6/15/2020 Snow Leopard Takes a Page From the App Store Playbook - The New York Times

FROM THE DESK OF DAVID POGUE

Snow Leopard Takes a Page From the App Store Playbook

June 11, 2009

Apple announced and demonstrated all kinds of things this past Monday at its
developers' conference: upgraded laptops, a new iPhone, a new iPhone software suite for
all iPhone owners, its new Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" operating system, and so on.
Lots of goodness, for sure. But to me, one of the most mind-blowing revelations was a
single statistic: 29.

That's dollars, and it's how much Apple intends to charge current Leopard owners for the
Snow Leopard version when it goes on sale in September. That's $29, rather than the $130
Apple traditionally charges for new Mac OS X versions.

Apple sells millions of copies of Mac OS X. So why on earth would it leave so much money
on the table? There are two official reasons, one semi-official reason--and one that may
be the real reason.

Official Reason 1: Snow Leopard wasn't intended to be a huge upgrade. From the
beginning, it was meant to be an optimization of the existing Mac OS X: cleaned up,
faster, smaller, more polished.

Which I think is an outstanding goal; who can sustain "200 new features!!!!" forever?

Besides, come on--think of your current computer or phone. Which, really, would you
prefer: more features, or better speed and reliability?

Microsoft is essentially pursuing the same mission with its new Windows 7. It's basically
"Windows Vista, refined." The beta versions are so much better than Vista, it's not even
funny.

Celebrate this trend, people. It won't last.

And sure enough, Snow Leopard really is faster--and smaller. Yes, smaller: The OS
occupies only half the disk space of the previous version, saving you a cool 6 gigabytes.
That's a first in the history of OS upgrades.

Apple says that everything is faster, too: Snow Leopard installation is 45 percent faster,
shutting down is 75 percent faster, waking up 50 percent faster, 55 percent faster joining
Wi-Fi networks, and so on. (These are all Apple's measurements, and they're all "up to,"
but still.)
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6/15/2020 Snow Leopard Takes a Page From the App Store Playbook - The New York Times

Truth is, though, Apple's programmers couldn't just sit by and leave their ideas on the
table; a healthy number of new features did, in fact, sneak into Snow Leopard. You can
edit videos (without having to buy the $30 QuickTime Pro package, as before) right at the
desktop, then upload them directly to YouTube or MobileMe. Video chats require only a
third as much bandwidth, so even DSL people can get in on the act. You can copy a single
column of text out of a PDF without including the columns on either side. And on and on.

So much for Reason #1.

Reason #2 is something like, "Well, we wanted Mac OS X to be affordable, so we can

Well, sure, but didn't you want your OTHER Mac OS X versions to reach as many people
as possible?

So much for Reason #2.

When pressed, an Apple product manager admitted that there might be a third reason for
the pricing: "Well, we wanted to put a little pressure on our friends up North."

That would be Microsoft.

I'm not sure what kind of pricing pressure Apple could put on Windows 7 at this point;
Microsoft's plans are surely in stone, since Windows 7 ships in October. And Microsoft
has also decided, once again, to pursue its disastrous and confusing plan to ship Windows
in five or more different versions, each with different features (sigh). Since Microsoft's
bread and butter is corporations, who buy Windows by the pallet, Apple's pricing gesture
must seem like little more than a gnat.

But there's a final possible reason for Snow Leopard's $29 thing: the App Store Effect.

When programmers write iPhone programs, Apple encourages them to set a price that's
really low--like free, or, if you insist, $1. As a result, the huge majority of programs in that
store are impulse buys. Nobody blinks at $1; it's less than a soda, and it's something
you'll have for a long time. Price is virtually no barrier at all.

That's quite a bit different from any other software category. Even shareware usually
starts at $20. There's a huge psychological difference between $1 and $20.

The App Store Effect says this: if you cut a software program's price in half, you sell far
more than twice as many copies. If you cut it to one-tenth, you sell far more than 10 times
as many. And so on.

It's a little counter-intuitive, but this principle has paid off beyond anyone's wildest
dreams. The numbers are staggering: as you've probably heard, iPhone/iPod Touch fans
downloaded 1 billion apps within 9 months. Some iPhone programmers have become

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6/15/2020 Snow Leopard Takes a Page From the App Store Playbook - The New York Times

millionaires within months--yes, selling $1 software--because of this crazy math. $20 may
sound like more than $1, but not when 1,000 times more people buy at $1.

I can't help wondering if Apple has the App Store effect in the back of its mind with Snow
Leopard. If the previous Mac OS X version sold for $130, then Apple would need five
times as many Snow Leopard sales to equal the revenue.

The App Store Effect says: Oh, baby, that's a no-brainer.

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