iPod Touch OS update fees may be a thing of the past
Nothing is more irritating to the stalwart iPod Touch owner than Apple’s pricing scheme for the operating system upgrades. While iPhone owners have been able to suck down the significant upgrades in the 2.0 and 3.0 iPhone OS updates, iPod Touch owners have had to historically pay for then: $5 for the 3.0 update, which added cut and paste, and an astonishing $10 for 2.0, which added the App Store.
Before 4.0 rolls around, most iPod Touch owners would like nothing more than for that fee to go the way of the dodo. And go the way of the dodo it might: according to Ars Technica, a rule governed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board might be enough to life the charge that iPod Touch owners have had to pay for their operating system upgrades.
The whole thing is a tad complicated, but it all boils down to “subscription accounting.” Devices that gain significant new features need to be reported over a series of years rather than at the same time. That’s fine for the iPhone, which has subscription charges associated over two years, but the iPod Touch is a beast of a different color, because Apple doesn’t want to report the sales of the iPod Touch all together for finance reasons, which is why they’ve been charging fees for updates: for some reason, it gets them around this rule.
But that rule might change, which Apple wants, since they’d be able to report all sales of the iPod Touch all together. And when that happens, out goes the operating system upgrade fee. Good news for Apple and good news for consumers. Let’s hope this is one dry financial accounting law that gets changed.
– By John Brownlee | geek
- Loulith Galenzoga
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