Dear Apple,

Last Friday you launched your new operating system, Mac OS X Leopard, a.k.a. Mac OS X 10.5. I was expecting that those of us who have purchased a Mac in the last few months would be allowed to upgrade at a discounted or free price. However, it appears that I am wrong. From what I can find all that you offer in this realm of customer service is a free upgrade to those who purchased an Apple computer after the first of October, 2007. This I find completely unsatisfactory, as I have owned my Apple computer for less than three months as of the date of this writing (ordered August 23, 2007 received August 31, 2007). I am appalled by the fact that the common customer should have to pay for an operating system upgrade within three months of purchasing their system. There is no reason not to allow customers from as far back as the month of August to freely upgrade to OS X Leopard. This is in my eyes a despicable move to drain the money from our pockets and drain the love of all things Apple from our souls.

I respect that Apple is attempting to keep the price of the upgrade down to a reasonable price. However I do not feel that allowing two twelfths of the over 7 million Apple computers sold in the last year to be freely upgraded is going to damage the revenue of Apple in any way. Furthermore I see this as another occurrence along the lines of the iPhone price cut, where it was deemed that it might seem wrong to the customer but Apple was going to make that choice anyway. Whoever is in charge of making such calls within the corporate structure of Apple seems to be trying to destroy the loyal followers of Apple, Inc. Even Microsoft found it acceptable to offer a free upgrade to Vista to any consumer who purchased a PC after October 26, 2006. This is in spite of the fact that Vista was released three months later. This information can be confirmed at: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/expressupgrade.mspx

I wish to conclude this letter by saying that I am personally one of the biggest followers of Apple. I spent almost all of the money in my possession just to own an Apple computer, and I do not regret it one ounce. Despite all of my fan-ship of Apple I am and will remain dissatisfied with this situation. I will continue to believe that this is the best way to do this. Apple should at least offer a recent purchaser discount on Leopard, if not a full fledged free upgrade to those who purchased an Apple computer recently. Offering the free upgrade to customers within a half a month of release may seem fair to the masses but I will not stand by and let innocent consumers be deceived that this was a generous move.

Many Thanks,
Joshua Grider
Features Editor of http://www.dtgeeks.com