Why Apple's iPhone Upgrade Program Is a Bad Deal For Most

Mark Wilson writes: You may have heard that Apple had a little get together today. There were lots of big launches — the iPhone 6S, the iPhone 6S Plus, and the iPad Pro. Those waiting for an iPhone fix were given quite a lot of get excited about, but like your friendly local drug dealer, Apple has a 'sweetener' to help ensure its customers just keep on coming back for more: the iPhone Upgrade Program which lets you upgrade to a new iPhone every year as long as you keep paying each month. On the face of it, it might seem like a good deal — particularly as the price includes Apple Care — but is that really the case? What Apple's actually doing is feeding the habit of iPhone junkies, keeping their addiction going a little bit longer, and a little bit longer, and a little bit longer. In reality, Apple would like you to perma-rent your iPhone and keep paying through the nose for it. Ideally forever.

Comments

Re:Get used to it, this is the future

[CastrTroy]

Personally I'm OK with paying for a music subscription. There's so much music out there, that I couldn't hope to own even a tiny fraction of the good stuff if I was buying everything by the album. Music services cost about $10 a month. For that I'd be lucky if I could buy a single album every month. After 10 years of buying 1 album a month, I would still only have 120 albums. That's a pretty small selection of music as far as I'm concerned. Esepcially when you consider that you wouldn't always select the best option 100% of the time. After 10 years, probably only 80% (96) of the albums would be worth listening to. And that's being generous as far as how good I am at picking up albums. Then there's the problem of multiple good albums coming out in the same month. Do you buy 3 albums one month, and spend a lot of money, leaving you with no new albums for the next 2 months? Or you could just pay $10 and have access to just about everything.

Right now, my only complaint is that they don't have absolutely everything. I think there would be a decent market for a service that cost $20 and had absolutely everything, but the music labels won't let that happen. It would probably even be a good deal at $30. Same goes for Netflix. I would probably pay many more times the current rate if they had everything. $40 or $50. Most people were/are paying more than that for cable already, and they still weren't getting everything.

I think that all media bought on subscription is a pretty good deal, provided it makes it cheaper to access more. Personally I don't ever tend to read a book more than once, because it takes so much more time than any other kind of media, and there's just so much good content out there. I really don't see any value in owning a book.