I quizzed X-Rite about the upgrade path/price and received the following answer - it may be of help to someone. (I use an i1Pro just for profiling my monitors and an Epson 3880)
Hi Carl,
I’m sorry to hear your unhappiness with this recent X-Rite offering. You do have a few no charge options that may solve your situation.
Your i1Pro will immediately function with i1Profiler for monitor profiling. You can download i1Profiler at no charge from our website and begin using it for monitor profiling should you wish to do this. The i1Profiler software will function properly on a Mac running Lion. Or you can continue to use i1Match until such time as you move to Lion. Here’s the link for downloading i1Publish Suite (which includes i1Profiler):
http://www.xrite.com/product_overview.aspx?ID=1397&Action=support&SoftwareID=1085 In addition, your i1Pro will continue to function on any Mac running 10.6. You might continue to keep at least one Mac running 10.6, build your printer profiles there, and simply copy them over to all your Lion Macs. The ICC profile structure between 10.6 and 10.7 is very likely identical. This will do monitor profiling and monitor QA.
You might choose to run dual boot on your Lion Mac. This would allow you to boot in Lion for all of the times when you wish to use the new features in this OS, and then permit you to reboot the computer and come up in Snow Leopard for the times when you wish to build printer profiles only. Please keep in mind that you will be able to build monitor profiles in Lion with i1Profiler at no upgrade cost whatsoever.
It’s our hope at X-Rite that you will consider some of these possible options on how you can continue to use and benefit from the investment you have made in your i1Pro. We believe that once you have a chance to see how i1Profiler functions, you might come to believe that it represents a step forward in profiling software, and one that will be worth any additional investment you might make.
I hope that you have been satisfied with the performance of your i1Pro over the past years of ownership, and understand that we are making considerable efforts to support our installed user base going forward. Being able to use your i1Pro device on this newest iteration of the Mac OS is important to us, and I hope you will consider our suggestions.
Best regards,
Like so many, I was obviously disappointed to find I have to pay about half of the original purchase price to continue to have the same functionality with Lion.
Given that since purchase the software has to date been "bolt-on" Rosetta code, and also that the new software is written and now supplied with the identical i1Pro hardware it does seem a bit fresh to be charging previous users an additional £365 to £650 here in the UK for an "upgrade" (despite the kit being made in the EU we don't even have the poultry $150 rebate offered across the pond). Bearing in mind the original purchase price includes the hardware, I could appreciate something in the region of maybe a 10% software upgrade charge, but 50%? - I hope Adobe aren't getting any marketing ideas from X-Rite.
If you've spent £120 on an i1 Display you can have a free update.... but if you spend £1000 on an i1Pro you're stuffed - it's the same download but with the bits you need to profile your printer turned off. Nice.
I guess the X-Rite marketing logic is something along the lines of.... these customers have made a large investment in the our hardware, they won't go elsewhere so let's screw 'em!
Hey-ho... such is life.