Even at $50 a copy ($49 US or $59cdn) this is a GOOD business decision for Apple...

Development Costs... say 10 developers (including programmers, QA and Tech Doc) per app plus 2 product managers at an average employee cost of $100K/year work for a year on this project (maybe less).

12x100x5= $6 million in Development for iLife 04

Then add a couple of million in Marketing

Then add a couple of million in media production and distribution...

Say $10 to $12 million in cost...

Now if apple sells a million of these puppies in a year (very likely) they get close to $50 million minus their costs $38-$40 in net profit... not bad business model boys.

I have to think that someone at Apple is saying... hey lets ditch the hardware and just sell Software.

..... and change our name to Microsoft II.

I have to think that someone at Apple is saying... hey lets ditch the hardware and just sell Software.

I think someone finally asked "why do we give it away free when we spend so much developing it, and we could charge 50 bucks for it."