The devil will be in the details. The Apple lease program to me isn't interesting because a) the minimum lease term is 24 months and b) the minimum order is $3,000.

If I have an option to subscribe on 6-12 month terms and upgrade my machine on each release cycle, that'd be really interesting.

You'll pay for a shorter lease term with a much higher monthly payment. Depreciation isn't linear; both a car and a computer will lose value much faster during the first 6 months than during the second 6 months (much less months 12-18.) So if you lease for say, 6 months rather than 24, the rate has to reflect that higher depreciation (plus the risk and cost associated with reselling the item at the end of the lease, spread over a much smaller number of periods.) I could easily see it costing double the rate Apple charges for a 24 month lease to rent for 6 months.

Example: $2000 machine that depreciates to $1500 after 6 months, 1200 after 12 months, $800 after 24 (keep in mind much of the value loss happens when you "drive it off the lot" and turn it from new into used). $100 overhead on accepting the return, cleaning it up and reselling it to extract that value. 6 mo lease: ($2000 - $1500 + $100) / 6 mo = $100/mo 12 mo lease: ($2000 - $1200 + $100) / 12 mo = $66/mo 24 mo lease: ($2000 - $800 + $100) / 24 mo = $50/mo

(Yes, I"m ignoring interest here. But rates are low.)

I think that Technica could differentiate if it allowed you to quickly scale up and down to match your hardware needs. Long term leases can be hard to escape.

They don't emphasise or even mention this as a feature on their site though.

I recently applied for a lease for a relatively new business that has been pretty profitable in a short time and got rejected. The Apple rep wouldn't tell us why. Will definitely be trying this service out.

Yes that was exactly what I was thinking

Wow. I wish we had something like that where I live.