Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!apple!chuq
From: chuq@Apple.COM (Spot the Wonder Dog)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: Upgrade Paths
Message-ID: <43756@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 8 Aug 90 17:28:41 GMT
References: <18088@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Organization: Third man from the Rhino, the Jungle Cruise
Lines: 53

leban@cs.umass.edu (Bruce Leban) writes:

>Of course, the upgrade is worth something.

>But consider the typical case
>where the new program adds 20% more features (as if it were possible to
>quantify this (:-)).  I already own most of the program I'm buying, yet I
>frequently have to pay more than 20% to upgrade it.

These statements don't mix. First you say that there's worth, then you throw
the worth out in your comment (20% new features but pay more). Besides, it's
a false argument.

Features do not an upgrade make. You can't claim 'you already own most of
the program' because you don't know that to be true. Maybe they went and
completely rewrote the code to be faster and use less memory. How do you
quantify performance? How do you quantify productivity?

Feature lists are nice but are in many cases irrelevant.

Do what I do. Don't look at an upgrade as an upgrade. Look at it as a
purchase. That is, after all, what it is. I'm a registered owner of Pyro
3.0. When I had the chance of upgrading, I asked myself the following
questions:

o what do I get from pyro?

o What do I get from the pyro update that I don't get from pyro?

o Are those changes worth the cost of upgrading?

The answer was no. What I did instead was ask those same questions between
Pyro and After Dark. I ended up getting After Dark.

Just because it's an upgrade doesn't mean that the way you buy the software
should change. I know some folks automatically buy upgrades, but that's
stupid. If the current program meets your needs and the new features aren't
worth the cost, don't do it. (Letraset is STILL trying to get me to upgrade
Ready, Set, Go! What they don't realize is that I did -- to Pagemaker).

Let me ask you this question: If you're an owner of After Dark and someone
wrote a neat, new screen saver that happened to have all the features of
After Dark 2.0 and charged $15 for it, would you buy it? If so, why are you
complaining about that as an upgrade price? And if not, then After Dark 1.0
is probably good enough so you probably shouldn't upgrade.

-- 
Chuq Von Rospach   <+>   chuq@apple.com   <+>   [This is myself speaking]

It's a small world, after all! 
It's a small world, after all! 
It's a small world, after all! 
It's a small, small world!