It is simply good practice to voice a reasonable opinion.
It was not a reasonable opinion. It was trying to blame Apple for a decision that they (the whiners) made.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tutumiles1
What I do not understand is why many have such a negative and vile reaction to people who felt taken advantage of
It's because you were not taken advantage of. You had the choice to not buy an iPhone. If you didn't think is was worth $599 to you when you bought it, why did you buy it, and if you did think it was worth that to you, why are you complaining now? You've still got the same iPhone you've always had.
I advantage of. You had the choice to not buy an iPhone. If you didn't think is was worth $599 to you when you bought it, why did you buy it, and if you did think it was worth that to you, why are you complaining now? You've still got the same iPhone you've always had.
This is true.
But at the same time I have sympathy for the whiners, and here's why.
The iPhone was overpriced, intentionally, to capitalise on the demand it would achieve on its release. This is so Apple could make a lot of money. A big one-off windfall, and pretty sharpish. Now, that's business. Apple is a big company that makes consumer products, like Sony, say, or Nike, and has no more obligation to its customers than they do. It's a big multinational brand and it exists to make money. If there was ever any doubt of that, clearly there's none any more.
The first people to buy the iPhone were shafted, if you like, by a company chasing money. But most of these people are the same people, let's call them 'fanboys', who love the company the most, each one a walking advert for Apple. They got shafted for Apple's, well, greed, let's call it, and it's a bit of a PR disaster.
I don't think Steve Jobs is really that concerned, and judging by his comments immediately afterwards it's pretty obvious. He's the CEO of a big consumer company. But he had to do something; it's cool he was brave enough to do it, but he had to do something.
I now find myself angry at Apple because of the pricing drop and rebate offer for early adopters ( I am one ) of the iPhone. So I have lost trust. I have lost the feeling that a new version is better than the last.
And exactly what new version of one of these products was not better than the last?
Seriously, we're going to have to dig into a thesaurus to find words with more depth than whiner or cry-baby.
Either you don't get the fact that the only assured path for AAPL back to $20 would be the departure of Jobs, or this post is an alias for Ballmer.
First of all the put down of those who complain neglect to realize that good consumers complain and help make better products and companies. If there was no reaction to companies output, they would not improve. Apple learned a lesson here as well as the consumers. Apple learned they can take advantage of their fanboys and the fanboys learned it is costly to have a close allegiance. I have gotten over my distaste, but Apple ultimately lost as any true student of marketing knows it is the early adopters that are pivotal to long term business success. Price drops alone do not build great companies.
If MicroSoft or the other manufacturers of phones and MP3 players were looking for an opening, it exists temporarily and we will see what the future holds. This game of phones and devices is not over by a long shot. Yes, I brought the phone for $600 and I can well afford it but principle matters in spite of the harse response to those who felt betrayed. Electronic mediums allow for ballsy comments but rudeness is not necessary.
It was done most of the time...After you recover the R&D cost, you can "dog fight" with your competitor on price war (slash 30-50% is common...Way to go Steve!
huh?
the threads title is "Apple to offer early iPhone adopters $100 credit" and my question was if apple ever did that before.
The first people to buy the iPhone were shafted, if you like, by a company chasing money. But most of these people are the same people, let's call them 'fanboys', who love the company the most, each one a walking advert for Apple. They got shafted for Apple's, well, greed, let's call it, and it's a bit of a PR disaster.
You have claimed to agree with me, and then demonstrated that actually you don't. Which is it? No-one was "shafted" by Apple. That is far too strong a word. Shafted would be being sold a phone for $599, which then broke after two months and Apple refused to replace or fix it. No one got shafted because they got and still have what they paid for, it still works the same (actually, a couple of features have been added, so it works better than when they bought it).
I just wonder if anyone here on the complaining list would go back to Target or Best Buy two months later to get 10 dollars back on the DVD they bought, after the price has dropped.
I would doubt they would get anywhere.
Consider yourself lucky Apple is giving you complainers anything!
Actually, I thought MarcUK summed it up extremely well.
Nothing at all wrong with the word "greed." But you might want to process the word "context"....
(But, since you thought it was all summed up rather well by MarcUK, I assume you had no issues with any of the remaining words as well -- why bring up only "greed?")
If more people complained about corporate behavior, we would not have to be theorizing about market behavior, Enron's, oil companies, and the like.
Interesting observation! It is often surprising to me how most of us act like sheep when it comes to being stockholders, taxpayers, and consumers...... i.e., the attitude of "gee, that's the way the system is, that's what you signed on to, so shut up and suck it up."
Because at the time I thought that was the only word you'd highlithted that was not either a swear word or "unsophisticated", if you like. It was only afterwards that I noticed that you'd also highlighted "lack of perspective".
Well, I don't get why you highlighted that, either. You highlighted words and then commented "nice vocabulary ", implying that he could have been chosen better words. The swearing, I understand but disagree, the others, I don't even understand.
I was one of those calling people whiners, and I don't see how this changes anything. First they did not give a refund, they gave you a credit for a future sale. A future sale on which they will still make several hundred dollars from you.
Or get Leopard, as pointed out by someone else for $29. Or iWorks free plus a remaining credit. Or a vNano for $50.
Quote:
Originally Posted by k2director
Way to go, Apple. It's a smart business decision, and the right thing to do.
A smart decision they could have anticipated making in advance rather than in the face of a maelstrom that didn't have to happen (see my comments below).
Quote:
Originally Posted by rrightm
Agreed. In fact, this may be the case where Steve Jobs has actually made chicken salad out of chicken shit. Indeed, he probably had this planned out. Needed to cut the price to gdrive sales to meet expectations. He knew it would seriously piss of his "loyal" customers. Let the press eat up the screaming of these customers for a day. Then, comes out with his "open letter" offering an olive branch which apparently is enough to placate most.
I just became more impressed with Jobs, not because of the goodness of his heart, but rather because of what appears to be shear cunning and marketing savvy. Interesting.
I present for your inspection, ladies and gents, another member of the "Steve had it all planned out" club. Steve hired Scully because he knew Scully would oust him so he could start NEXT because he always planned to bring Unix back to Apple after the company nearly went over the cliff, and he had the iPod in his head before the first Bondi iMac hit the shelves, etc. C'mon. "'Shear (or even sheer) cunning," my sweet paootie. Apple was navel-gazing at their cool spreadsheets of the new nicely-segmented new price points across the iDevice line, and then back-pedaled quickly when the crap started to stick to their image. Again, more below, but the Stevester, while arguably the most fascinating business exec in generations, is NOT infallible and all-seeing all the time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by peve
i can't recall that apple did something like this ever before.
can any longtime apple-user in here confirm that?
I've been following the company since day one and in my memory Apple's never done anything like this before with a piece of new, hot-selling hardware (Aperture's pure software and the situation isn't analogous for several reasons). And certainly never for the same reasons. They did make some thrashing about desperation moves during the Jobless areas, however.
As for all of you apologists who say the rebate (or whatever you want to call it) was planned from the first:
This teapot tempest will pass, but it was handled clumsily, since the reaction was totally foreseeable. The frakkin' iPhone's only 8 weeks on the market and the cut is huge in relative terms. Had the coupons been announced as "one more one more thing" in gratitude "all you early iPhone buyers," since we're so far ahead of our expectations, DURING the event, it would have been seen as far-sighted and generous by the great majority of early iP owners, and as an indication that Apple's already paid off their "production experience costs," and is accepting the rosy iSuppli predictions, thus soothing both customers and market analysts at once.
THAT would have been "sheer cunning." (But he does deserve make-up credits by breaking his stubborn Steve image to stop the bleeding within hours.)
Of course WE know that the cut has as much to do with with a simple pricing strategy as much or more than the above, although Apple probably HAS recovered -- or is on track to recover their R&D and other ramp-up costs very early in the game, and the iPod Touch will further help since it utilizes most of the same exact technologies by and large, and we know its sales are going to be off the charts since those technologies are already a success out in the wild and don't require a "relationship" with AT&T.
A three hundred dollar premium for a device that adds mostly only phone functions above what the iPod Touch now offers just didn't fit any longer into a line that stair steps up in neat $50 increments from vNano through the iPod Touch, and NOT cutting would have hurt iPhone sales.
One can also conjecture that Apple either did second-guess itself with the initial iPhone pricing, wanting to make sure they didn't eat the bag if sales were sub-par ...or... were a wee bit more aggressive than usual on the margins on their hyper-hyped new baby until they had to reveal the disparity with the intro of the iPT.....
..so whereas a $499 8GB initial iPhone price and a $100 cut would have raised a few eyebrows, the $200 cut with no sop rattled loyal buyers' cages and caught the attention of analysts who understand what price cuts mean when AMD is sitting on subpar inventory, or when Intel's been leapfrogged by AMD, but NOT what they mean inside the marketing strategies of Cupertino.
"Then Larry tells me that if we're really going to stick with this rebate on iPhone, we ought to make up for it by announcing a retroactive price hike on the Mac Mini, and everyone who bought one of the new models that we introduced a few weeks ago is going to get their credit card billed for an extra hundred bucks because it turns out we priced the product too low and we just figured that out and sorry but it's something we have to do. He's like, Brilliant, right?"
...and to keep the credit card companies that offer price protection happy. AE, and others sure did not like eating a 200/phone cost that customers were rightfully requesting.
Maybe apple should've kept the price at $600 bucks for another year, that way people who bought it first wouldn't complain about a price drop
and american express would not refund the price difference on a product for a customer. where the heck did you get that idea from?
I present for your inspection, ladies and gents, another member of the "Steve had it all planned out" club. Steve hired Scully because he knew Scully would oust him so he could start NEXT because he always planned to bring Unix back to Apple after the company nearly went over the cliff, and he had the iPod in his head before the first Bondi iMac hit the shelves, etc. C'mon. "'Shear (or even sheer) cunning," my sweet paootie. Apple was navel-gazing at their cool spreadsheets of the new nicely-segmented new price points across the iDevice line, and then back-pedaled quickly when the crap started to stick to their image. Again, more below, but the Stevester, while arguably the most fascinating business exec in generations, is NOT infallible and all-seeing all the time.
First, so sorry for spelling the word "sheer" incorrectly. It seems to have put your knickers in a bunch. Maybe you'll get over it.
Second, I was only suggesting that Steve (and/or his execs) had this planned out prior to the announcement of the price drop. I was not remotely suggesting that he had this planned out as far back as when he was learning to eat solid foods, walking around in his black shirt and denim-pants-diapers. Get a grip. I am saying that Steve probably had this planned out well before he determined that the price on the iPhone would be reduced (and some time after June 29th). He's obviously a genius at marketing and thus I do not think it is beyond his ability to plan something like this. I thought it was brilliant as the last couple of days have done nothing but give Apple free press on the major networks.
Third, what's a paootie, oh spelling-genius of the AI forum?
Not necessarily. Steve Jobs is smart enough to know that the Apple fan base doesn't forget...anything. There are STILL people pissed that the Cube and Newton were discontinued. I think he understands that businesses aren't businesses without customers. They might take a hit on this now, but in the long run it will bode FAR better for them.
I personally am okay with buying a good or service for a higher price if I know the company is going to take really good care of me. That's why I use a Mac in the first place.
I'm one of those still annoyed about the Newton, but may forgive SJ now that the iPod Touch has become Newton 2007, even though it doesn't run 6 weeks on a fresh set of batteries...
But remember when he dumped the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh for $1500 (down from $8500) in one of Apple's first online fire sales? ahhh... good times... still love the way it looks and to this day i've never heard a computer that sounds as good...
Having been a loyal Apple customer for years- buying new hardware and software when first delivered because I trusted the company and loved the constant improvement in function- I now find myself angry at Apple because of the pricing drop and rebate offer for early adopters ( I am one ) of the iPhone. So I have lost trust. Apple products and Steve Jobs are less attractive. I have lost the feeling that a new version is better than the last. I now question Apple's motives- they have lost track of their customers. This is the beginning of Apple's fall from grace as a brand. The magic has gone. Jobs did the wrong thing three times. When he allowed the iPhone pricing to be so high in the first place, when he reduced the price and told everyone "Tough" and when he changed his mind and and offered the iPhone rebate. Yes you are damned if you do and damned if you don't - this the price of such a major management error. Unfortunately, It is time for Steve Jobs to step aside. Hopefully the board will take action.
If one thing good has come from this saga it is that it hopefully clears away this kind delusional thinking once and for all (although we all know it cannot be completely eradicated).
"Loyalty"? Of course you shouldn't buy Apple products out of "loyalty." What a dumb reason to buy anything. Be loyal to people you love, not companies that make things out of plastic. If you're going to buy something from Apple - or any company - buy it because it is worth more to you than the money it costs, and because it makes your life better to own it.
"Trust"? If anything, this saga should build not erode trust. You can trust that Apple is trying to make products people will like, and are priced to maximize profit. When strategic, you can trust that Apple will lower prices to increase sales. There. Now you know you can trust them to behave like a company, not your bestest buddy since, you know, that's what they are.
"Attractive"? "Apple products and Steve Jobs are less attractive"? Apple products and Steve Jobs are exactly the same this week as last week, except for all those new iPods which are more not less attractive than the models they replace. If you let extraneous reasons prevent you from judging products in and of themselves, then you will buy the wrong stuff. Unlike Soylent Green, Apple's computers are not made out of people, and shouldn't be confused for them. If you like something, buy it. But don't buy it because there's some invisible fuzz that makes you all warm and gushy about them or some concocted fiction that you attach to the company. As for how attractive SJ is to you... I'll leave that one alone.
"Motives"? You question Apple's motives? Here's the answer: make great products that customers will want to buy and will enjoy using, and make lots of money for shareholders. Those are Apple's motives.
"Magic"? "The magic is gone"? There never was any magic. It's a combination of vision, talent, work, production, marketing, and distribution. It's not about magic and never was. If you want magic, read Harry Potter. If you want a great laptop, buy an Apple. If you are looking for magic in Apple, and dissapointed when you don't find it, it is because you are looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place.
This whole saga illuminates just how anachronistic your mindset has become. Apple is a thriving company serving a growing market by riding the transformational wave in our society from industry to information. It is not about loyalty or magic. It is about providing increasingly sophisticated technological tools to a society increasingly organized around them.
The "fanboy population" and its discontent, once the core, is now the periphery. And Apple, to its credit, is less dependent on them. The niche that buys iPhones in the first 24 hours doesn't matter. It's the mainstream population that will buy iPhones over the next 10 years that does.
The only people who have been doing the shafting, are the consumers who bought a $600 mobile phone.
They shafted themselves.
Clearly reading through these posts, we do see some level headed iPhone purchasers who realise that they paid a $200 exclusivity fee, which they judge to be worth it. Thats fine.
Ok, if you're a 15 year old kid who worked at mcdonalds all summer to buy the most expensive phone on the planet in order to be the coolest kid in class, I might feel some sympathy for you because you do not have the life experience to realise that there is a high price penalty for being cool. If this experience is the first time this has happened to you. Im sorry you wasted your summer, but that is the way the world works. Get over it, shut your mouth and engage your brain in a bit of reflective contemplation. Learn something from it and get on with life, and dont repeat the experience again.
For everyone else... This boils down to nothing but Greed and lack of self control. No understanding of reality and no perspective. Its totally expected from a nation of self-gratifying shallow losers.
If you didn't value the phone at $600 when you bought it, that begs the question of why the hell did you buy it?
Fact. There are very few people who need a $600 phone. Probably no-one. You bought it because it was cool, and you wanted to buy into that coolness. You got exactly what you wanted, what you knew you were getting and you handed over the money. You had two and a half months of flashing, gloating, feeling special, looking cool.
And when the truth comes out, you can still do all of those things and your phone still does all of the things it did when you bought it.
But the real issue here is that what the phone is, or what it does is irrelavent. The reason we have been inundated with whiners, is that people bought the phone so that they can brag "Look at my $600 phone". Thats all there is to it, and that is why they are upset.
They just lost a chunk off the bottom of the prop that holds up their shallow, insignificant lives, where the only measure of self-worth for them is an inflated price tag for a completely extravagant item.
Now that is gone, the feelings off worthless insignificance come creeping back and they default to being the whining losers they always were.
But dont blame them! Thats the state of the worthless society they live in.
End of story. Shut up. Period.
Now does any one want to hear my story of buying a Q6600, only to have it drop by $300 a month later. No. And you wont hear me moaning about it either, because I paid for what I wanted, I knew the price, I knew price cuts were coming, BUT I decided it was worth it at the price I paid. So I handed over my money and got on with it - after sitting out the first 6 months of its release waiting and showing self control for the price to drop to a level where I thought it was worth it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hassan i Sabbah
But at the same time I have sympathy for the whiners, and here's why.
The iPhone was overpriced, intentionally, to capitalise on the demand it would achieve on its release. This is so Apple could make a lot of money. A big one-off windfall, and pretty sharpish. Now, that's business. Apple is a big company that makes consumer products, like Sony, say, or Nike, and has no more obligation to its customers than they do. It's a big multinational brand and it exists to make money. If there was ever any doubt of that, clearly there's none any more.
The first people to buy the iPhone were shafted, if you like, by a company chasing money. But most of these people are the same people, let's call them 'fanboys', who love the company the most, each one a walking advert for Apple. They got shafted for Apple's, well, greed, let's call it, and it's a bit of a PR disaster.
I don't think Steve Jobs is really that concerned, and judging by his comments immediately afterwards it's pretty obvious. He's the CEO of a big consumer company. But he had to do something; it's cool he was brave enough to do it, but he had to do something.
Comments
It is simply good practice to voice a reasonable opinion.
It was not a reasonable opinion. It was trying to blame Apple for a decision that they (the whiners) made.
What I do not understand is why many have such a negative and vile reaction to people who felt taken advantage of
It's because you were not taken advantage of. You had the choice to not buy an iPhone. If you didn't think is was worth $599 to you when you bought it, why did you buy it, and if you did think it was worth that to you, why are you complaining now? You've still got the same iPhone you've always had.
I advantage of. You had the choice to not buy an iPhone. If you didn't think is was worth $599 to you when you bought it, why did you buy it, and if you did think it was worth that to you, why are you complaining now? You've still got the same iPhone you've always had.
This is true.
But at the same time I have sympathy for the whiners, and here's why.
The iPhone was overpriced, intentionally, to capitalise on the demand it would achieve on its release. This is so Apple could make a lot of money. A big one-off windfall, and pretty sharpish. Now, that's business. Apple is a big company that makes consumer products, like Sony, say, or Nike, and has no more obligation to its customers than they do. It's a big multinational brand and it exists to make money. If there was ever any doubt of that, clearly there's none any more.
The first people to buy the iPhone were shafted, if you like, by a company chasing money. But most of these people are the same people, let's call them 'fanboys', who love the company the most, each one a walking advert for Apple. They got shafted for Apple's, well, greed, let's call it, and it's a bit of a PR disaster.
I don't think Steve Jobs is really that concerned, and judging by his comments immediately afterwards it's pretty obvious. He's the CEO of a big consumer company. But he had to do something; it's cool he was brave enough to do it, but he had to do something.
I now find myself angry at Apple because of the pricing drop and rebate offer for early adopters ( I am one ) of the iPhone. So I have lost trust. I have lost the feeling that a new version is better than the last.
And exactly what new version of one of these products was not better than the last?
Seriously, we're going to have to dig into a thesaurus to find words with more depth than whiner or cry-baby.
Either you don't get the fact that the only assured path for AAPL back to $20 would be the departure of Jobs, or this post is an alias for Ballmer.
(BTW folks, ixnay about the oothtay airyfay)
If MicroSoft or the other manufacturers of phones and MP3 players were looking for an opening, it exists temporarily and we will see what the future holds. This game of phones and devices is not over by a long shot. Yes, I brought the phone for $600 and I can well afford it but principle matters in spite of the harse response to those who felt betrayed. Electronic mediums allow for ballsy comments but rudeness is not necessary.
It was done most of the time...After you recover the R&D cost, you can "dog fight" with your competitor on price war (slash 30-50% is common...Way to go Steve!
huh?
the threads title is "Apple to offer early iPhone adopters $100 credit" and my question was if apple ever did that before.
The first people to buy the iPhone were shafted, if you like, by a company chasing money. But most of these people are the same people, let's call them 'fanboys', who love the company the most, each one a walking advert for Apple. They got shafted for Apple's, well, greed, let's call it, and it's a bit of a PR disaster.
You have claimed to agree with me, and then demonstrated that actually you don't. Which is it? No-one was "shafted" by Apple. That is far too strong a word. Shafted would be being sold a phone for $599, which then broke after two months and Apple refused to replace or fix it. No one got shafted because they got and still have what they paid for, it still works the same (actually, a couple of features have been added, so it works better than when they bought it).
I would doubt they would get anywhere.
Consider yourself lucky Apple is giving you complainers anything!
huh?
the threads title is "Apple to offer early iPhone adopters $100 credit" and my question was if apple ever did that before.
Yes, with Aperature.
Why do people forget that it was priced high initially too, was priced dropped and a rebate was given to early adopters then too.
There's something wrong with the word "greed"?
Actually, I thought MarcUK summed it up extremely well.
Nothing at all wrong with the word "greed." But you might want to process the word "context"....
(But, since you thought it was all summed up rather well by MarcUK, I assume you had no issues with any of the remaining words as well -- why bring up only "greed?")
If more people complained about corporate behavior, we would not have to be theorizing about market behavior, Enron's, oil companies, and the like.
Interesting observation! It is often surprising to me how most of us act like sheep when it comes to being stockholders, taxpayers, and consumers...... i.e., the attitude of "gee, that's the way the system is, that's what you signed on to, so shut up and suck it up."
why bring up only "greed"?
Because at the time I thought that was the only word you'd highlithted that was not either a swear word or "unsophisticated", if you like. It was only afterwards that I noticed that you'd also highlighted "lack of perspective".
Well, I don't get why you highlighted that, either. You highlighted words and then commented "nice vocabulary
I was one of those calling people whiners, and I don't see how this changes anything. First they did not give a refund, they gave you a credit for a future sale. A future sale on which they will still make several hundred dollars from you.
Or get Leopard, as pointed out by someone else for $29. Or iWorks free plus a remaining credit. Or a vNano for $50.
Way to go, Apple. It's a smart business decision, and the right thing to do.
A smart decision they could have anticipated making in advance rather than in the face of a maelstrom that didn't have to happen (see my comments below).
Agreed. In fact, this may be the case where Steve Jobs has actually made chicken salad out of chicken shit. Indeed, he probably had this planned out. Needed to cut the price to gdrive sales to meet expectations. He knew it would seriously piss of his "loyal" customers. Let the press eat up the screaming of these customers for a day. Then, comes out with his "open letter" offering an olive branch which apparently is enough to placate most.
I just became more impressed with Jobs, not because of the goodness of his heart, but rather because of what appears to be shear cunning and marketing savvy. Interesting.
I present for your inspection, ladies and gents, another member of the "Steve had it all planned out" club. Steve hired Scully because he knew Scully would oust him so he could start NEXT because he always planned to bring Unix back to Apple after the company nearly went over the cliff, and he had the iPod in his head before the first Bondi iMac hit the shelves, etc. C'mon. "'Shear (or even sheer) cunning," my sweet paootie. Apple was navel-gazing at their cool spreadsheets of the new nicely-segmented new price points across the iDevice line, and then back-pedaled quickly when the crap started to stick to their image. Again, more below, but the Stevester, while arguably the most fascinating business exec in generations, is NOT infallible and all-seeing all the time.
i can't recall that apple did something like this ever before.
can any longtime apple-user in here confirm that?
I've been following the company since day one and in my memory Apple's never done anything like this before with a piece of new, hot-selling hardware (Aperture's pure software and the situation isn't analogous for several reasons). And certainly never for the same reasons. They did make some thrashing about desperation moves during the Jobless areas, however.
As for all of you apologists who say the rebate (or whatever you want to call it) was planned from the first:
This teapot tempest will pass, but it was handled clumsily, since the reaction was totally foreseeable. The frakkin' iPhone's only 8 weeks on the market and the cut is huge in relative terms. Had the coupons been announced as "one more one more thing" in gratitude "all you early iPhone buyers," since we're so far ahead of our expectations, DURING the event, it would have been seen as far-sighted and generous by the great majority of early iP owners, and as an indication that Apple's already paid off their "production experience costs," and is accepting the rosy iSuppli predictions, thus soothing both customers and market analysts at once.
THAT would have been "sheer cunning." (But he does deserve make-up credits by breaking his stubborn Steve image to stop the bleeding within hours.)
Of course WE know that the cut has as much to do with with a simple pricing strategy as much or more than the above, although Apple probably HAS recovered -- or is on track to recover their R&D and other ramp-up costs very early in the game, and the iPod Touch will further help since it utilizes most of the same exact technologies by and large, and we know its sales are going to be off the charts since those technologies are already a success out in the wild and don't require a "relationship" with AT&T.
A three hundred dollar premium for a device that adds mostly only phone functions above what the iPod Touch now offers just didn't fit any longer into a line that stair steps up in neat $50 increments from vNano through the iPod Touch, and NOT cutting would have hurt iPhone sales.
One can also conjecture that Apple either did second-guess itself with the initial iPhone pricing, wanting to make sure they didn't eat the bag if sales were sub-par ...or... were a wee bit more aggressive than usual on the margins on their hyper-hyped new baby until they had to reveal the disparity with the intro of the iPT.....
..so whereas a $499 8GB initial iPhone price and a $100 cut would have raised a few eyebrows, the $200 cut with no sop rattled loyal buyers' cages and caught the attention of analysts who understand what price cuts mean when AMD is sitting on subpar inventory, or when Intel's been leapfrogged by AMD, but NOT what they mean inside the marketing strategies of Cupertino.
"Then Larry tells me that if we're really going to stick with this rebate on iPhone, we ought to make up for it by announcing a retroactive price hike on the Mac Mini, and everyone who bought one of the new models that we introduced a few weeks ago is going to get their credit card billed for an extra hundred bucks because it turns out we priced the product too low and we just figured that out and sorry but it's something we have to do. He's like, Brilliant, right?"
...and to keep the credit card companies that offer price protection happy. AE, and others sure did not like eating a 200/phone cost that customers were rightfully requesting.
Maybe apple should've kept the price at $600 bucks for another year, that way people who bought it first wouldn't complain about a price drop
and american express would not refund the price difference on a product for a customer. where the heck did you get that idea from?
AI will refund you half of the time you wasted reading whiners on the forum. However, you must spend all refunded time on future AI threads.
I'm redeeming the refund right now! thanks AI, you're the best!
I present for your inspection, ladies and gents, another member of the "Steve had it all planned out" club. Steve hired Scully because he knew Scully would oust him so he could start NEXT because he always planned to bring Unix back to Apple after the company nearly went over the cliff, and he had the iPod in his head before the first Bondi iMac hit the shelves, etc. C'mon. "'Shear (or even sheer) cunning," my sweet paootie. Apple was navel-gazing at their cool spreadsheets of the new nicely-segmented new price points across the iDevice line, and then back-pedaled quickly when the crap started to stick to their image. Again, more below, but the Stevester, while arguably the most fascinating business exec in generations, is NOT infallible and all-seeing all the time.
First, so sorry for spelling the word "sheer" incorrectly. It seems to have put your knickers in a bunch. Maybe you'll get over it.
Second, I was only suggesting that Steve (and/or his execs) had this planned out prior to the announcement of the price drop. I was not remotely suggesting that he had this planned out as far back as when he was learning to eat solid foods, walking around in his black shirt and denim-pants-diapers. Get a grip. I am saying that Steve probably had this planned out well before he determined that the price on the iPhone would be reduced (and some time after June 29th). He's obviously a genius at marketing and thus I do not think it is beyond his ability to plan something like this. I thought it was brilliant as the last couple of days have done nothing but give Apple free press on the major networks.
Third, what's a paootie, oh spelling-genius of the AI forum?
Else
Shut the f up and go be an immature f.moron crybaby somewhere else. Better still, have a think about the lessons above.
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Last edited by audiopollution : Today at 08:46 AM. Reason: Language
Geez. When are ppl going to let the blind rage go?
Might make more sense if it was over something where lives were on the line, like the Iraq war. But over a rebate/pricing strategy? Pfft.
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Not necessarily. Steve Jobs is smart enough to know that the Apple fan base doesn't forget...anything. There are STILL people pissed that the Cube and Newton were discontinued. I think he understands that businesses aren't businesses without customers. They might take a hit on this now, but in the long run it will bode FAR better for them.
I personally am okay with buying a good or service for a higher price if I know the company is going to take really good care of me. That's why I use a Mac in the first place.
I'm one of those still annoyed about the Newton, but may forgive SJ now that the iPod Touch has become Newton 2007, even though it doesn't run 6 weeks on a fresh set of batteries...
But remember when he dumped the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh for $1500 (down from $8500) in one of Apple's first online fire sales? ahhh... good times... still love the way it looks and to this day i've never heard a computer that sounds as good...
Having been a loyal Apple customer for years- buying new hardware and software when first delivered because I trusted the company and loved the constant improvement in function- I now find myself angry at Apple because of the pricing drop and rebate offer for early adopters ( I am one ) of the iPhone. So I have lost trust. Apple products and Steve Jobs are less attractive. I have lost the feeling that a new version is better than the last. I now question Apple's motives- they have lost track of their customers. This is the beginning of Apple's fall from grace as a brand. The magic has gone. Jobs did the wrong thing three times. When he allowed the iPhone pricing to be so high in the first place, when he reduced the price and told everyone "Tough" and when he changed his mind and and offered the iPhone rebate. Yes you are damned if you do and damned if you don't - this the price of such a major management error. Unfortunately, It is time for Steve Jobs to step aside. Hopefully the board will take action.
If one thing good has come from this saga it is that it hopefully clears away this kind delusional thinking once and for all (although we all know it cannot be completely eradicated).
"Loyalty"? Of course you shouldn't buy Apple products out of "loyalty." What a dumb reason to buy anything. Be loyal to people you love, not companies that make things out of plastic. If you're going to buy something from Apple - or any company - buy it because it is worth more to you than the money it costs, and because it makes your life better to own it.
"Trust"? If anything, this saga should build not erode trust. You can trust that Apple is trying to make products people will like, and are priced to maximize profit. When strategic, you can trust that Apple will lower prices to increase sales. There. Now you know you can trust them to behave like a company, not your bestest buddy since, you know, that's what they are.
"Attractive"? "Apple products and Steve Jobs are less attractive"? Apple products and Steve Jobs are exactly the same this week as last week, except for all those new iPods which are more not less attractive than the models they replace. If you let extraneous reasons prevent you from judging products in and of themselves, then you will buy the wrong stuff. Unlike Soylent Green, Apple's computers are not made out of people, and shouldn't be confused for them. If you like something, buy it. But don't buy it because there's some invisible fuzz that makes you all warm and gushy about them or some concocted fiction that you attach to the company. As for how attractive SJ is to you... I'll leave that one alone.
"Motives"? You question Apple's motives? Here's the answer: make great products that customers will want to buy and will enjoy using, and make lots of money for shareholders. Those are Apple's motives.
"Magic"? "The magic is gone"? There never was any magic. It's a combination of vision, talent, work, production, marketing, and distribution. It's not about magic and never was. If you want magic, read Harry Potter. If you want a great laptop, buy an Apple. If you are looking for magic in Apple, and dissapointed when you don't find it, it is because you are looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place.
This whole saga illuminates just how anachronistic your mindset has become. Apple is a thriving company serving a growing market by riding the transformational wave in our society from industry to information. It is not about loyalty or magic. It is about providing increasingly sophisticated technological tools to a society increasingly organized around them.
The "fanboy population" and its discontent, once the core, is now the periphery. And Apple, to its credit, is less dependent on them. The niche that buys iPhones in the first 24 hours doesn't matter. It's the mainstream population that will buy iPhones over the next 10 years that does.
They shafted themselves.
Clearly reading through these posts, we do see some level headed iPhone purchasers who realise that they paid a $200 exclusivity fee, which they judge to be worth it. Thats fine.
Ok, if you're a 15 year old kid who worked at mcdonalds all summer to buy the most expensive phone on the planet in order to be the coolest kid in class, I might feel some sympathy for you because you do not have the life experience to realise that there is a high price penalty for being cool. If this experience is the first time this has happened to you. Im sorry you wasted your summer, but that is the way the world works. Get over it, shut your mouth and engage your brain in a bit of reflective contemplation. Learn something from it and get on with life, and dont repeat the experience again.
For everyone else... This boils down to nothing but Greed and lack of self control. No understanding of reality and no perspective. Its totally expected from a nation of self-gratifying shallow losers.
If you didn't value the phone at $600 when you bought it, that begs the question of why the hell did you buy it?
Fact. There are very few people who need a $600 phone. Probably no-one. You bought it because it was cool, and you wanted to buy into that coolness. You got exactly what you wanted, what you knew you were getting and you handed over the money. You had two and a half months of flashing, gloating, feeling special, looking cool.
And when the truth comes out, you can still do all of those things and your phone still does all of the things it did when you bought it.
But the real issue here is that what the phone is, or what it does is irrelavent. The reason we have been inundated with whiners, is that people bought the phone so that they can brag "Look at my $600 phone". Thats all there is to it, and that is why they are upset.
They just lost a chunk off the bottom of the prop that holds up their shallow, insignificant lives, where the only measure of self-worth for them is an inflated price tag for a completely extravagant item.
Now that is gone, the feelings off worthless insignificance come creeping back and they default to being the whining losers they always were.
But dont blame them! Thats the state of the worthless society they live in.
End of story. Shut up. Period.
Now does any one want to hear my story of buying a Q6600, only to have it drop by $300 a month later. No. And you wont hear me moaning about it either, because I paid for what I wanted, I knew the price, I knew price cuts were coming, BUT I decided it was worth it at the price I paid. So I handed over my money and got on with it - after sitting out the first 6 months of its release waiting and showing self control for the price to drop to a level where I thought it was worth it.
But at the same time I have sympathy for the whiners, and here's why.
The iPhone was overpriced, intentionally, to capitalise on the demand it would achieve on its release. This is so Apple could make a lot of money. A big one-off windfall, and pretty sharpish. Now, that's business. Apple is a big company that makes consumer products, like Sony, say, or Nike, and has no more obligation to its customers than they do. It's a big multinational brand and it exists to make money. If there was ever any doubt of that, clearly there's none any more.
The first people to buy the iPhone were shafted, if you like, by a company chasing money. But most of these people are the same people, let's call them 'fanboys', who love the company the most, each one a walking advert for Apple. They got shafted for Apple's, well, greed, let's call it, and it's a bit of a PR disaster.
I don't think Steve Jobs is really that concerned, and judging by his comments immediately afterwards it's pretty obvious. He's the CEO of a big consumer company. But he had to do something; it's cool he was brave enough to do it, but he had to do something.