Snow Leopard on E-Bay

Some folks may find this interesting. I was surfing around e-Bay...and came across some folks already selling upgrade disks of 10.6 Snow Leopard.

I thought it was sort of surprising that they were selling it before it was even released...but then I thought what the heck is stopping them, since they could order lots & lots of copies from Apple...and then resell them on e-Bay.

But the very strange thing is...the auction I was looking at was selling the single user upgrade 10.6 disks for $27.50 + $2.99 shipping...for a total of $30.49...which is $1.49 higher than the $29.00 price (plus sales tax) Apple is charging.

I guess the real confusion on my part is...why would someone pay more for 10.6...and probably have to wait longer to get it by buying from this guy...when they can can get faster & cheaper directly from Apple???

I know a lot of users may not be as "plugged in" to what Apple is doing as a lot of us are...it's just sort o strange to see this auction on e-Bay just 1 day before folks are supposed to start getting their 10.6 disks from Apple.

Here's a link:

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Single User Upgrade - eBay (item 270448131533 end time Sep-25-09 21:17:49 PDT)

- Nick

p.s. Just had a thought...maybe this deal is more attractive to some International customers, who may not have access to Apple products as easily as some of us.

Probably to either: save sales tax (here it's 9.5%), which would make it technically about $1.00 cheaper then what I paid at Apple - OR they're hoping to get people who think they won't be able to get a copy *soon* (soon being relative to release date and expected demand and supply).

Judging by the listing, it's being done via a store style listing as it's a 30 day listing with buy it now as the only option. So he's obviously hoping to sell out by the end of September. I see 5 people have already purchased from the person.

To me, it's worth spending that extra $1.00 to have it hear from Apple immediately rather then wait until *after* the 28th for shipping. I guess for some people, they'd rather save the $1.00.

The only other thing I could think of is that normally he runs a store that sells Apple computers and software, and has already received the software for sale tomorrow (I'm sure the stores will receive their shipments of Snow Leopard prior to release day so it can be on the shelves release day) but he's shipping them early violating release date even tho he states in his auction that it won't be shipped until after the 28th...

Just my thoughts on the matter

Nethfel said:

Probably to either: save sales tax (here it's 9.5%), which would make it technically about $1.00 cheaper then what I paid at Apple - OR they're hoping to get people who think they won't be able to get a copy *soon* (soon being relative to release date and expected demand and supply).

Just my thoughts on the matter

Click to expand...

Great additional thoughts!

You make a good point about possible "out of stock". Even though Apple thinks they have produced enough copies of 10.6...and send the proper amount of copies to each store...with all of the 10.6 excitement, there are bound to be some "out of stock" situations at stores! So this guy's auction would then be a great place to obtain a copy...if re-stocking of 10.6 would have a long delay at the retail stores.

On the other hand...since OS 10.6 is only for owners of Intel Mac's...stores may not be as busy...and may not have as difficult a stock problem.

I was reading an article about 10.6, relating to the tracking of the % of Apple users that actually upgrade to a new version of the OS.

Since 10.6 is for Intel Mac only owners...Apple will have an easier time comparing/tracking the number of Intel Mac's sold since they were introduced in 2006 vs. the number of OS 10.6 upgrades sold.

This would provide them with a number of interesting statistics:

- how fast do Intel Mac owners upgrade
- how excited are Intel Mac owners about 10.6
- how successful was the $29.00 upgrade price
- how many Intel Mac owners either preferred to purchase the full install product or were still using 10.4 (if they purchase the "Mac Box Set")
- How successful was/is the "Mac Box Set" with the inclusion of iLife & iWork 09 for $169

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

Great additional thoughts!

You make a good point about possible "out of stock". Even though Apple thinks they have produced enough copies of 10.6...and send the proper amount of copies to each store...with all of the 10.6 excitement, there are bound to be some "out of stock" situations at stores! So this guy's auction would then be a great place to obtain a copy...if re-stocking of 10.6 would have a long delay at the retail stores.

Click to expand...

Plus, for people like me - it's just not cost effective to go to the store unless I really need to. The nearest reseller (Mac Authority and Best Buy) are both 1.5-2 hrs away from me, and the nearest Apple Store is near where a second Mac Authority store is which is between 2 and 2.5 hrs away from me. With what I've heard about Apples shipping of their updates when you preorder them, it just (to me) makes more sense to buy directly from Apple on an update like this.

On the other hand...since OS 10.6 is only for owners of Intel Mac's...stores may not be as busy...and may not have as difficult a stock problem.

Click to expand...

This is also another truth, although I think there are still a lot of PPC based owners out there, I think their numbers are dwindling. I'm sure there are a lot of people who will never switch from their PPC mac, and for them Leopard (if new enough) or earlier will be the end of the road for them. But on the same note - it's good to know that Apple is still putting out security patches for 10.5 (can't really comment about 10.4, as the only 10.4 box I have is 10.4 server which I do still see security updates for, but I don't know if they are as frequent for the desktop version), so I'm glad for those people that can't update that at least for a while they will continue to get security updates.

I was reading an article about 10.6, relating to the tracking of the % of Apple users that actually upgrade to a new version of the OS.

Since 10.6 is for Intel Mac only owners...Apple will have an easier time comparing/tracking the number of Intel Mac's sold since they were introduced in 2006 vs. the number of OS 10.6 upgrades sold.

Click to expand...

That is an interesting fact. It'd be interesting to see those numbers, and how they would adjust their statistics to take into account machines that are no longer functional for whatever reason.

- how fast do Intel Mac owners upgrade

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True, I have a feeling they'll find a similar distribution to those that upgrade with MS Products - a certain amount of early adopters will get it immediately, some will way a few weeks to months to see how others like it, and some will wait until the first major service release (ie:10.6.1) prior to purchasing.

- how excited are Intel Mac owners about 10.6

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I have a feeling those that are really excited are those that have a real feeling for what the changes will (or at least could) make for them. Some that are excited will be just because they can't wait for the "next best thing", and then some will be more "meh" about it because they don't feel it's a significant upgrade from Leopard (basing this on comments I've read here and on other forums about how people feel about the SL upgrade). I think on the server side of 10.6, a lot of people are going to be upset as it doesn't seem they included support for the new file system (I think it's called ZFS) which was something they had originally planned (according to articles I read a while back)

- how successful was the $29.00 upgrade price

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I have a feeling any OS upgrade that cheap would be successful. It's definitely a good way to keep loyal customers happy.

- how many Intel Mac owners either preferred to purchase the full install product or were still using 10.4 (if they purchase the "Mac Box Set")
- How successful was/is the "Mac Box Set" with the inclusion of iLife & iWork 09 for $169

Click to expand...

Which is interesting as they didn't seem to list the OS as a standalone product but rather only as a part of the box set, which may backfire a bit as I think there are quite a few people who may not want newer versions of iLife or iWork - or at least don't want to pay for them. They may come out with SL in a standalone box like they had with Leopard at some point.