Just installing mine now. How come its free? The cynic in me is struggling to understand such a move….
Few years ago Apple dropped the prices of their machines in an attempt to take market share off Microsoft, and succeeded to a degree.
People new to Mac’s then moaned about the high price of software too.
Apple crept the prices of machines back up, and reduced the software costs. Nobody noticed the additional £100 per machine, but everyone was ecstatic they can now update to the new OS for very little money.
The release of 10.9 onto the world for “free” comes only a few weeks after Apple put the prices of some of its base machines up by £50 (or more) again… To be fair, I know I sound cynical right now, but I understand why they do it. If you want to buy a shiny new iMac, the fact that a month ago it was £1099 and now it’s £1149 isn’t going to concern you in the slightest, but if you had to pay £20 for the latest OS only a few months after you’d bought the machine you’d be annoyed!
This way, as stated above, everyone will adopt quicker meaning they can drop support for older OS’s much sooner. I’ve been running 10.6.8 on my hack, and 10.7.5 on my laptop cos I didn’t want to pay to upgrade to mountain lion when I saw (for me) no benefit. As 10.9 is free, providing its stable then I’ll be on it pretty soon.