For every paid upgrade of every software that I've ever known about,
there are always a significant number of people who complain that the
cost of upgrading is too much. These developers can never make everyone
happy, and I really don't think they are attempting to.
I think there is a line between paying a fair price for a fair product and being taken advantage of. We bitch about paying $130 every two years for a new mac OS. Look at Windows and Microsoft. I don't know the most recent info, but wasn't it like $300 to upgrade to Windows 98? And this from a company which has about 40 times the market share Apple does, with a CEO who is the richest man in the country. I would bet that they could have sold their upgrade for $69 and still made a profit, but instead they used their monopoly power to stick it to people.
But on the other hand, I think we have all seen software companies go under and stop producing. So there needs to be a balance.
I've griped about the Abynth updates ... I realized that I will have spent over $450 if I upgrade to v3 - for one soft synth. Meanwhile I have half a dozen other soft synths that cost $99-$150 (discounted) which still work fine. These NI upgrades to Absynth and Battery are fine, but in many cases they are fixing clumsy original designs or limitations. Like some of big features of Abs3 is that the clumsy multiple window thing that didn't work well, is now replaced with a single window. And Battery had attrocious file handling and kit remembering features which are now corrected. But pay $100 for each upgrade? Its greedy.
I think what is happening in general, is that software companies are trying to maximize profit. Native Instruments is going to subscription plan, and Waves has such a plan. Many of the big pro software packages are sold like that too... one year license only. Instead of convincing you to buy and that being it, they now want a steady stream of money flowing from you to them.
Apple has something of a monopoly on us too... when they go to Tiger (whom no one is very excited about)... then they will make iLife, iCal, and all the security updates only work for Tiger. And probably logic too. They will find some way to include features in 7.1 which won't work in Panther so you need to upgrade your OS along with Logic.
It seems that Apple doesn't want to release a lot of little upgrades the way Emagic used to. I think they want to present a stable simple situation like with all their software. The problem is that Logic 7 and 7.01 were not ready for prime time, and not beta tested properly. And they don't care. Its been six months now and only the most minor upgrade.