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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.'"
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."
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.
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.
Stop throwing the 120million number out there. Thats two different carriers who each own half of. For that number to mean jack, fucking, shit, we would have to assume that both carriers would support the phone as AT&T is (Visual Voicemail for instance). Good, fucking, luck, with that. They are doing what they always do right now, they start with the biggest share they can (while keeping as much control as possible in case issues arise), and once the ball gets rolling and they are damn well ready they roll their hardware to everyone. Once the iPhone is proven with AT&T Apple will then be able to request just about anything they want from the other carriers. Don't want to play ball with Apple? Ok, we'll make a press release about it, and see more of your subscribers jump ship.
Seriously, stop bitching because you chose any company but AT&T, and suddenly want an iPhone.