In the amazing world of all things oozing Apple, a ripe, pasty white “industry-leading offer” was announced during today’s WWDC. Apple is launching iTunes Match, a service that, get this…matches your music library with that of iTunes, and makes it all available online via their new iCloud mass storage service. The cost? $24.99 per year – unlimited. No uploading, no organizing. It simply matches your ripped Danzig box set with the version available on the iTunes store. It’s pummeling other online media offerings of late, namely Google’s craptastic entry of Google Music. But what about the CAD industry? Could this set a standard for pricing cloud services or matching your models?
I want model matching
No doubt that consolidating the majority of iDevice user’s music (and eventually entire media) collection is a good move for Apple. It binds the masses closer to their ecosystem. It makes the media easier to access. It takes away a person’s dependency on one particular device and the need to continually sync data to each. Why can’t the same be true for 3D product development, from the models we create to the programs we use?
Pricing is the other factor. Where the CAD industry revels in layers of suites, subscription based pricing structures and dongle-based program access, Apple, and many other cloud-based service providers offer single simple price. $24.99 per year? We probably won’t see that. $2,499 per year? Why not?
