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Apple Legend Woz Blasts iPhone Price Drop
Stony Stevenson writes "Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak Saturday blasted Steve Jobs' decision to drop the price of the iPhone by $200 just two months after the product was launched. Said Woz: 'Everyone expects technology to drop in price. The first adopters always pay a premium. I am one of them. I am used to that. But that one was too soon, too harsh ... A lot of people from Apple, even a lot of people that worked on the Apple Lisa and Macintosh computers in the beginning now work at Google. The thinking over at Google is very much like early Apple days. The fact that they give people time off to work on their own ideas is exactly matches some of the things that made Apple great. I wish Apple did that.'" We just discussed the price drop last night.
I don't think it's just the loss of $200 that bothers everyone, the price drop also makes the product seem a little less 'exclusive'.
(I'm sure that's not the factor most people would be annoyed about, but I'm sure a fair few people bought it largely as a status symbol.)
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.
I don't get it. What does the price drop on the iPhone have to do with working at Google over Apple? Did the price drop affect the employees of Apple in some bad way, that Google didn't/wouldn't? Are they going to lose their job as a result? The two stories seem completely unrelated.
I.O.U One Sig.
Give me a break. A low price and lack of inventory hasn't hurt the Wii.
This thread has a level of trolling rarely seen. Way beyond the normal fanboy vs anti-fanboy crap. The iPhone is at least "good." Admit that and then criticize and nitpick if you want. Starting arguments by calling it a worthless piece of crap just shows people that you're a very angry troll and that your post is safe to skip. I have an iPhone... my sister doesn't want an iPhone but wants (for some reason) a smart phone. She said it was too hard to use. I gave it to her last weekend to play with and she figured out *almost* everything on her own. She still doesn't want one, but since we need to get her a phone regardless, I did the math for her:
/yr
/yr
We're AT&T customers. She needs more text messages than 200 (around 400 would work). She also needs data.
Including AT&T new customer / upgrade discounts, mail-in rebates, etc, the prices for the phones are:
BlackBerry Pearl: $99.99
BlackBerry 8700: $200
Treo 750: $249
BlackBerry 8800: $300
iPhone 8GB: $399
iPhone is the most expensive choice, right? Not so fast. Add in the annual data and text message charges, you get:
All blackberry models:
Monthly:
BB Internet Service Plan: $29.99
200 text/unlim M2M: $9.99
Annually:
Text: $119.88 (200+unlim/mo)
Data: $359.88
TOTAL: $479.76/yr
Treo 750:
Monthly:
PDA Personal Plan MAX: $39.99 (inc 1500 text & web)
Annually:
Data/Text: $479.88
TOTAL: $479.88
iPhone 8GB
Monthly:
200 text: free
200 more texts: $4.99
Data: $20
Annually:
Text: $71.88
Data: $240
TOTAL: $299.88
Now multiply out the first year of costs, including phone purchase price, data and text:
BB Pearl: $579.75
BB 8700c: $679.76
iPhone: $698.88
Treo 750: $728.88
BB 8800: $779.76
Wow! Surprise, after the 1 year basic costs necessary to use the internet with your smart phone, iPhone is just average cost! But wait, contract length for some of these is 2 years. Even if it weren't, who spends $250 or $300 on a phone that they'll only use for a year? So lets add another year to the cost analysis:
Two-year cost of phones, including purchase price, monthly data, monthly text:
iPhone: $998.76
BB Pearl: $1059.51
BB 8700c: $1159.52
Treo 750: $1208.76
BB 8800: $1259.52
Oh wow! Looks like in the long run, the iPhone is cheaper than other popular comparable options! If you don't text at all, you can remove the text message options, but it doesn't make a difference in the ordering.
STOP THE BITCHING ABOUT HOW EXPENSIVE IT IS!!
iPhone has high UP-FRONT cost, but reasonable and sometimes even CHEAP long-term costs because of it's inclusive plan!
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.