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Crazy Stevie's iPhone Prices are Insaaane!
theodp writes "Slate takes a look at the alarming lesson of the iPhone price cut and ponders the long-term effects of a Fire-Sale Nation mentality, especially when companies go all Crazy Eddie slashing prices on products like homes and cars that have active secondary markets. 'High-profile price-chopping tends to occur whenever companies freak out about the vicious combination of a slowing consumer economy and the prospect of getting stuck with big inventories of unsold goods. The tactic often works in the short term. The hype over insanely low prices functions as a form of free advertising, and the lower prices tend to attract buyers. Apple announced on Sept. 10 that it had sold its 1 millionth iPhone.'"
It won't matter to me what his prices are. An incredibly short-sighted error, IMHO. I'm good for five of them (three kids and my SO.) But no connectivity, no buy.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
but you still have to be able to afford the monthly bill. Oops I guess Apple forgot that part! Isn't that the #1 thing people shop for and just cross their fingers and hope the phone's either free or cheap? You don't have to be a cell phone expert to know that
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
So they appropriately lowered costs. Had they lowered it $100, then lowered it another $100 in November, would that really make any buying it feel better? Particularly those buying it in September and October? No. If it were raining $100 bills from the sky, there would be some people complaining that they were hard to break and they wished it rained $20 bills instead.
Crazy Eddie ended up in jail.
No, I have one and it is a very good phone.
Does anybody really think that Apple won't make money on it at $399? For Grid's sake, it's assembled overseas for slave wages. It only has a few parts (if you count the main board and display as one part each). I don't think they will hurt. And if they do -- that is, if they are dumping it on the market for a loss -- then they are prosecutable under antitrust laws.
Please, let's see some real news, rather than trying to make problems up.
Its funny how much we've been conditioned to think that the price of things should go up not down. Think about it, all other things being equal, as we get smarter, more efficient with our production of goods prices should go down. Prices only go up because inflation is an even more powerful force than innovation in our economy.
Second, the cost of everything has an fixed component and a quantity component. One reason an F22 fighter is so expensive is that relatively few are built. The same thing happened with the iPhone. At the beginning they weren't sure if they'd sell 1 or 1 million. They had to guess and price accordingly. Now that so many are sold, the fixed costs (like engineering) are paid-in.
Meanwhile, they are competing with many other kinds of smart phones. Most of which were cheaper already. Doesn't anyone remember all the talk about how the iPhone was outrageously priced above competing smart phones?
Yeah. So after their profit margin was clearly fat, they cut prices to be competitive and more than just fan-boy enthusiasm. We should be worried? This article is drawing ridiculous connections between the iPhone and the panic over the sub-prime mortgage market.
I don't care how nice a screen it has, at $400 with a 2 year contract, a locked phone with no extensibility and EDGE-only speeds is still far from cheap. The best one can say is that it has gone from an insanely overpriced phone to merely an expensive fashion phone.
iPhone doesn't start hitting "Crazy Eddie" pricing until it's below $100.
Sounds almost like a Mr. Obvious sketch. What do you mean technology prices drop over time?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Well they decided that it was worth $599 to them when they handed over that money. They should be grateful to get any rebate, let alone $100.
After the rate cut that the Fed announced, fellow-liberal Jon Stewart asked Greenspan pointed questions of whether America is a free economy given the invisible hand of the Fed that favors "investment over work", these guys have been wondering what kind of "flation" we will have to live with.
The Fed chose to cut rates to prevent deflation. The Slate article seems to suggest that deflation has only been postponed and companies will be hit in the long term. But the price cuts are held often - think Thanksgiving or Labor day weekend sales. The fact that there is (almost certainly) a chance to get products way cheaper at a certain point in time does not mean that sales at other time will slow down. The iPhone price cut debate is over - atleast on Slashdot. We all agreed that there will always be early adopters who don't mind paying extra to be the first ones to own a cool piece of gadgetry. That is the very definition of early adopters.
2+2=5 for very large values of 2.
Prices also go up because materials become rarer or more difficult to obtain.
Many pundits also complained that the iPhone could not compete with the smart phones. Of course, the iPhone is not competing with the smart phone, but merely assuming that some people might be willing to pay more for a phone upfront if it provided a value. Such a market was made clear by the Razr.
Now pundits are saying that Apple is desperate and crazy because it lowers prices. It is true that Apple never has a sale, but this is a phone. Phones start expensive and then get cheap. It always happens. I don't have an iPhone. Being an early adopter was not worth the price. I was waiting for this price drop, and a relaxation to contract rules typical to ATT. The price drop is not like the price drop of a Mac or an iPod. With those devices, one is not contracted with a total costs that is at least $2K.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I'll club a seal to make a better deal!
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
The car example cited in this article (Toyota with $850 of incentives per car vs. US car manufacturers with $3K average) is a perfect example of why US automakers are so very, very screwed.
No matter how much Consumer Reports et al. say the reliability has improved, and no matter how much the US makers craft intriguing and unique new offerings, their cars' value will continue to tank.
Sure, all cars lose value the minute they're driven off the lot, and it's a substantial number. But go take a look at what happens to a Civic or Camry versus what happens to a Fusion/Taurus or Malibu. Go ahead, check it out. It's awful.
I bought a new Scion tC last year. I was all primed to buy a used carwith ~35K miles; it makes sense to let someone else take the financial hit. Then I looked at the prices on used Scions, used Civics, etc. $17K cars were selling for $14K after three years. It made absolutely no sense to go buy a three year old car with a nearly-expired warranty and a possibly shady maintenance record when $3K got me a brand new one. On top of that, I was paying cash; the price difference is narrowed even more if you're financing, because the used car will almost certainly have a higher APR.
Now contrast this with a Ford Focus or Chevy Cobalt or similar. Go look at the similar models, and marvel at how much more has bled off of the value; it's because the $17K Ford, depending on when you catch it, might be only $15K, and might have a 7% or a 0% APR. It's great in the short term, and if I was interested in a Focus I'd be all over it.
Ultimately, if I was buying this car to drive it into the ground and toss it at 300K miles, it would be smarter to buy the Ford (assuming the reliability was the same, which isn't really the case with the Focus). Most people, myself included, don't do that. They get rid of the car in the 80K to 120K range, when it's starting to show some age but before it might potentially require major repairs. And many people look at how the US automakers have played their "SUPER LOW 72 MONTHS 0%! $3,000 CASH BACK" games and they walk across the street to the guys who might charge a bit more, but won't slash their prices next week. All things being equal, a Camry with the same MSRP as a Malibu or Fusion will resell for more at every step in its life, and it's because Toyota has shown that they're going to hand out approximately the same deal to everyone.
I want to buy American, or at least be able to widen my prospects when looking at cars. I really do. If I were willing to drive cars into the dirt, I could probably do it, but I'm not comfortable with the risks near the end of the car's life. A $2,000 engine repair does make better financial sense than buying a new car, but not when your car won't start, and you have to get a rental for a week, and you're wondering if it will be okay for another year or will require a new transmission in four months. So, like most people, I sell mine before I think those problems will show. As long as the US automakers are willing to go "Crazy Eddie" and reap the short-term profits, though, they'll continue to lose out on long-term buyers like me. I sincerely hope other industries are willing to look at Ford, GM, and Chrysler's experience when they think that it's a good idea to slash their prices.
That was sarcasm, ya idiots. I was slyly rubbing it in.
That's the price you pay for being an early adopter. (Or, as I like to call it, "stupid.")
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Really, come on, I think the article informing customers they may want to opt-out of the Verizon upgrade, or maybe the new alpha ATI driver could have used this space. Is there anybody on here who is NOT sick of iPhone articles yet?
Now pundits are saying that Apple is desperate and crazy because it lowers prices
No... pundits are saying that Apple is desperate and crazy because they aren't even close to making their target of 10 million phones in the first year. If Apple gave us an unlocked phone with an SDK, they could easily make or exceed that goal. It's simple really: Apple decided to focus on a great profit instead of a great product, and ended up with neither.
what I want to know is, should I decide to buy an iPhone, will the well-documented Steve Jobs reality-distortion field affect my reception? What about my wireless access point and cordless phones at home?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
So the "slow" sale of homes is partly a scam to make us think it's a good time to buy...
I suggest you read Slashdot
The iPhone's price cut was surprising (way earlier than I expected), but that's the nature of the cellphone/personal electronics business. Always has been. A device comes out at a premium price, and then over the 6-12 months of the device's lifecycle the price drops drastically. By the time the new hotness replaces it not only has the price collapsed, but it's not even a lust object anymore. But we've been going through those cycles ever since the Walkman.
What's masked it a little here in the US has been the subsidies that cellphone carriers pay to get lock-ins. And they increase the subsidies as the life of the gadget progresses (at least on paper), to reduce the perceived cost more. Remember, once upon a time the Motorola RAZR was the hottest phone on the market. And it cost around $400-$500, even with a contract. And that was just a phone! Now, of course, they're free with contracts, and have been for quite a while.
Anyhow, I'd say the dependency of the domestic auto market on rebates is a much better bellwether for the state of the "Crazy Eddie Economy" (and I grew up in New York, so I remember those ads), along with the use of incentives in the housing market. Heck, supermarket coupons are part of it, too. When discounts are the norm without any real reason to do so (real costs are always dropping in the electronics business), prices have no real floor, and consumers have no incentive to pay the "real" price, because they know that it's going down. A lot.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Priceless: Israel asks U.S. foreign aid be paid in EUROS, and Secreatry Rice says "We need to place our Israeli obligations at the top of our national priority list. Israel should not suffer any inconvenience due to currency fluctuations":
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/3689
Our economy is screwed - the longer we hyper-accelerate the virtual money printing presses, the worse it will be in the long run.
I have to ask: how did we get in this financial position?
From the linked article:
(Israeli) "Foreign Minister Levni cited the rapidly declining dollar
and it's disfavor as a world currency as reasons for the request."
Apple knew there were a bunch of fanboys who would pay almost anything to get an iPhone early, so they gouged them for as much as they would pay. Once they'd all bought iPhones, it made sense to cut prices to attract a different market. It turned out that the fanboys were annoyed enough that Apple decided it was worth giving them partial refunds.
So nothing surprising, just Apple doing whatever seemed likely to maximise profits. You don't like it? Tough luck. Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword.
It's that Apple had a good idea, an ok product, an expensive final product and a closed developer and network model which really isn't hitting the numbers that you'd expect if someone like LG had put out a similar styled phone.
The fact is, if you don't own the intellectual property, being first to market usually sucks.
With such a restricted sales model Apple will never see but a fraction of the sales potential of the iPhone. Perhaps they will learn with their next release, but thats still probably billions in lost sales. Unfortunately they seem to be slipping back into their old ways and favoring models that lock out free market competition.
I also don't see any long term use for the iTunes Store since for one, Apple is not really in the business of media distribution, they are just leveraging their advantage as a computer company and platform, which while giving them a short term advantage won't pay off unless they quickly master media distribution. Looking at their recent public insult of NBC, it seems they have a bit to learn. Secondly, I think most news services will eventually go the route of distributing their own media, it's not that expensive or difficult to do and few media companies want to be at the mercy of other media distributors.
Wouldn't it make vastly more sense for a company who's market focus was media distribution to handle media distribution or handle it in house. Letting your PC maker distribute media for you is just stupid because they have a vested interest in keeping you on their platform. Apple will, if they have to, use that as leverage against competition, so empowering them as a media distribution model is just bad all around, bad for the OS and bad for media distribution.
Why not have Netflix or blockbuster hosting such a service since they already handle such content and keep the OS makers out of media distribution. If you like the Apple OS you should realize Apple becoming a media distributor is a bad idea because they will leverage their OS against other models and try to lock Apple users in as much as possible or shove Apple technology down everyones throats.
Netflix, Blockbuster, or YouTube don't have vested interests in your OS choice and already specialize in video distribution. A torrent powered video site, by far, makes the most sense and would do a lot to save the limited US bandwidth. When you want media distribution, you contract a media distributor, not an OS maker. You may as well trust your media distribution to Microsoft.
The fed doesn't favor investment over work. What does that even mean? When a company invests in a new technology, that means more work. When a city invests in new infrastructure, it means more work. When farmers plant more crops, it means more work. Investment facilitates work. Without it, people wouldn't have jobs, and nothing would get done. The fed does not "favor investment over work", they favor investment because it leads to work.
The fed works to mediate the economy so that people with money will continue to invest it. If new investment stops, people lose their jobs. If no one is working, no one is building new houses, no one is growing food. That is a really bad thing.
It is not just illegal to "maintain a monopoly". It is also illegal to attempt to corner the market by dumping. Both are "monopolistic practices".
One does not have to be accused of trying to maintain a monopoly. "Dumping" at a loss is ILLEGAL because it is a "monopolistic practice". There are lots of examples. For just one, not many years back we saw certain computer memory manufacturers who were charged with "dumping"... even though none of those companies had a corner on the market. They WERE trying, though... which is the point.
The same thing happened with the iPhone. At the beginning they weren't sure if they'd sell 1 or 1 million. They had to guess and price accordingly.
Uh, no... actually they were banking on selling 10 million. They aren't even close, so the iPhone becomes more like an F22. By your rationale, the price should go up. It's a nice textbook theory, but in the real world where real businesses exist, there are contracts. The price went down, because Apple is desperate to sell the phones it has contracted to buy from asian manufacturers. If they can't, they are hung with a pile of phones and a huge loss.
Doesn't anyone remember all the talk about how the iPhone was outrageously priced above competing smart phones?
No, actually, I remember buying a more expensive phone a month before the iPhone was released because the iPhone was locked and guaranteed to never have any third party apps, ever. I saw it coming months ago, made plenty of noise and was told I was wrong. I was told repeatedly by fucktards here on Slashdot that I was not in Apple's target market.
So ladies, how would you like your crow cooked? You were obviously waaaaay off the mark, and I was right. 100% correct. I told you the iPhone would fail. It did fail. Miserably. Think Cube. And Apple will continue to fail as long as they ship locked phones with no native SDK.
OK, I read the article *after* reading the articles. Mod me down my brothers, mod me down.
"But Bro, don't taser me"
Seriously, I assumed the article was about the general USA economy, and copied an email I had mostly just written to my family and friends. Oh well...
Sorry for the off topic post.
I meant "OK, I read the article *after* writing my post."
I can tell you why. Since recent time Slashdot become a target for paid posters who work in an attempt to influence stock prices: so called "pumpers" and "bashers". There's been a chain of anti-Apple articles here recently, which were very obviously work of paid bashers. Articles like that are normally very easy to recognize (as is the case with this one and with the recent ones posted here), which brings the question of why these articles were allowed to make their way to the front page of Slashdot, especially if one takes into account the fact that none of them were even close to being typical Slashdot material. Is someone high in the Slashdot's "chain of command" getting paid for it? Or is the basher's mob responsible for this?
It sounds better than the other two phones I've had -- Siemens SK65 and Nokia 3120. It's a pretty good phone, though it could do with voice dialing if you drive a lot and need to dial whilst driving. Me, I don't drive much, so it's fine.
-b.
Locking or not, SDK or not, there are already plenty of 3rd-party applications out for it, and it's only been out for about two months. Installation has become pretty much a point-and-click affair: search for AppTapp Installer. Pick up a 4GB iPhone for $300 or a used one on EBay for $250 or so. Play with it -- you'll like it. It's a lovely piece of hardware with a great UI, and Apple will be forced to open it to third-party developers once everyone realizes what they can do with it!
-b.
i do believe he has summed up my feelings on the matter..
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone
are being bought in China for eventual use on the Moon.
Apple will be forced to open it to third-party developers once everyone realizes what they can do with it!
Actually, Apple can/will just flash your firmware via iTunes and you'll be right back to no third party apps after the update. Feel free to participate in the arms race against your device maker. Every commercial developer took a rain check to the little install-a-hack party. Their clients expect supported applications. Without real apps and solutions, an iPhone is useless to me. I'll keep my $300 thank you. I worked too hard to waste it on a pretty paperweight.
An off-topic with a double-self-reply ...
:-(
I'd criticize that, but the link depressed me too much.
I don't think it's the falling dollar per se that bothers me, but the fact that usurers like me aren't getting compensated with higher interest rates
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
You have to give permission for flashing. Besides, there'll soon be applications that'll allow loading calendar/contacts/music directly from a network share. This will obviate the need for iTunes bloatware entirely.
-b.
Anyone old enough to remember those Federated Electronic store commercials? Reminds me of Crazy Eddie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHNIRik7bUA
Life is not for the lazy.
They said they would like to sell 10 million in the first year and a half. I don't think they were actually "banking" on it. They've hit 1 million in less than 3 months and they are pretty happy with that.
Let's not forget that they are only just now starting to release the product in Europe. They haven't released it in Asia yet.
I don't think they dropped the price because they weren't moving fast enough. I think the truth is closer to what Apple said, they have an opportunity to push a larger number during the Christmas season if they set the price point lower. They're probably getting some improvements in pricing if they ramp up production. They might still hit the 10 million mark... in North America alone.
You guys can't possibly be this simple minded about basic economics. Apple was either going to launch the iPod Touch before or after Christmas. If it were going to be after Christmas the iPhone's price would have stayed the same. Once they decided to sell it before Christmas, for whatever reason the iPhone price had to come down. The iPod Touch 8GB had to sell for $299, it was the right price point and the 16GB for $399. Since the 8GB Touch is an iPhone ONLY without the phone part there could only be a $100 difference between the two. A $300 difference people would buy the Touch and keep their free phone. But for only $100 people will pay that in a hart beat. Too only have to carry around one device and also have the best cell phone interface (aka usable) on the planet. This was the simplest decision Apple probably ever made. The decision was already made for them the minute they decided to ship the iPod Touch.
Econ 101.
Common sense is expensive. I'd say $100 is pretty cheap a price to pay for a lesson, really.
I'm not sure that's a comfort or not but in either case it shows a huge gap between costs and prices. When Apple or anyone can happily give huge discounts and rebates and coupons then the price of the product has no relation to what it took to made.
It's like when you buy a used car. You've all been sold the old story that your new car loses 30% of its value blah blah blah. Well I just looked at a 2005 Camry with 51K miles and it cost more than my NEW 2004 Camry, same model. In fact the dealer seemed to be quite proud of the fact that it was only $1800 less than the sticker price of a NEW 2007 Camry. I bet the guy who sold him his 2 year old car got about $10,000 for it if it was in 'excellent' near new condition.
That is 4 carries that you have to make Visual Voicemail work on.
Visual voicemail works fine on any phone with a web browser through Google/Grand Central. I get a voicemail on that system, I can choose to get a call and/or a text, or all the voicemails are listed, visually, on m.grandcentral.com. Doesn't seem too difficult.
Da Blog
lets not go getting all hyped up by the fact that the iPhone has a screen with 4.8% more pixels 36 months later, it's not overly revolutionary.
Agreed. Toshiba's G900 WM6 phone packs in 800x400 pixels into the same size screen as the iphone. Also, some of the (Korean-only) Samsung touchscreen models have haptic feedback for the touch UI. For $600, sorry, $400, I'd expect a little more.
Da Blog
You certainly don't find many devices with the iPhone's feature set in the $0-$100 after contract price range.
Really? No GPS, no tethering, no mem card, no IRda, no real bluetooth PAN, no MMS, no OTA pda syncing, no useful push email, no IM, no tactile feedback. I'm having trouble finding some features, can you point them out?
Da Blog
Well, there is the issue of conspicuous consumption - i.e. carrying around an iPhone shows that you have 600$ to spend on a phone, which sends a signal that you have a lot of money, or you would not be wasting it like that. Now that the iPhone is significantly less expensive, it has lost some of the signal value it used to have, so the people who bought it for the signal are not happy.
I would agree, though, that one should not expect any kind of expensive electronics to hold its value for very long.
Bjarke Roune
It no longer surprises me that the internet is full of gullible fools who can't tell truth from bullshit. Before you immediately believe anything you read, check the sources. When there are none (per this article) you should check the facts. Hell, just check the comments where the authour says it's BS, in between the paranoid anti-zionist rantings. Quote: "Submitted in the spirit of Greg Bacon's classic Israeli PM vows to "Wipe Iran off the Map"", which of course is another bullshit anti-zionist rant piece under the guise of satire.
Remember the $600 dollar price tag of the Moto Razr when it was first launched? What does one go for now? Free perhaps...
I don't understand the fuss. Prices drop as production ramps, and development costs are recouped.
Another non-news worthy story. What exactly is the point of this, companies lower the price on product because they think they are not selling enough and are not meeting sales goals? Wow, please fill is in on some other great insight, oh great and wise masters of the economically obvious. What other revelations will be allowed to discover today for your great book of technology industry insight? That you can use Eclipse to develop Java applications on the Mac? Wow, I had no idea that it was possible and the news is so timely, its only been going on for years. Perhaps we should have a "news" article that Visual Studio makes C# development easy on Windows, or that Linux is an operating system that is PC compatible and could run on your own PC?
I get $100 back, so the cost for buying early is $100. In return, I got 10 weeks additional use of my iPhone. That's about one coffee per day. Using the iPhone has been worth at least that to me over that time period. Eg all the times I've been able to amuse myself surfing, when I needed to wait... Watching "Meet the Press" free while on the Stairmaster... Google maps that have saved me from getting lost several times... Plus the amusement of having the most famous gadget in the world.
It was well worth it, and I'd buy it again...
If you've been following the real estate market lately (we're patiently waiting it out for a reasonably priced first home), the sales of new homes were ALREADY being significantly discounted in many markets. But they didn't appear that way because developers were including fancy schmancy upgrades as opposed to price drops. So the price of the house/condo stays the same, but the new owner gets upwards of tens of thousands of dollars in extras. Yes, a 25% drop in price will impact the neighborhood values, but I would suspect that the areas where they discounted at 25% are due for a major dose of reality anyway. It's just a difference of keeping the price the same and adding extras vs. dropping the price and (I'm guessing) not offering extras.
:)
Upset neighbors who bought a month ago? A lot of people buying right now need to buy for some reason or another, so while they're probably upset, they didn't have much of a choice. Anyone who can help it (in the declining markets) is waiting it out.
In short, in some markets a 25% "fire-sale" might only be a correction to the market value of the home! Yep, we'll keep sitting it out. Note to the vast majority of people: don't count on real estate investments to pay for retirement! Historically, long term gains in the stock market are far better than real estate! Plus it only costs $10 or so to dump a loser and you don't have to deal with a real estate agent!
That's my stand on it, and I paid the $599. It's a lot to spend and I was irritated that the price dropped so much so quickly, but for me it was still worth the original price to have one device that does everything well, rather than two devices that between them have fewer features and one of them is totally worthless (ie, my old Nano plus the piece of shit phone I'd been formerly using).
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
There's a little problem with the situation - if you use some tool to unlock a new IPhone and sign it up on T-Mobile or some other GSM carrier then Apple doesn't get that kickback payment each month. You can be sure that the folks at Apple are very aware of this issue and are watching the situation carefully.
As long as unlocking is a fringe activity then it's probably cheaper to let those few go rather than spend some development dollars working up a "fix". But if IPhone unlocking becomes a mainstream easy-to-buy thing then Apple will shut it down. There's some serious money involved here and Apple isn't going to just let it slip away.
The wise person should assume that in the near future Apple or AT&T will move to stop the revenue leak. It might be fun to speculate about how they'll do it, but do it they will.
If you're buying an IPhone with the plan of unlocking it and using it on another carrier - don't be surprised if it stops working; current unlocks are not a long-term solution.
If $1 will buy everything you need for a day in China, and it takes $50 in the USA, who's getting ripped off?
You need to think about the nature of money a bit.
Deleted
It's not even close to the end of 2008 yet either, so why don't we wait a year and see how it pans out before we declare it a failure?
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
that's the early adopter fee. I've read that Canadians are paying well over $1000 for unlocked iPhones while people in the US bitch about getting only a $100 rebate.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
There's something inherently cute but also very disturbing about someone who gets ripped off, and then decides to hide the shame by defending the ripp-off, and proclaiming he likes to be ripped off again, any day.
Crazy Eddie a la Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/v/4yYGoO5imyY
I can't speak for other countries but in Indonesia, for almost every big transaction (buying car, house, etc), buying in cash is always way cheaper than financing it. 10% discount for cash, compared to 1 year financing, is pretty common.
If you delay pleasure infinitely, the pleasure will be infinite. (YM)
You give away wads of money and in return you get a "HA-HA! Silly fan boy, we knew we could count on you!" pat on the back and a coupon for three packs of iPod socks. http://www.amazon.com/Apple-M9720G-iPod-Sock-Socks/dp/B0006JMX14
I wont even go into ramifications of buying 30$ socks for an inanimate music player.
I dare not think what would happen should MicroSoft or Sony venture such a customer-buggering move.
Thousands of turds shaped like Zunes mailed in for replacement as defective to MS? (If you are reading this and thinking "Oh, jolly good. Now I'm going to make a brown MS product joke!" - You are too late. MS and I both have beat you to it.)
PS3s boxes filled with tarantulas and/or roaches shipped to Sony?
Sony's HQ stoned (bricked?) with bricks with buttons and screen drawn on them with chalk?
But when Apple does that? Oh noooouuuuu...
Then it is hailed by fan-boys (fan-bots?) as "Brilliant Marketing Strategy" or "Quality Customer Relations".
Damn!
And I just got my karma back to Bad from the last time I spoke my mind about Apple and its cult.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It turns out that the article I linked was a satire. Oh well, still a little interesting :-)
The iPhone has a huge margin with or without the price drop. Only taking 30% margin instead of 50% (or whatever the figures are, they're around that order of magnitude) isn't "fire sale" pricing.
$400 x 12 months = $4800 x 4 years = $19200.
While the math works, it doesn't reflect real life. $400 five years from now isn't the same as $400 right now. Let's say you can get a 5%/year return on your cash. So the first car payment you make, one month from now, isn't really $400 in present value, it's only $398.67. But your final payment of $400, due 48 months from now, is only worth $340.95 in present value. So, when adjusted for present value, you're actualy paying the same as $17,715.53 right now. (Ignoring such things as inflation, taxes, the difference in returns available for short term savings versus longer term, and the such.)For period t, we calculate PV = C(t)/(1 + annual rate/(periods per year))^t).
I agree with you 100 percent on this, however, I don't believe you should have posted this under an iPhone heading, I mean seriously. You must under estimate yoruself, because what you just said deserves to be ont he main page. Just a thought.
WWPD - What Would Picard Do?
I'm kinda wondering what the big deal about visual voicemail is.
I mean, I get that the feature is great, and I'd love to have it myself. But it seems to me that it'd be pretty easy for any network to offer it to almost ANY phone, or at least a pretty close facsimile to a large majority.
Phones that can receive audio-video MMS messages have been around for many years. So why not just MMS the recorded voice file directly to the phone, when it's convenient? They already SMS you the notification, why not just send the voice too? Then you can see all your voicemail messages listed individually on your phone, and listen to them at will.
Technically it's better for the network, as the bandwidth cost is lower than playing the message over a voice call, and they can do it at less-than-realtime data rates too. They can still charge for the service however they like, and many customers would pay for the convenience. They could send extra info in the MMS, maybe even a basic speech-to-text summary (for a fee). They could also email it anywhere, as many VoIP providers do now.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
The author conflates several very different phenomenon and then tries to draw a conclusion tying it all to his existing bias. It doesn't wash. The iPhone price drop was planned from the beginning, I guarantee you Jobs planned this out late last year before it was ever announced. $399 was a high price for a cell phone, his brilliant answer, make the price even higher! Then when you drop the price back to the what it needed to be in the first place it suddenly looks like a bargain. AND you get a TON of free publicity for the product again. The guy is a frigging marketing genius, and/or has a number of them working for them. The 'deal of the century' on houses is another thing altogether. That is a company doing something very smart; getting their money back out of houses they have already built, trading away any potential profit for guaranteed not being in the hole. Why? Because the bottom is about to drop out of those markets. Markets like FL aren't anywhere near the bottom yet.
Doesn't seem that difficult for a geek you mean.
If by "difficult", you mean bookmarking "http://m.grandcentral.com" and simply opening a single page to see all your voicemails immediately, or alternatively by reading your SMS message list where each voicemail generates a simple text message with the caller ID details and a single click will play each message then, yes, that seems quite difficult... if you're retarded.
I mean, it takes fully *two* clicks to initialise and play any single text message. My god, when will the horrors of obscure UIs end? Tell me again how many hand waves it takes to send an email to a specific person under Apple's implementation of a touch UI on the iphone?
Da Blog
Having to use your web browser to get your freaking voicemail is just insane.
Almost as insane as claiming that the browser should constitute the entirety of a handheld's "SDK" and implement all of its applications?
I was thinking about how many clicks it took for me to get voicemail, and I realised that 2 was one too many. So I quickly recorded a voice tag ("Visual!"), assigned it to a button and made it open m.grandcentral.com. So now I just push the assigned button to activate my phone's voice interface, say "Visual", and away it goes. Get back to me when Apple implements a voice interface. If you're ever going to use your handheld properly in multiple environments, you're going to need to have a variety of interfaces available. When you are driving, you most certainly do not want to be futzing around with an exclusively visual screen that takes many wipes to accomplish anything. Likewise, if you are in a meeting, you may want to be surreptitious about using your device and so sight-unseen button pushing is key here. But like you, when I can use my screen, I like being able to do everything with just the touch interface, even though it often takes longer to accomplish many tasks than a more goal-directed, macro approach.
Da Blog
$10/week extra for all the utility & fun I got from having the iPhone in the first 10 weeks was well worth it -- *to me*. But this tends to upset the Internet scolds who are invested in the "early iPhone buyers got ripped off" meme.
You really drank the iKoolaid!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That's a bogus comparison. First of all, 3G coverage may be poor where they are. Second, Palm's Blazer browser on PalmOS is 5 year old technology and dog slow; it doesn't get higher speed than that even over WiFi. Third, the Palm is $100 cheaper than the iPhone. Overall, I'd still rather have the 3G Palm than the iPhone (but neither is really great).
I have both an EDGE and a 3G phone... trust me, it's a world of difference. Once Apple ships a 3G iPhone, you Apple fanboys will make fun of everybody who doesn't have 3G.
You are right that it was about import goods, but you are wrong about it not being "about monopoly". As you mentioned yourself, there was only one U.S. memory manufacturer.
Now, if you want to argue that the law ONLY pertains to imported goods, rather than domestic "monopolistic/unfair business practices", that is another matter. Please say so. Then we might be debating something meaningful.
... and put your heads in the sand. As a true Apple fan, I don't hesitate to point out when they F' it up big time.
You don't think? You must not have read much about it then. To anyone who has, they were clearly banking on it. A month into it they were renegotiating contracts attempting to cut production in half. A month after that, they dropped the price 33%. The "revolutionary new product" has been a dud.
No shit!?! Maybe they could sell more phones if they could somehow sell their iPhones directly to customers instead of pairing it with service plans from various vendors. Maybe if the iPhone were somehow unbound from that relationship, unlocked if you will... Man!!! Confused one, that is an AWESOME idea!!! You should tell Apple about that!
...
Friday's close of 144.15 is just off AAPL's all time high. AAPL crashed hard on their last high profile failure. I'm not expecting a repeat performance, but it isn't going to be pretty. We'll see who's flamebait in another month, won't we?
an 8GB flash drive
Correct me if I'm wrong, but apple's phone without serious hacking doesn't support USB Mass Storage and doesn't allow owners to access that 8GB as storage, right? So, what good it is to me? By comparison, my Mogul (HTC Hermes) cost around $120 after activation rebates, has WiFi b/g, bluetooth, mem slot with support for *multiple* 8GB cards, wide touchscreen, slide out tactile kb, widescreen, 3/1 Mbps up/down, browser with flash and streaming video, IMs, Java, IRda, voice interface, and push email. Also, I can run, as an option, a "touch" interface that is pretty, and looks cool, but basically is less efficient for complex tasks than a multi-modal, goal/macro interface.
I'm still not entirely sure why you are dead set on comparing the iphone, a $600/$400 phone, with a $100 phone. If anything, you are making the iphone seem overpriced for what you get, or the $100 phones underpriced. You should compare the iphone with high-end phones such as the LG Prada, the Tosh G900, the HTC Kaiser or Athena, or the Nokia N95. Against those, it's a little anemic and aggressively hostile to owner customisation.
Da Blog
Erm, their goal is to sell 10 million phones in 2008.
Erm, got any links to back that up? The very first sentence in the article I linked to reads:
That sounds an awful lot like one year from launch date to me. I want Apple to do well, but they have to drop their boneheaded position on a native SDK and carrier locked phones. Otherwise, it's doomed to fail. It is failing, I'm telling you why it's failing, and you're still in denial. Being in denial brings no change in policy, ensuring complete and total failure.
You must want Apple to fail. That's all I can conclude. Do you think no SDK, and therefore no apps, is a good thing? Do you think crippled phones are better than fully functional phones? Do you really think anyone is going to happily buy a ringtone when they already own the exact same song on their iPhone? Only if they're a fucking crackhead. These are EXTREMELY retarded positions for Apple to take. Most people aren't stupid. Want to sell phones to most people? Stop treating them like they're stupid.
You want to defend Apple? Fine. Defend Apple. Why should I pay extra for a ringtone on the iPhone when a free RAZR can use any MP3 as a ringtone? Why are there are no games for the iPhone while there are thousands of java games for every other phone on the market? Why can't I send MMS messages on an iPhone? Why can't I capture video on an iPhone? Why can't I share my Vcard via bluetooth on an iPhone? Go ahead. I'm all ears.
I saw Job's introduction in the UK, he stated the 3G chip set consumed too
much power. Already, that iPhone power limitations are frustrating my
friends who already has it.
I also really want GPS... which is still talked about in the blogs,
but (sigh) doesn't seem to be in the immediate future.
Oh well - I'm willing to wait a while longer, but keeping that
iPhone fed is going to be my biggest problem...
No one outside of a small circle in Apple and ATT know what the real deal is. Apple is getting something for the phone and something each month for the service. ATT signed up using a spreadsheet with one set of assumptions. Some suggest Apple gets $200 per phone plus a bit of the monthly service charge. ATT's calculations could never guess Apple would change the equation this big so soon. It's not Apple's normal thing to slash prices. ATT will sell more services, but Apple probably gets a huge iPhone subsidy. I bet Apple took ATT to the cleaners with the deal.
Uhoh, Crazy Eddie is on the loose? Humanity is doomed.
Okay, that is the stupidest thing I've read all week. Including last week, since it's monday. Apple announced that it had sold its millionth iPhone two days after the price cut. How in the world could anyone possibly think that they sold the millionth iPhone because of the price cut?
That's an interesting way to put it, and I've never seen anyone saying it quite as open as this. You don't want a better phone; you just want one with more features. That's why the iPhone is not for you and will never be. I, however, will gladly trade some of my P990i's features for a bit more stability and usability.
Which is why I'll switch to an iPhone. I don't want more features (unless you count usability and reliability as a feature). I want the ones I have to work, and work well.
Is there a good possibility of iPhones for other US GSM networks in the very near future?
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
If one more of you idiots makes these half-assed "conditioning" statements again, I will go completely fucking nuts. Jesus Christ, fire sales? Products that keep getting new features so the price stays up? At least you didn't make some kind of police-state, or privacy reference.
It's, that's neat and all that you've recognized a trend, but it's not conditioning in that context unless you can prove someone is deliberately trying to train or accustom us. Stop using the word because you think the concept sounds cool.
Also, what the FUCK does the F22 have to do with anything? Aircraft development & production & sales are TOTALY different than CE.
I just don't see how the iPhone actually is better. It's shinier, yes, but my SCH-U740 is stable and usable already. I suppose it could stand to take one less button press to find a contact, but that's what voice dialing is for. The music player is ugly and makes poor use of screen space, but I already have an iPod, and I'm not about to replace it with a phone that can only hold 1/3 of my music. Other than that, all the glitz in the iPhone's interface just seems like fixing what isn't broken.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
I listed a few
That's fair enough. I do think that crowing, today, about the iphone having 8GB of memory is a little silly, when next year 8GB of flash will probably cost around $40 and people with current phones *and* memory slots can ust buy a card and pop it in.
Memory cards really extend the useful life of a handheld. I have an old Archos Ondio, a 2002-era flash player that is useful because it runhs the OSS Rockbox and is great for recording. Anyway, when it was released it came with a whopping 128MB of RAM. It now happily supports 4GB via its built-in memory slot and I still get useful work out of it. I can't remember if Apple had Nanos out then, but with their lack of a slot, people are basically stuck with whatever they get and, to upgrade, they need to junk their current and re-buy. Which is, of course, exactly what Apple wants.
Da Blog
If you want to be a rules Nazi, Apple's '08 starts in about a week. Besides, I've been over this until I'm blue in the face. I'm not typing it again. This is established fact. They are averaging about 10K a day @ $400. They were shooting for about 27K a day @ $600 a pop. That's a difference in revenue of $4 Million vs $16 Million... They're coming up $12 Million short per day. That's one billion dollars this quarter. Let's put that into perspective... last year's Q4 revenues were 4.84 Billion. They've dumped all their advertising, effort, and energy into the iPhone and its going to be a billion dollar bust. Why? Because it's locked, with no SDK. That's why. [And don't even start with the sales will pick up on the long end of the year BS. Why do you think they dropped the price and cut production? Sales were not and are not brisk. Period. It's another cube because of their boneheaded position on locking and SDKs.]
Now, since you decided to jump into the fray, care to answer my questions?? Just pretend you're an Apple store employee selling one to someone who might actually want to buy it... I'll copy and paste 'em for ya: Why do I have to pay extra for a ringtone on the iPhone when a free RAZR can use any MP3 as a ringtone? Why are there are no games for the iPhone while there are thousands of java games for every other phone on the market? Why can't I send MMS messages on an iPhone? Why can't I capture video on an iPhone? Why can't I share my Vcard via bluetooth on an iPhone?
Yeah, me too :-)
I just don't see how the iPhone actually is better. It's shinier, yes, but my SCH-U740 is stable and usable already. I suppose it could stand to take one less button press to find a contact, but that's what voice dialing is for. The music player is ugly and makes poor use of screen space, but I already have an iPod, and I'm not about to replace it with a phone that can only hold 1/3 of my music. Other than that, all the glitz in the iPhone's interface just seems like fixing what isn't broken.Well, it's broken for me. What I want from a phone is:
That's not a lot, but all the phones that seem to provide this and that I own (I've owned or currently own a P800, a Treo 650 and a P990i) are crap. The Treo is a pretty nice and usable phone, but it does no multithreading. So if I read something in the browser and then reply to an SMS, the browser forgets where on the page I was. The Symbian phones have multithreading, but they crash. A lot. And when they do, they insult me by telling me that "the phone had to be restarted to improve performance," as if I was too stupid to figure out that it crashed. Furthermore, entering a new appointment takes 14 steps on my P990i. Did anyone actually try using these things? Finally, the P990i is fat. If I put it in my trousers' pocket, it looks like... well, I don't want to go into details.
What Apple does really, really well is:
I have no idea about stability, but so far, I haven't heard any complaints other than Safari crashing from time to time.
Also, it has the neat threaded display of SMS messages, which is a huge plus for how I use SMS.
So I think Apple really nailed what I want from a cell phone.
I have a Treo 700P. Its really that slow in a good area. Its thr browser, Blazer sucks. In any case lack of 3G is a non-event. I'm keeping my first gen iPhone until 2010 at the least.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
The price aint an issue here but its how good the Iphone is. If it aint good enough, the productivity aint going to be good as what people expect. No matter how much the price shoots up, there are gona be people who buys it without knowing the flaw in it.