Nixta Rolls

Apple’s keynote address at MacWorld was notable for a few things today. No Steve Jobs (fair enough, he’s having some time off), a totally pwned macrumors.com live feed, no new Mac Mini, and something that wasn’t really announced: That the Mac Box Set software package of iWork ‘09 and iLife ‘09 includes Leopard.

The Family Pack retails for just $30 more (at $229) than the Leopard-only Family Pack (at $199).

That’s $6 per license for both iWork and iLife ‘09.

Single user retails for $40 more than just Leopard ($169 vs $129). That’s… $40 per license.

There are a few ways to look at this:

1. Leopard is now $11 and you pay $158 for both iLife ($79) and iWork ($79).
2. Leopard is now free and you pay $11 extra to bundle iLife and iWork together.
3. iWork and iLife are cheap ($6 or $40) incentives to finally upgrade to Leopard.

Whichever it is, those of us who upgraded to Leopard or bought a Mac with iLife ‘08 installed or who paid for iWork are getting screwed here. By buying early, by putting up with alllll the Leopard bugs and helping Apple hone it, we’ve committed to paying more to get the same shit that someone who sat back and waited over a year to upgrade will get. But that has pretty much always been Apple’s pricing strategy, so I suppose I shouldn’t be pissed off about it.

In actual fact, there can’t be that many people who have been waiting to upgrade to Leopard who will do so now, so who’s benefitting from this?