Like most legislation coming out of Washington these days, nothing that’s broken gets fixed, and other more serious problems are created and allowed to fester. SOX was passed in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble and corporate scandals such as Enron and WorldCom. Now, we can look back and see how effective this legislation was at slowing the current stable of problems created by the funny-money accounting and business practices at Freddie-Mac, Fannie-Mae, Lehman Bro’s, Washington Mutual, Wachovia, and others.

But,

Apple, being the good corporate citizen that it is, wants to do everything “by the book” and charge for upgrades that enable “extra” functionality not previously found in their devices. Of course, hardware chips such as bluetooth adapters work wonderfully well *without* software to drive them. So this thinking is right on target.

I guess the Apple CFO sees the absolute necessity of accounting for hardware and software separatel. After all, hardware and software operate independently, and neither one depends on the other. Case in point: my laptop’s Broadcom bluetooth adapter, in the absence of device drivers, works wonderfully as a space filler to direct the cooling fan’s airflow around my WiFi radio, which did come with device drivers. So, the drivers are *extra* functionality which must be accounted for, and paid for separately, lest some bean counter over at the Department of Justice notices such an omission in Apple’s accounting and, heaven forbid, file criminal charges for such an ommission.

So, to avoid all that let’s all pay our $$$ and just shut up.

If Apple had given the enhancement away free, Apple’s auditors could have required it to restate revenue for that period and could possibly have required Apple to start in the future to defer all the revenue from computer sales until all such enhancements are shipped, this person said. That would have had a devastating impact on Apple.

They had to choose between charging a fee for the upgrade, or reopening their books and possibly taking a cut of future product’s revenue.

Take a look at this article. It’s regarding the $1.99 802.11n enabler, but much of the same information is relevant:

http://www.macalope.com/2007/02/13/must-the-macalope-do-everything/

The story is they figured out the *could* charge, and would find a way to make people charge, then you work backwards from their and give a reason for why you charge that doesn’t make you look greedy to the point of pissing off their customers.

So, they have something you want. Great. They’ll sell it to you. If you don’t want to charge, you can just not charge (forget S/O — when the executives served themselves with options, they had much more liberal interpretations, including lying, stealing and backdating…). Or charge $.01. As for consistency of the price. Give me a break. I can cook up a many othe rreasons whyt $20. It corresponds to a popular bill. People will part from $20 for other, more frivolous stuff. $20 is a nice round number. $20 looks good in the balance sheet.

Sony, Nintendo and others aren’t American firms so the law does not apply.

and Microsoft rarely adds “functionality” to its products, so they can skirt the new law.

all these updates are free on torrents so it’s really not a big issue once you know that.

I am just not buying it. For example Sony and MS will both be introducing huge upgrades to their respective gaming platforms (PS3 and Xbox360) in the coming months. These are not just cosmetic changes they are complete revamps of the entire systems (and this is not the first time they have done it either) yet neither will be charging for it. The two cited examples are Xbox Experience and Playstation Home.

I do realise it’s a case of cover your ass for Apple but if they really did have their hands tied by Sarbanes-Oxley (which I don’t believe to be the case) they could have done it at a nominal cost to the consumer. I think it’s a cynical attempt to justify milking unwary customers for cash.

My recommendation for everybody is to give Apple the finger and download the widely available restore.

Up until recently, Apple was under investigation by the SEC, and wanted to be as careful as possible with their accounting.

If this horrible little law did apply then can someone care to explain to me why Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft and many others been breaking the law by giving us all free firmware updates for our various devices. PSP, Wii, PS3, Xbox, Xbox360, etc etc.

I would hate to think I was complicit in breaking the law by accepting these updates without paying for them. Shudder the thought.

While I understand Apple’s decision to charge money for the new applications (especially because they might run afoul of the SOx Law) the new $20 “application pack” also includes a SYSTEM UPDATE in the form of the home page editing, web clips, and lyrics features. All of these are updates to the currently existing iPod Touch software and NOT new applications, which means that they ought to be free to all users of the iPod Touch.

Adding insult to injury these applications are all hidden in the 1.1.3 system update, a whopping 104.4mb file that all users must download if they want to fix bugs in the system. These applications can only be used when you pay Apple $20 to “unlock” them, but even if you decide not to buy them they stay on your iPod taking up precious space that could be used for songs, videos, or photos.

Apple is normally wonderful when it comes to providing system support and updates, but having them shaft early adopters and loyal fans like this is offensive and shows that Apple has absolutely no regard for the iPod Touch community.

You can leave Apple direct feedback here:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipodtouch.html

You can also sign this petition:
http://www.petitiononline.com/freeappi/petition.html

As for the cost, I have no problem with it at all. The reason is, when the iPod Touch and iPhone came out, you could easily read the box and figure out which item was best suited for you. Getting upGRADES for free has never been a policy of ANY company that I know of. UpDATES on the other hand are a completely different situation. Be careful what you consider an upGRADE versus an upDATE. Buying Quicktime Pro 6.0 and then upGRADING it to 7.0, a completely different version is called upGRADING! This costs you money. Also if you buy a computer with standard edition software such as Microsoft Office and then you realize later you wanted the full Professional version, guess what? You’re gonna pay for it

Remember, upDATING is only adding new features to current software through a service pack like Quicktime Pro 7.0 to 7.04 and is FREE.
UpGRADING is changing the entire version of a software such as Quicktime Pro 6.0 to 7.0 and this is NEVER free…neither is getting additional apps!

As a user I am disappointed I had to pay $20 for the updates. I did it and I am fine with it, but it did leave a bad taste in my mouth. Of course I bought the Touch thinking it would be an ipod/pda (or whatever you want to call that line of functionality). So my expectations where wrong. I think sometimes in business like it or not you have to play to your customers expectations. I look to the iPhone refund as an example.

Anyway that being said I paid the $20 I am happy with the applications and I am ready for more 3rd party apps, but if Apple decides to give me $20 credit I will take it.

The difference is that the add event was an added feature in a pre-existing application. This is adding 5 completely new (to the iPod) applications.