Sarbanes-Oxley sucks
Posted by Anticitizen on March 8, 2008
So I retract my previous statement, blaming Apple for the pricing on the iPod touch. While I could explain in my own words, I believe Michael Mistretta puts it best in his blog post, which can be found here.
In case you don’t want to read a lot, here’s where he’s spot on:
“It’s the law. Unfortunately, there is a horrible little law called Sarbanes-Oxley, that legally doesn’t allow you to add features to products that you have already been paid for. Apple couldn’t add features for free. They had to charge something for them. Apple has gotten around this for the iPhone and AppleTV, by accounting for their payments over the course of 24 months. This means that they can keep adding new features to your iPhone or AppleTV for free for up to two years. They didn’t use this accounting method for the iPod Touch however. This means that legally, they can’t just add apps to the iPod Touch for free. Why charge $20 then? Why not just charge $1? The $20 for 5 apps comes out to about $4 per app. This is most likely the price that Apple will be selling third-party apps at, and wanted to keep their prices consistent.”
