Apple iPhone

[MrBern]

price drop

full nytimes report
breakdown:
"People who had rushed to buy the Apple iPhone over the last two months suddenly and embarrassingly found that they had overpaid by $200 for the year’s most coveted gadget.

Yesterday, in a remarkable concession, Steven P. Jobs acknowledged that the company had abused its core customers’ trust and extended a $100 store credit to the early iPhone buyers.

Mr. Jobs said the cuts were precipitated by a desire to build demand aggressively for the product in the coming holiday shopping season. Analysts, however, wondered if it was indicative of sagging demand for the expensive phone."

 

[matei]

Methinks the aforementioned analysts have their heads up their collective back passage.

If they read any of the Mac user forums, they would see that Steve Job's $100 offer was very, very well received - and dispelled a large part of the ill-will that appeared after the price-cut announcement.

They would also notice that even amongst the Apple diehards that there is still strong demand for the iPhone - not everyone had that money to spend at the product launch, some are still saving up.

Even if the demand does wane in the US, it is still very high outside the US where the product hasn't been launched yet.

Any way you analyse the move, whether it was calculated to win over more fans or a genuine reaction to the negative feelings generated by the discounted iPhones, it was a PR master stroke.

 

[Salv]

Now this is what I want - the iPod touch. An iPhone-like iPod without the phone and camera, but with 8GB or 16GB of storage and wifi web browsing. This is the video iPod that I've been waiting for.

 

[HamletJSD]

I read an analyst (before the iPhone was released) who was pleading with people not to buy into the hype ... he said this is not the only, the cheapest, or even the best, iPhone-like device that will come out within 6 months. In other words, if he is right there still might be an upgrade in the near future. He was at least correct that it didn't take long for the price to change ...

If I could just get my hands on one of the iPhones that will work on T-mob

 

[Samsa]

If they read any of the Mac user forums, they would see that Steve Job's $100 offer was very, very well received - and dispelled a large part of the ill-will that appeared after the price-cut announcement.

I was actually on of those forums last night, and a lot of people were quite angry, despite the refund.

 

[Twitch]

Never seen ANYTHING drop proportionately so much in so short a time. Can you say "rip off" boys and girls? Just proves there are suckers born with each passing moment.

 

[Samsa]

Never seen ANYTHING drop proportionately so much in so short a time. Can you say "rip off" boys and girls? Just proves there are suckers born with each passing moment.

I'm not quite sure what people were expecting, really. One of the reasons I didn't buy an iPhone was because I simply knew a better, cheaper version would be released before Christmas.[huh]

 

[Shaul-Ike Cohen]

It's still too expensive for what it gives. Now, it's $2000 instead of $2100 for something where other brands and systems are better and more user-friendly. The high price I wrote isn't by mistake - you have to add the compulsory long-term AT&T contract even if you don't need it, and which doesn't simply cover your still additional phone and data costs even if you happen to need a new contract right now.

 

[Feraud]

On a positive note.. I am looking forward to seeing the touch screen technology filter down to our everyday lives.

 

[Samsa]

It's still too expensive for what it gives. Now, it's $2000 instead of $2100 for something where other brands and systems are better and more user-friendly. The high price I wrote isn't by mistake - you have to add the compulsory long-term AT&T contract even if you don't need it, and which doesn't simply cover your still additional phone and data costs even if you happen to need a new contract right now.

I don' think that's entirely fair. When buying lots of phones you need to factor in the cost of a contract. It's not like those two years are a "hidden cost" that sneaks up on people.

 

[Bebop]

What kind of refund is it when you have to use it to buy more Apple product? It's S.J's underhanded way of telling his customers he knows how stupid they are. Why not charge $1000 for a phone and then give everyone a $900 credit towards any other Apple product to make things "fair"?

 

[Hemingway Jones]

I say it's the price you pay for getting it first.

It is a standard practice to offer things for more money out of the gate. Look at the Mazda Miata, it had a $10K dealer markup when it first came out. Is anyone asking for a refund of that? They should be!

Many other electronics are big money in the first versions and the price often falls radically. Have you seen the declining prices for HDTVs lately?

If you look earlier in this thread, many people said that they would wait for the price to come down in the second version and this was reported widely in the media. There was an expectation that the price would come down.

As for me, $400 is just about what I would pay, so I think it is a fair price. I am still holding out for more memory and hoping my old phone lasts until Christmas when the 3rd version probably arrives, or shortly thereafter.

 

[Shaul-Ike Cohen]

I don' think that's entirely fair. When buying lots of phones you need to factor in the cost of a contract. It's not like those two years are a "hidden cost" that sneaks up on people.

Yes, but when you read you can get an (unbranded, no-contract) HTC Touch for $479, people will compare it to $399 for an iphone, not to $2000.

 

[Samsa]

Yes, but when you read you can get an (unbranded, no-contract) HTC Touch for $479, people will compare it to $399 for an iphone, not to $2000.

What are they going to do with a touch phone and no phone contract, though?

 

[Shaul-Ike Cohen]

What are they going to do with a touch phone and no phone contract, though?

Use the one they currently have, instead of paying both for the time of overlap. The latter is typically between 0 and 24 months.

 

[MK]

.

So...how many members here own this gadget? How is it as a phone? How is the battery life?

 

[HamletJSD]

I say it's the price you pay for getting it first.

It is a standard practice to offer things for more money out of the gate. Look at the Mazda Miata, it had a $10K dealer markup when it first came out. Is anyone asking for a refund of that? They should be!

Many other electronics are big money in the first versions and the price often falls radically. Have you seen the declining prices for HDTVs lately?

If you look earlier in this thread, many people said that they would wait for the price to come down in the second version and this was reported widely in the media. There was an expectation that the price would come down.

As for me, $400 is just about what I would pay, so I think it is a fair price. I am still holding out for more memory and hoping my old phone lasts until Christmas when the 3rd version probably arrives, or shortly thereafter.

BINGO Mr. Jones ...
Just as in people paying $??K dollars on eBay for the first PS3s ... sort of an artificial price mark-up (since not from Sony itself), but still an example of what people pay for the privilege of having the best first.
I think they're crazy to spend that kind of dough on brand new technology, but to each is own.

You've got to stick by your decisions. People seriously griping about Apple ought to be asking God for a refund, since He short-changed them in their attic.

That being said, if I had plenty of largess laying around untouched, I might have jumped on the iPhone at whatever price they asked ... because it looks really cool

 

[HamletJSD]

After a few minutes of thought ... that God comment may have been a bit much
I know myself well enough to admit that I might also be complaining if I had purchased an iPhone and then been told it was $200 overpriced.

I'd like to think, though, that I would be beating myself over the head, not Mr. Jobs.

 

[scotrace]

So...how many members here own this gadget? How is it as a phone? How is the battery life?

Did you see that this morning's iPhone software update causes the user's skin to turn green at the first cheeseburger joke they tell...

:icon_smil

 

[Salv]

I got an iPod Touch a couple of days ago, and it has quickly become my favourite gadget ever! I bought a 16GB model, which gives me 14.84 GB of usable space. I have 10.5 GB of music - which is 2845 songs - about 3GB of photos - 4673 - and just under 1GB of video files, including 22 music videos I downloaded from YouTube and a film called The Loveless, which I ripped from a DVD, and which looks surprisingly good on the 3.5" screen.

The browser is excellent, and the wifi antenna is quite powerful - I get strong reception at home and in my garden from my wifi router, and I'm at work at the moment and I've picked up a signal from the hotel across the road.

The only thing missing was the facility to keep text notes, which all other iPods have had. I keep a series of text files with details of my record collection on my old iPod, so if I'm vinyl shopping I can check if I have a particular 45 or album. There's a clumsy Touch workaround involving creating a new contact and adding a text note to the contact, but that is severely limited in terms of size. However, while browsing through the forums at http://www.macrumors.com/ I came across a link to a mini app which converts various file formats to Safari data URLs (a concept I had never heard of before...) http://www.insanelygreattees.com/news/?p=51 - apparently all the data in the file is saved within the Safari URL itself, and there is no seperate data file. Genius! It was developed for the iPhone but works just as well on the iPod Touch.

This is infinitely better than the old iPod text note facility, so even if Apple implement notes on the Touch I won't bother with them. I pasted the record collection data from its original AppleWorks database into an Excel spreadhseet and saved that to my Touch, but it was enormous and took ages to load. I then broke it down into several smaller files of between 100 and 150 lines and saved them to the Touch: much faster! I added a London Underground map that I had as a .pdf, and I'm going to experiment with maps of central London, the UK motorway network, New York streets and subways and anything else I can think of. The comments on the developers page show that some users have saved books in .pdf format to their iPhones, making the iPhone an ebook reader. Given that a Mac can convert any printable file to a .pdf the possibilities are endless.

So ... a fantastic gadget, and IMHO the best iPod ever.