Not fair! Apple releases Final Cut Express 4

On Tuesday, I ordered Final Cut Express 3.5 with overnight shipping because I had some screencast work to do. I got it yesterday and installed it. Today, Apple released Final Cut Express 4. They’ve lowered the list price to $199 from $299 (luckily, I paid about $230). I don’t so much care about that part… what I do care about is that I don’t want to have to pay $100 to upgrade to FCE4, when I just yesterday paid more than the new price for the product.

Yes, yes, new products come out, technology changes, yadda yadda. Remember the iPhone price drop that people were complaining about? If you bought an iPhone within 14 days of that price drop, you got that money back. If you bought a computer within a few weeks of Leopard’s release, you could get Leopard for $10.

I have no problem with paying $10 to cover the media cost for FCE4. Unfortunately, the Apple customer service rep said there was no such deal, and that my only recourse was to try to return FCE 3.5 to the reseller I bought it from. I called them, but what could they do? They can’t take opened software back! I’m going to try the time-tested technique of calling Apple again and talking to a different rep.

Dear lazyweb: if you happen to know of an Apple policy about this, please post a comment here. Thanks.