John, some of these points make sense and are well taken, I have to point out however that in a way the validate my larger theme here, that lion implemented a lot of very dubious "features" that have been reverted, or rather have come as close as apple's ego will allow a revert, which is to offer an option for the a different way to do things. Users have been asked to pay again for these ui fixes. Some users, myself included, cannot run ml at all in several of their macs because apple is obsoleting devices that they don't have to obsolete.
I wish I could have snow leopard with a few of lion's good features, whatever these are, and nothing comes immediately to mind, well icloud instead of the defunct mm I had in sl, maybe the new filevault, there could be a couple more I am missing... and have a faster more reliable system.
At the stage apple has put me in I am arguably paying on some macs for bug fixes and enhancements (wiki definition for a service pack), on an os update that again falls miserably short of doing any real backbone work (kernel is one behind ios) or adding any new features. We 've come to the extent where pinch to zoom in text edit, is included as a new feature, along with a notes app, chinese support (who the eff cares anyway if you are not chinese? Are the going to be touting every language they add from now on as an os feature) etc etc. in a list on apple's site that you read through in a few secs, and you go ho hum, nothing there pretty much.
And in some of my macs I am stuck with lion or a downgrade (there's no question which option I ll chose of course).
All that doesn't really make me a happy camper, all the more so, when I see redmond has put a lot of effort in core work in their os to make it even faster than windows 7.
I just feel that the world's most advanced os is currently a joke, with obj. c, an archaic kernel, an old file system, and a bunch of slap on features from ios. It keeps some of it's former glory in some prior ui and automation choices, but it's not getting any better. On the other hand the hardware apple uses is getting insanely better all the time. But what about the software?
That's why I said $50 isn't cheap, and a bilion and a half returns to apple (just by half the user base upgrading, surely more will) are simply not warranted for their efforts, imho. I went as far as to say $0 would have been a better price here (aren't ios updates free anyway?). I take that back, $20 for both lions would have been a fair price, provided lion was fast and bug free, which of course it wasn't.
All that doesn't really make a happy camper, you know.
Next time apple release a software, fast fire release cycles notwithstanding, I 'd rather they charged me $100 instead and gave me something that really was worthwhile, hell I wouldn't have a problem paying $200 if the os warranted it. But I do have a problem paying an extra $20 on bug fixes and enchancements and damn twitter, I do have a problem that half of my macs are stuck in lion cause apple said so.