I had a Plate'o'Shrimp moment today when I saw an article pointing out that Apple is much better than Microsoft at maximizing revenue per user for operating systems. Article here. (Plate'o'Shrimp explanation)

Just a couple weeks ago I was pondering how Apple probably makes a lot more money running the iTunes Music Store on it's current pay per track setup rather than my preferred option which is a subscription based model. As I was running through the music scenario it occurred to me that with updates almost each year for Mac OS X, Apple probably is able to get much more money out of our wallets than Microsoft does with paid updates multiple years apart.

Microsoft has only had new OS's every few years, longer from XP to Vista. While Apple has had new revised versions of OS X almost every year. If a person were to pay for each update of OS X along the way, they would pay for more total dollars to be able to run the newest versions of OS X than a Window user would have paid for current versions of Windows.

I don't want to get into a philosophical (or mud slinging) discussion about Windows versions the Mac. But it was pretty interesting to me as I thought about this at how much more money Apple can potentially make by doing upgrades and charge for them annually as opposed to revamping the OS every few years.

How many people upgrade with each new release of OS X, how many people run the version that came with their computer, and "upgrade" when they buy a new computer? I've got no idea, but I'm pretty certain a high percentage of Mac users don't upgrade their OS as frequently as Apple releases new versions. If you are here on this site reading this article, I'm pretty sure that you update the moment the new version is available.

One thing for sure, I'll be running Leopard, whether I upgrade my current Intel iMac, or upgrade to a newer faster Intel Mac which would come with Leopard installed.

I don't hear people complaining about the cost of upgrading to the newest OS X, I think the people who pay to keep current find the upgrades worth the cost while others who don't find it worth the cost just wait.

Gene Munsters's analysis assumed that everybody upgrades at each opportunity, I don't think that is what happens for a large percentage of users. Regardless, it would seem to me that Apple has a more lucrative approach for generating OS revenue dollars. Without some hard facts it's almost impossible to know how much more money Apple is generating.

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