In case you aren't aware, Apple hasn't announced anything re: the exact release date, or the price. They have said they're moving to a yearly OS X release, though, which leads me to believe it's going to be less expensive than Lion was.
Mac OS X used to cost $129 every time there was an upgrade. They came out roughly every two years. When Snow Leopard hit, partly because of the perception that it was a fairly minor upgrade to Lion, and I think partly because Apple knows just how little of its revenue comes from software, they moved to $29, a full $100 reduction in cost. At the time they claimed you had to be on Leopard already to get that "special" price, but it installed on compatible Tiger machines just fine.
When Lion, a truly major upgrade was announced, there was a lot of speculation that Apple was going to return to their previous $129 pricing system; after all, that was roughly what Windows upgrades usually cost, and this was once again, a "major" upgrade, but it is extraordinarily rare for Apple to go up, rather than down in pricing, so those of us who'd been watching that trend predicted it would stay exactly the same; and so it did.
This time around, however, they've changed the game entirely. They're moving to year-on-year releases to match iOS, they're working with an all-digital distribution model, battling the popular notion that they're complacent about the Mac in favor of the much more popular iOS. They're also the most valuable and cash-rich company in the world today.
With that in mind, it's possible they could keep it the same and charge $29 again. There isn't a chance in **** they'll go any higher than that. But I think even that is unlikely here. Given how little they make on software compared to how much they make on hardware, given the fact that they're the most valuable company in the world right now, given the fact that today they are a giant bullseye for media and consumer criticism, and most importantly, given the fact that they can and Microsoft can't, they're going to give away the upgrade for free. They might charge $29, or $19, or $9, but I think $0 is the only right number. I think that buys them so much more goodwill than they'll be giving away in revenue.
