Originally Posted By: wfaulk
Originally Posted By: drakino
XCode 4 is a paid upgrade due to the accounting practices Apple has.

That's nonsense. They don't charge for Quicktime, iTunes, or Safari. Someone made a decision that they needed to start charging for XCode, probably so they could make some extra revenue off of iOS developers.

What makes it that much worse is that XCode is built on top of a lot of open source software, like gcc and dtrace.

The bigger problem, though, is that if there is a non-free barrier to the development environment, the software becomes that much less free. There's not much point in giving the software away for free, if everyone you give it to has to spend money in order to build it.


From what information I've gathered, it's not nonsense. Well, it's accounting nonsense, but heres how it goes:

XCode is lumped in with the OS financially, due to it being bundled on the OS discs and with new machines. On the books, part of that $29 of the OS fee, or the part factored into every machine goes into the XCode bucket. Both computer sales, and OS sales revenue are recognized instantly on Apple's books, instead of being deferred over time. In accounting terms (or the limited knowledge of the terms that I do know), it's always the same in the non GAAP and GAAP numbers, due to the instant revenue recognition.

The XCode 4 release is a major upgrade of the product, one that clearly had a lot of engineering time spent on it. Engineering time on the books is a negative, bundled alongside the positive revenue from the product to (hopefully) show a net gain. All the engineering time for Snow Leopard, and Xcode 3.x was already on the books. Thus, XCode 4 can't be lumped in the same pile, otherwise a shareholder could potentially challenge it with a lawsuit, saying that Apple is spending more on engineering time after revenue recognition occurred, thus impacting financial statements and ultimately the stock price. "Cooked books" would be another term for it.

For your examples of Quicktime and Safari, notice how Apple only upgrades to a major version of either when releases of OS X also occur. Back when Quicktime still had the Pro model, they could use that revenue as justification for updates mid OS cycle, but thats now gone. So all the Quicktime X improvements are sitting waiting in Lion, instead of coming to Snow Leopard. Same for Safari.

iTunes, I'm not certain on this, but I assume it's probably bundled in with the overall iTunes store operation on the books, so they can update that whenever, and label it as keeping the store front up to date or some other accounting excuse. It's a "free" app only in that it's a free way into the marketplace they run that generates revenue. It's also possible a portion of every iPod revenue goes into the iTunes bucket.

Originally Posted By: sn00p
if it is down to accounting practices, then why the $4.99, why not the minimum $0.99 charge? Or maybe just a statement "guys, we can't continue to give Xcode away for free, but we're making it as cheap as possible".

Pricing it too cheaply would also potentially raise the risk of a shareholder lawsuit. As for making a statement about it, I haven't heard one specifically for XCode, but they have issued statements when it came to the 802.11n fee, or the iOS upgrade fee for iPod touch units.

All of this accounting nonsense is a direct result of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 thanks to the mess Enron caused. And it's not specific to Apple either. I had some high level discussions with top executives at a previous company over the accounting nightmare virtual items and currency bring to the table in a post SOX era. It's been a pain for some public companies accounting wise when they want to release something for free too.