I completely agree with your thoughts, though I think the app most like iWeb is Pages. In fact, I manually recreated one of pages templates for my iWeb site -- there isn't really any reason why apple couldn't have included some more themes while they were at it.
Check it out: http://sworthington.byethost4.com/Site/Home.html
I know what you mean, but try to think of it this way: It's the content of the iPod that makes it an individual experience. Hand crafted playlists, and the volume however you like it make it your own.
I'm in the US, but I totally agree with you. Many of Apple's services are too US centric, and like your example with the photo books, it's not always clear why.
While I would appreciate a price break (especially on ilife and iwork), I can see it from Apple's point of view. They could argue that current pricing is the upgrade price (for ilife and os x) b/c the consumer already purchased a copy when they bought a mac.
To differentiate, I would like to see discounts, but only for those who purchased a previous retail edition (i.e. your computer came with jaguar. Your purchase of panther would not be reduced, but your purchase of tiger would be).
Though I agree in part, I believe that there is a difference between switching browsers and switching from a PC to a Mac - awareness that another product exists. Everyone has heard of apple. Some think that they're "only for graphics", but they've heard of them. The iPod especially has driven mindshare. Firefox, on the other hand, is relatively unknown. Most people have never heard of Mozilla in their life, but they know what a macintosh is.
I'm putting off an iMac purchase personally. My current mac is a 1Ghz powerbook, and for 90% of what I do, it performs fine. However, the HD is starting to feel cramped, more ram would be nice (even though I have it at 1.25gb), and I would like to be able to burn dvd's and make garageband, imovie and batch processing in photoshop faster.
If I truly needed the machine now, I'd buy. But the more I think about it, front row has intrigued me to wait for a more capable media center mac, and I might as well hold off on ilife '06 (unless there's a new killer app) and the imac until the intel rev to future proof it.
If my current computer was a little older, or if I NEEDED the speed NOW, I'd upgrade. But personally, I'm going to wait.
My feeling is that there are two main reasons:
(1) Pure intertia - people continue to use what they use. If they never use a mac, they never know what they're missing. Even if they are briefly exposed to OS X at an Apple Store or friend's house, it's a lot different from using it for a few months.
(2) It's different, used by a small percentage of people, lots of unknowns, and some minor annoyances (sites liking IE only, random software that someone has gotten used to, etc
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