It seems that yesterday’s post on my annoyance at Apple’s upgrade policy to Tiger seemed to spark some debate. Some think I’m out of line, others agreed completely, others felt the need to turn it into (yet) another boring Microsoft vs. Apple discussion.

Here’s a minor follow up: I ended up calling Apple-Care yesterday and they did confirm (no surprise) that there isn’t going to be any type of ‘grace period’ for those that purchased new hardware previous to yesterday’s Tiger announcement. To be honest, the guy on the phone was pretty sympathetic (and even said ‘yeah, I know it sucks’). I am curious why several of the forums up on Apple’s discussion forum that were talking about the prices have been locked.

Regardless, I ended up ordering the upgrade. I can’t run on a version of an OS that’s older than the current release - my geekness just won’t let me.

I finally realized what bothered me the most about it and how it’s similar to another ‘upgrade’ strategy: Have you ever had the situation where you bought a DVD for a movie that you really like? Then a few weeks later, a new ‘extended’ version comes out. While the new version has 20 minutes of extra footage, a ‘making of’ documentary, DTS sound and a bunch of new goodies, the version you just bought is ‘fine’. What sucks is that you know there’s a new, better version out there and you still feel the need to upgrade. To me this is no different.

And yes, I’m also annoyed that there’s a 3 disk Gladiator Extended Edition coming out in June. The difference? I bought Gladiator when it first came out on DVD back in 2000 (and we’re only talking about $20).

I really feel that Apple could have bought some ‘good karma’ by reading some of Kathy Sierra’s advice on ‘thanking users‘. If out of the blue, I received an email that said "Hey, we know you just bought a Mac Mini a few weeks back, thanks for supporting us and here’s some love - a $25 off coupon", that would have gone a long way with users, IMHO.

Anyways, I’m over it now. What’s done is done.

Finally, I feel like I need to say that this post has nothing to do with Microsoft. This post is about one voice in the blogsphere that was annoyed about upgrading a computer they feel passionate about that they just bought. If you feel the need to vent about Microsoft, please start your own blog and post there. I’ll most likely subscribe (if I haven’t already).