Apple

Apple is a hardware company, always has been, and probably always will be. They use their software just to sell hardware, which is why it tends to cost more. Also keep in mind that the in order to keep up with OS X, one will have had to buy 5 copies of it in the space of time that XP was out. And (Until 10.5, which sounds unimpressive) it has been almost imperitive to buy newer versions of OS X, because those before Tiger are mostly immature betas tested gratefully by all those fanboys.

So people have paid $130 every 18 months for the next RC for Apple, sounds like a fair deal compared to one investment in XP back in 2001, which will still work pretty well for the next 3 or so years.

Gods know why MS even sells Windows direct to consumers, since they make most of their money off oem sales, and more still off selling Office. The Windows consumer pricing is really just a joke, as no Enterprise or OEM will see anything like it, and those are just about the only markets MS really gives 2 hoots about.