I read in a discussion about open source PowerPC laptop Hardware that there are people who refuse to pay a price close to 120 euro (actual price 111 euro) for their powerbook to run what is considered nothing than an "Amiga clone".

(phrase that makes sensing a point of disgust about Amiga).

http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2qvr5a/gnulinux_powerpc_notebook_to_make_happen_a_new/

Perhaps is time to reconsider prices of licenses in order to make more appealing the purchasing of MorphOS for new customers and increase userbase?

(despite of Amiga legacy that could scare them)

[EXTRA]
Altough I think it is also time for realizing a good manual of instructions and "official" video tutorials online to make new users aware that Amiga is not that "infamous" operating system they erroneously believe it is, due to bad gossip murmured by professional detractors in the past.

Would they buy a licence for any price? Plus, they can use it for free 30 minutes at the time.

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I agree with you. But sure actual price scares people, who want using full-time their machines, and Amiga legacy has a bad reputation that should be fight with counter propaganda, and good information to public.

Only MacOS has actually a price of 105 euro circa (if I recall well price of standalone installer CD), and sure MorphOS at 111 euro on a powerbook has much lesser features (time machine just to talk of a single very useful feature for example) and it is still more unstable, despite its ease of use and being completely under control by the user and totally customizable.
Other operating systems are less expensive (Windows and even AmigaOS 4.1 Final -just to mention direct competitor that drop its price to 39 euro-), while Linux and AROS are free.


[ Edited by Raf_MegaByte 12.01.2015 - 16:44 ]

Yes, but why would they ever switch to MorphOS anyway? The only real advantage we got is speed. The rest Linux and MacOS can do better or mostly better.

I think you need to get a liking to the OS in order to 1, use it daily, 2, to pay the fee and 3, to overlook it's shortcomings.

It's like all those Youtube flicks with awful techno background music that shows: "look, we can surf the web and play 10 year old games!". It does impress people who remember the Amiga fondly and makes them think: "Wow, can an Amiga system do that now?" But for people outside the Amiga world it just looks stupid, because they have been able to do that all along.

I think MorphOS attracts two kinds of people atm: people who remember and longs for the Amiga and people who likes alternative operating systems. The first category already knows about MorphOS or they will find out soon enough if they start to surf on Amiga forums. The second category is probably the only one where we can attract new blood is more than single digit numbers.

That said, MorphOS is still awesome!

Something like 39 Euro would be a great price as it would temp new people to register MorphOS for the first time and attract existing users to register more machines. As it stands one must make a careful decision whether it's worth registering any particular machine or not. I have come by some very good deals on low end Mac hardware but it's not worth paying 111 Euro or even 79 Euro to register those. Personally, I end up with a couple of main machines that I am willing to register for the cost. MorphOS is certainly not in the casual purchase kind of category at current pricing. I think the operating system should cost about a third of whatever you pay for your hardware especially when dealing with vintage systems like we are here.

In fact it's somewhat uncomfortable to show someone MorphOS and just when they get interested you have to destroy their enthusiasm by telling them to buy a particular old Mac hardware and pay 111 Euro to unlock it. It really does sound a bit crazy to someone not active in the MorphOS/Amiga world.

I do not think it's about convincing people to switch to MorphOS so much as to offer it as an interesting alternative experience alongside whatever else they may already be using. I am thinking more along the lines of a low cost registration for anyone mildly interested in playing around with vintage computers, old video games, gadgets, emulation, programming, virtual machines etc.

I am probably in the minority as a person that uses MorphOS as their main operating system daily.
Of course I do not know the reality of behind the scenes MorphOS development so maybe I am missing something here... :)

Just to tell my opinion:

I tried Aros on an old PC with an that had an nvidia grafikcard and a 1,8Ghz cpu. True that was a few years
ago but the system doesn't run stable old amiga software didn't work. I played around for several month
and lost interrest on it.
I had thought about buying an Amiga again but they where to expensive for me and from what i read they
had not even a feature rich browser.
On linux I used OnlineTVrecorder frequently, and what a surprise there was a decoder for Morphos from which
I knew it was a next gen. Amiga system - and its hardware was much cheaper since supporting old macs.
So I bought a Powermac MDD and payed the 111 Euro after having a very easy installation, not to compare
with the most linux or even Windows installers. No gfx driver the soundcard was specified the network came
up with no trouble.
As a beginner I took the papiosaurus software package. The System was better then my old Amiga 4000 060/32Mb
Cybervision ....
And it cost less then 300 Euro (in 2011 and that was the Hardware + System).
You can't get an old Amiga 1200/030 32Mb w/o gfx card for that prise.
It still is an impressive system, not to talk about the Powerbook - !! an Amiga Laptop !!
Only Morphos can run such a thing and its really cheap and (mac hardware) reliable.

well thanks for reading ...

@relastar

People can play with MorphOS for free, 30 minutes at the time. I did that for a couple of months before paying my first license. Plus, I think the price has little to do with "best price" and much more with what it costs for the Team to develop. Sure, you can argue that one third of the price will attract 3 times the users (which is of course better) but you simply can not know for sure. If they are unlucky they will just end up losing money, and that is really bad for MorphOS.

700 Euros for a phone? 350 Euro for a watch?

If something sells the price is fine.

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It is important to view things in their proper context. Early adopters who upgraded to MorphOS 2.0 in 2008 have been able to upgrade to new OS releases for close to 7 years with absolutely no additional charges.

If you bought a Mac computer with MacOS X Panther and then paid to upgrade to OS X Tiger and eventually OS X Leopard, you probably spent more on just OS updates than a lot of MorphOS users have spent on their Mac system plus MorphOS license.

Plus, the cost of many commercial OS distributions are ultimately hidden because they are subsidized via hardware in one way or another. Since you mentioned Linux, Canonical charge (substantial) fees to add official support for new custom computer systems to the "free" Ubuntu distribution, which can only be financed via higher hardware prices...

@ASiegel

Two good points there.

Existing users have certainly appreciated getting free updates all this time but I also do not see as many new users giving MorphOS a chance because of the pricing. I guess it depends on what the overall expectations are for the user base growth and which system would be more beneficial for the MorphOS Team and continued OS development.

@ASiegel

but new users won't get 7 years free updates when they buy morphos now, so you can't bring that argument. or is that somewhere hidden in the license contract?

MorphOS could go down the drain in a year and everything could be for nothing as well.

I think they should reconsider the pricing. Something around around 50-70 Euros would be much more appreciated and appropriate by new and non-legacy customers.

Well, prices has gone down. AFAIK the original price was 150€ for everything. Now an Efika costs 49€ and an Mac Mini 79€. As new models gets added, the older ones get a price cut. At least until now.

In addition to what ASiegel already pointed out, MorphOS even supports the first hardware it was sold for.

On other platforms you have to upgrade the entire hardware every few years for more or less no reason to keep the OS up to date or you will loose the ability to use or update applications.



[ Edited by geit 13.01.2015 - 00:10 ]

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Everything said should answer people's concerns about the high cost for register MorphOS. Mac OS X release numerous updates, much more than MorphOS. When ever OS X changes its nickname, they charge you again usually they just add frills and gimmicks. The gullible crowd has zero issues in repaying for OS X each year, and sometimes twice per year!

Reducing the cost to register MorphOS should not be necessary. Instead, if some introductory MorphOS hardware should be ported with MorphOS registration on that hardware cost reduced.

Or you could point out much more clearly that MorphOS has free updates and mention the fact on the website.

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It be nice if this fact remains true after MorphOS ports to new ISA.

> When ever OS X changes its nickname, they charge you again [...]. [...] The gullible
> crowd has zero issues in repaying for OS X each year, and sometimes twice per year!

Mavericks has been free of charge for owners of Snow Leopard or newer, and so will be future releases of the OS.

> if some introductory MorphOS hardware should be ported with MorphOS registration
> on that hardware cost reduced.

I'm not sure I understand this sentence, but MorphOS is 79 EUR for Mac mini G4, PowerMac G4, eMac and Pegasos (and 49 EUR for Efika 5200B).

i made an free update from Lion to Yosemite. i just had to download it from the app store. i had to pay nothing. and btw, you can't really compare OS X updates to MorphOS, because OS X comes fully equipped. MorphOS did lack a lot of basic features like WiFi or graphic card support and other hardware stuff that had to be delivered in later updates.

Not to sound elitist or anything but what happens when a lower price brings people who complain when they can't run Skype?

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I fall into the second group here. I never used an Amiga back in the day. I have not registered MOS yet even though I have tinkered with it on and off since Release 3.1.

My holding out to purchase a license up to this point has been two-fold.
1-What hardware to run it on has been my main hold up. If the MOS License wasn't tied to the originally purchased machine I would have licensed MOS at 3.1. I would probably transferred the license to my 3rd machine by now. But given how the license restrictions are I have held off. I originally was going to installing MOS on a PowerMac G4. Then I though about maybe a Mini. Then when the G5 support came about I worked out a deal to get a supported G5 since the G5 I had wasn’t MOS compatible. Now that I have a supported G5 installing MOS on that Mac makes my OS X hard drive invisible and non bootable. I haven’t worked too hard on the issue but holding down the Option key only the MOS drive is shown. If I boot from a OS X DVD both drives are available and I can boot from OS X. Next reboot it’s invisible again.

2-Price. For a Hobby OS last time I did the price conversion it was about $130.00US for a G5 license. For a Hobby OS pricey for considering the price of the old hardware cost.

Having said that I finally made up my on what machine to run MOS on now I have to get the G5 to accept MOS without messing up OS X. Then I will purchase a license.

[ Edited by fmh 13.01.2015 - 20:41 ]

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Thats why the demo is already allowing you to check out if you like the OS and all its features or not.

If you need skype or other stuff which is not available simply do not register.

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You can buy OS4 for something like that these days. And then a $3,000+ computer to run it on...

Seriously, of course a price of 39 Euro would be more favorable to a customer. And a price of 0 Euro would be so even more. It would be less favorable to the development team though. MorphOS is not a mainstream OS, the potential market is very narrow, the potential custostomers are limited. Most of them are probably already MorphOS users.

79 EUR license fee for one eMac, Mac mini G4, Pegasos I, Pegasos II or PowerMac G4 isn't over the top IMHO. Add a cheap Mac Mini and you will have a very nice setup for a very low total cost.

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I actually think you are wrong, I have seen plenty new people on this site alone, but many new people probably stays at their old regular Amiga sites instead, and you see "MorphOS" mentioned in "signatures" of some people today (at amiga.org and amigaworld.net) that you only a few years ago would *never* believed they would ever take the step!

The licensing scheme gives new potential users the chance to try MorphOS *endlessly* for 0 Euros, 30 minutes a time, and no limitations whatsoever except this reboot thing. The full version! Either you are into the MorphOS hobby and consider it's worth the money, or you aren't.

If people (and we are 99.9% talking about Amigans here of course) don't bother "to give MorphOS a chance", then the reasons are probably more about them favoring either classic/retro, os4, or AROS instead, or HW on which MorphOS doesn't run (x86, "X1000", latest G5 970MP based macs, or whatever).

Most people I read (here and in other bulletin boards) don't have any problems with the price, if they are convinced about MorphOS. Or wouldn't buy it for any price if they are not. Both sides are glad that they had the chance to evaluate the possibilties before buying. Personally, I don't consider 79 EUR for the G4 desktop system as too expensive, even 111 EUR for the "latest" systems are ok. I'm using my main MorphOS machine for 5 years now, and since then I got every update for free, so it was and is clearly worth its price.
Would it be better to offer a "damn cheap" 30 EUR edition, for which you have to pay extra money to get a half decent graphics driver, or which has more bugs than the version before? IMHO the MorphOS people are giving more value for the money, and we should all respect that.

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I did not know this. So the revised sentence I wrote needs to be "When ever OS X changes its nickname, they (previously) charged you all over again.

Or perhaps OS X is not best example. What about just considering Windows?

None of what I said makes any sense now, if you consider many people might get a used computer on ebay with Windows (or OSX) pre-installed. Since this is very rare to find a used computer with registered MorphOS installed, it might make MorphOS sound "expensive" in comparison.

Anyways I do not use OS X any more. I use Windows sparingly, but I update to the new Windows versions infrequently.

On the other hand I update MorphOS immediately. 1. because updates are free and
2. I think that the updates to MorphOS are very useful and needed.

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I already knew this. I was imagining a very cheap and open (if any exists) hardware similar to Raspberry Pi, Banana Pi, and a MorphOS computer version called Cherry Pi (or something) with very low cost purchase device and then to install, use, and very low cost to register the MorphOS onto device. This would increase registrations. If the new users want more equipped hardware they can purchase a higher end device, which could even more increase additional registrations.

And perhaps they can simply try MorphOS on emulations on their existing hardware first.

[ Edited by In_Correct 13.01.2015 - 21:52 ]

You could add that for a lot of OS upgrades you need to buy a new, beefier computer. I don't know about MacOS, but this is quite true with Windows, and also Ubuntu when it got Unity. And a lot of times I have seen computers on sale which is clearly not good enough to run the installed OS. So in order to run them, you do feel after a while a need to upgrade RAM or HDD and stuff.

MorphOS feels quite smooth and nice even on pretty low end computers. There is never a "need" to upgrade your hardware to run the latest version of it. If your computer was quick and nice with MorphOS 2.0, it still is with MorphOS 3.7.