Apple's OSX Upgrade Troubles Worsen

Everything’s fine over at Apple, with absolutely no one complaining about the company’s decision to exclude new Mac purchasers from a low cost upgrade to Mac OSX Leopard. At least, that’s the impression you’d get if you were to read about subject on the Apple Leopard pre-release discussion board, where buyer complaints about the upgrade policy were immediately deleted by Apple staff.

You may recall that customers who bought new Macs in August, when they were initially released, or just thereafter in September, were denied upgrade pricing, and had to pay full price for Leopard. However, customers that waited to buy their new Macs until October, at least 7 weeks after the new Macs were initially released, were rewarded by Apple with special $9.95 Leopard upgrade pricing.

When I questioned moderators as to why complaints about the upgrade pricing policy were being deleted, actually, let’s use the correct term here, censored, I was told it was because the questions were not "support oriented". When I asked follow-up questions as to why posts praising Apple’s upgrade policy, from customers that bought new Macs in October, were not also being deleted, as they also were not "support oriented", my own posts were censored.

The lone survivor of the many threads I saw is located here. Interestingly, in the last line of the thread, the original poster compares his situation, as an early purchaser of a new Mac, to that of early purchasers of iPhones.

This was my first visit to the official Apple support forums. I’ve always found the help I’ve needed elsewhere. One thing I found particularly disturbing while surfing through dozens of Apple discussion pages was the attitude of the most hardcore Apple and Steve Jobs supporters. This included outright lying when asked whether Apple uses a Microsoft like validation scheme to prevent installing a given copy of Leopard on more than one Mac. The question arose repeatedly in the context of whether it’s really necessary to buy the more expensive Leopard "Family Pack", versus the "Single User" edition.

And in thread after thread, posters were repeatedly told by the Apple faithful that you can only install a given copy of Leopard on one Mac. A statement that simply is not true. I don’t condone software piracy, that’s an issue between you and your conscience (and Apple’s legal staff, should you get caught). I also don’t condone the wholesale spread of outright lies. Of course, when anyone set the record straight on this point, again, the threads were censored.

Censorship at Apple? Paraphrasing the infamous 1984 Super Bowl commercial, 1984 really was nothing at all like "1984". In 1984, Apple changed the way we worked with computers. But 2007 Apple-style is starting to feel an awful lot like "1984".