Once again I found myself in an Apple retail store, seri­ously con­tem­plat­ing the pur­chase of a new com­puter. The next oper­at­ing sys­tem, ver­sion 10.5, is to be released “in Octo­ber.” I won­dered: if I bought a com­puter today, surely Apple wouldn’t make me pay $130 to upgrade the OS when the new ver­sion comes out in a cou­ple of weeks. But the sales­peo­ple con­firmed my worst sus­pi­cion: yes they would. “If it’s worth $130 to you, I’d wait.”

I returned home empty-handed.