Forums | MacLife

DukeofNuke wrote:

MB38 wrote:

Imagine buying a car and having its value drop 33% in 10 weeks.  Or a computer.  Or whatever.  If you bought late, sure.  But if it was brand-smurfing-new?

As I understand, the value of a new car drops thousands of dollars the moment you drive it off the lot.

I'm really sorry you guys got burned by the price drop. Really! ( )

That's a poor analogy.  Anything drops in value when it's used v. new.  This is a difference in the price of NEW models.

Prices drop, and that's just the biz - still, I don't think anyone thought the price would drop so soon, and by so much.  I'd be kinda pissed if I bought one, too.

With electronics and technology, you always run the risk of buying something then having it either drop in price or have a new model with a lot better specs and features for the same price shortly thereafter.  You buy when having the item matters more than having the money required to purchase it.  Crying about it later and acting indignant like the company has committed some moral outrage is just ridiculous.

Can I get in on this lawsuit too!???! Only I want to sue MICROSOFT because i bought a  zune 3 days ago!!! and they dropped the price by 20% yesterday!! smurfs!

Did anyone else notice that it says on Apple's website:

Apple Website wrote:

8GB iPhone priced at $399 for this holiday season

Notice how it says "for this holiday season" as if they might raise the price after the holiday season.

Honestly I think we will see a new iPhone model released at MWSF and it will have 3G and push the price back up to at least $499.

Frank

Czachorski wrote:

Gimmee a frickin break - I just finished a 5 page, 3-day thread on how Apple's prices were too high for christ sake.  So lowering it is bad too?  Funny.

Exactly.

The people that are going to be extremely delighted by this (me) FAR outweigh in every metric to Apple the people that Apple has pissed off by this.

Daniel wrote:

Alright Apple...it took you two months and one week to obsolete my 4GB iPhone,

what, doesn't it work anymore?

Why is this stickied? I mean it's a funny read but nothing that we didn't know was going to happen. I must admit the price drop has come sooner than expected, but it was expected.

Some people may be unhappy about the "early adopter tax", but they didn't have to pay the "guinea pig penalty" - apart from the activation mess on AT&T's end in the beginning - they got a product that worked out of the box as advertised.

Putting so many component features together, and having them work together without a hitch - touchscreen, phone, video and audio playback, wifi, Edge..., it was pretty amazing.

I also suspect that Apple did the price drops and iPod Touch release so soon to trump other companies that are opening new DRM free music stores online to compete with iTunes, and releasing competing phone/video player products for Xmas.

The people we should weep for are the Zunies.

Czachorski wrote:

MacAddict4Life wrote:

This us the kind of F-you I expect from Microsoft, not from Apple.

Apple Board Room Discussions:   Hey, let's really f-over our customers - send them the really f-you - we can lower prices!

Gimmee a frickin break - I just finished a 5 page, 3-day thread on how Apple's prices were too high for christ sake.  So lowering it is bad too?  Funny.

If people feel taken advantage of and screwed over, then that's enough for this to be messed up. If we were talking about just 6 months here, I would shrug and say wow... $100 more off than I expected. But to happen this quickly... well it basically says to me "you worked extra hard to get the newest and support the company... and $200 off for everyone else is your reward."

I'm trying to keep this in perspective, frankly my iPhone IS worth $600 and if I wasn't willing to pay that I wouldn't have bought it at that price point. But what those of you mocking and frowning upon people who feel taken advantage of... well that's not very considerate of you at all. If I said "I hope something like this happens to you!" that would not be nice of me. Well it's the same thing. "Too bad! Get over it!" is just not helpful when people feel (rightly so or not) taken advantage of.

MacAddict4Life wrote:

Czachorski wrote:

MacAddict4Life wrote:

This us the kind of F-you I expect from Microsoft, not from Apple.

Apple Board Room Discussions:   Hey, let's really f-over our customers - send them the really f-you - we can lower prices!

Gimmee a frickin break - I just finished a 5 page, 3-day thread on how Apple's prices were too high for christ sake.  So lowering it is bad too?  Funny.

If people feel taken advantage of and screwed over, then that's enough for this to be messed up. If we were talking about just 6 months here, I would shrug and say wow... $100 more off than I expected. But to happen this quickly... well it basically says to me "you worked extra hard to get the newest and support the company... and $200 off for everyone else is your reward."

I'm trying to keep this in perspective, frankly my iPhone IS worth $600 and if I wasn't willing to pay that I wouldn't have bought it at that price point. But what those of you mocking and frowning upon people who feel taken advantage of... well that's not very considerate of you at all. If I said "I hope something like this happens to you!" that would not be nice of me. Well it's the same thing. "Too bad! Get over it!" is just not helpful when people feel (rightly so or not) taken advantage of.

I think the point is that you did get something for your $200. You got to be the cool kid on the block for 2 months. Does it suck that they lowered the price that quickly, sure. But do any of you think that Apple knew they were going to reduce the price by $200 this quickly when they released the iPhone? I don't think they had this planned for the past two or three months. I think that it was probably a combination of factors that allowed this to happen:

1) The price of components changed
2) The price point on the iPod touch was decided and the iPhone didn't look like it was worth double the price just to add the phone capability.
3) They have almost sold their 1 millionth iPhone already and this has allowed them to recoup the R&D costs faster than they originally estimated.
4) Nokia and others have announced possible competing products recently and they want to cut them off at the pass.
5) They are simply going in for the kill. They realize based on what they though and now has been confirmed by customer satisfaction surveys that they hit a homerun here and lowering the price will allow them to lock up a much bigger portion of the market than even they predicted.

So yes it sucks. But new products are constantly released and prices can change in the tech world. We know this and it happens even faster with cell phones than it does with other products so you do need to just suck it up. Look at almost every other huge cell phone release and you will find that the price dropped significantly within 2-4 months after the original release. That is pretty standard. Heck, I think my Treo was available for $100+ less than I paid just a few months after I bought it but I bought it when I did because I needed a new smartphone (changed jobs) and if I didn't think it was worth the money then I wouldn't have bought it.

Frank
Frank

robco wrote:

Great, they lowered the price. Now if they would only drop the exclusivity with AT&T.

And buttons. Make a version with buttons. Real buttons.

Buttons? Really? Which buttons would you like to see? I hope you're not referring to a keyboard because that is one of the reasons the iPhone is so nice. I'd trade my Treo (w/buttons) for an iPhone in a minute if it worked on the Sprint network.

Frank

I paid $4.99 for Vortex, and now they're giving it away!
I WANT MY MONEY BACK, WITH INTEREST!





Or, just give me an iPhone!

Last edited by DukeofNuke (2007-09-06 12:54 pm)

I'm not going to drop $400 on a device to try out the keyboard for a week to see if I get the hang of it. I'm faster on my RAZR and it doesn't even have a real keyboard. I've also used Blackberries and Treos without a lot of problems. Of course the people who bought it are happy with it. The people who don't like it haven't bought one.

Apple made a choice, I don't have to like it. It's going by the usual Apple assumption that one way of doing things works for everyone and is the best for everyone. Personally, I don't want to have to haul the device out of my pocket, look at the screen, swipe to unlock and then tap the on-screen button when all I want to do is skip to the next song. Apple gambled, I'm not sure it was a great gamble. A small, simple play/pause button and a ffwd/rew rocker switch along the side would be sufficient and would hardly mar the iPhone's design.

I'm not saying they should ditch the current iPhone, but consider offering an alternative. They didn't kill off the other iPods with the introduction of the iPod touch. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple were working on alternate, less expensive and smaller models.

In addition, the iPhone needs Exchange support. Good Exchange support. Without it, it's useless to me as that's all the company uses. We've standardized on Blackberry for that reason.