• slaacaa@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    They used to charge for the OS, which was changed/updated every year 2 years to a new version. I remember prices around 20-30, so it was still cheaper than windows

    • Twipped@l.twipped.social
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      18 hours ago

      And that $30 was largely for the physical media, in a time before broadband distribution. Apple never had license keys, if you owned a mac you were licensed.

    • reversedposterior@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      It wasn’t updated every year. Major paid versions came out every 2 years or so. They became free when they started updating major versions annually

        • reversedposterior@lemmy.world
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          24 hours ago

          Yeah, the first Mac I bought I only ever bought Snow Leopard as an upgrade, skipped other versions and then upgraded to Mountain Lion or whatever was the first free version. That’s basically 30ish spent over the entire almost 20 years I’ve been using Macs on actual software.

          The comic is kind of dumb because it’s Microsoft who’ve typically made tons of money on software licenses, everyone knows that Apple makes their money on hardware.