or a cap on your bandwidth and can't afford to fork out $70 (or don't want to) for OS X Lion, you can always lug your computer down to the local Apple Store and use its internet for your digital download.

/sarcasm
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.
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 ?
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.
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.
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.
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.