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Comment by chc | Hacker News Reader

The reasoning was that they couldn't release Xcode 4 free for Snow Leopard because of Apple's extremely conservative interpretation of Sarbanes-Oxley. Xcode has always been free with new OS versions. They were only charging extra if you wanted to get it for the old OS.

(An extremely low price point like $5 is generally a tip-off that Apple is just charging a nominal fee to satisfy accounting rules.)

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This keeps coming up every now and then. What's the difference between Xcode and iTunes that lets them give iTunes updates for free?

The theory is iTunes facilitates the buying of items from the iTunes Store.

That's a good question, but unfortunately I'm not privy to Apple's internal workings to give you an accurate answer. The general metric seems to be "Does it add value to the core product?" This is the same reason iOS updates are free to the iPhone but not to the iPod Touch — the iPhone is viewed as a multi-year investment (and reflected as such in Apple's accounting), while the iPod Touch is a shrinkwrap product that Apple doesn't believe it can add value to without charging for it.

But the precise bar for when they feel like they need to charge is something only Apple could tell you, and maybe not even them. Like I said, their interpretation of the law is idiosyncratic.

Thinking about it further, I'd bet the distinction is that iTunes is on Windows too, so it's viewed as an independent product, while things like Xcode and FaceTime are tied to Mac OS.

This also fits with the fact that they don't charge for new major versions of Safari, which also has a Windows version.

I read something somewhere (can't remember where) that Apple is starting to spread the sale of new macs (starting with machines with Lion on them) over some longer period of time.

This would apparently set things up for providing new features (ostensibly iCloud) without having to charge small increments and still adhere to their conservative SOX interpretation.

edit: found it. http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/07/19/apple_to_incre...

Why not $1, if all they're doing is satisfying accounting rules by charging a nominal fee?

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