The cost of being an Apple fan [updated]

I’m in the middle of following Steve Jobs’ keynote from Macworld, and it sounds pretty cool. The price of some of their software has gone up, however, and it reminded me of a post I’d wanted to write some time ago. Between text-based page refreshes seems like a good time.

Apple’s products have always been expensive. I understand that. But lets add up some of the numbers after you’ve bought your computer. It comes with the operating system and a whole passel of Apple software for “free.” And that’s good.

But a year later, they’ve updated the OS, they’ve updated iLife, and your yearly subscription to their online .Mac service is dues, and you’re looking at, well:

iLife ’05: $79 iWork: $79 OS 10.4: $129 (okay, not exactly yearly any more…) One year of .Mac: $99 (for… the slideshow feature, that’s all)

Yearly: $386

Ouch.

Update: Denny pointed out that the prices are a little less for education-discount-getting folks like me. Those prices would result in a yearly payout of $276. Still a lot.