Letters to the Editor
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Now that's better
Now give me CANDY! NOW! :-)
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/outrageous!!!111!!one
Shoulda been $200.
No. Wait. Shoulda been $300.
$500!
One meelyun!
Wahhhh! Apple sux!
:P
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Oh come on....
So everyone complained about the high price (notice they bought the phone anyway). Apple lowers the price, people complain again about how much they paid the first time. And now Apple gives them money back!?!?
This is absurd. Is Microsoft going to give money back to all the folks who bought an X-box 360 when it was 450 now that it's down to 350? How about the games when they go from $50 to $25?
Sorry folks, but depreciation and price changes are a fact of life. Business uses them all the time to generate sales. Everyone KNEW the phones would come down in price. You pay a premium to be the first person on the block with the new toys. If you didn't want to pay the premium, you should've waited until the thing was affordable. But I don't get money back on my Blackberry because the price came down for the holidays.
And did you ever stop to think there's precious few things in the Apple store that cost under $100? So they're STILL going to make money on this deal. Jos is a freaking genius.
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credit
(a) Microsoft won't give refunds because they are Microsoft. And the product was out for a resonably long time before the price cut
(b) Apple has gotten a lot of free advertising out of the early adopters (I can't tell you how many people have played with my iphone, but it is a lot, including many complete strangers). Those of us who adopt early (this is my third time buying an apple product on day 1) know the risks involved. But we trust Apple because they have a habit of making solid products and taking good care of their customers when things do go wrong so it isn't as risking as early adopting is with other companies. But a 33% price cut after 2 months isn't the way Apple normally does business and felt like a slap in the face to a lot of us.
(c) yes, Steve Jobs is smart. By giving 100$ store credit Apple will certainly have many customers come in and spend more than 100$. But a lot of us, myself included, will probably purchase things we were already intending to purchase and may purchase things that we had decided not to purchase b/c we were angry at Apple.
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Jobs caves
What a crock. If you bought an iPhone when they came out and honestly thought the price wasn't going to drop -- and soon -- you're exactly the sort of sucker who deserved to overpay for this device.
Granted, it's a store credit rather than a refund (which will increase Apple's sales, in the end), but it's ridiculous that Jobs felt he needed to throw a bone to these whiners.
What's next? A bail-out of everyone who got in over their heads because they didn't read the fine print on their subprime mortgages?
Stupidity should come with a price. In this country, it seems that all too often we're willing to forgive people for being morons.
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Babies got their bottle!
Now just wait for further complaints when the little babies only get an Apple Store credit. "Waaaaah, I can only spend my free money at the Apple Store?!" Kudos to Steve, this'll work like gangbusters.
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tsk
i don't buy overprice apple crap in the first place, but i just lost a little respect for steve jobs and his merciless overcharging-the-rubes strategy.
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wow. you folks just don't get it!
it's not that the price dropped! it's that the price dropped significantly and quickly for no reason other than to garner sales!
it did not drop because of a breakthrough in production.
it did not drop because it is a different device.
any of you would be angry about a product you bought that had a 33% lower price just 6 weeks later.
it was BAD marketing to do this.
only tech-o-philes subscribe to this early adopter stuff. normal people on the street do not. if the phone was only for techies, market it to techies, not the general public.
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A little help here...
Farhad, I think you're a pretty good reporter and I generally enjoy reading your column, but, the, uh, making moon eyes at Apple is getting a little embarrassing, isn't it?
I can't tell if the "best tech exec ever" and "Oh, isn't that man just dreamy?" comments are intended to be tongue-in-cheek or not, but I can tell you your column would be taken more seriously by more people if you went about it with a little more professionalism and a little less pre-pubescent excitability.
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@ Anomymous
While I do agree with much of what you say, I don't think early adoptors of technology are morons. It takes a bold and forward looking person to spend $600 on a new and untested piece of electronics. They understand that there is risk associated with that, and future price drops are a part of that risk.
What Apple has done is to buy additional loyalty from they early adoptors for the price of $100. It is a great move, and it will pay dividends far beyond Apple's cost on that store credit.
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It can't be
This couldn't have been - uh, what's the word I want? Oh, yeah - planned, could it?
I mean even Steve Jobs wouldn't have been so crafty as to make an announcement he had to know would upset several hundred thousand customers, having already decided what he would do to make them feel like his company cared about them, right?
And he wouldn't have realized that he would get a huge second day bounce from the announcement of the lower iPhone price by waiting a day to disclose his plans, since every story will have to report both the store credit and the price decrease, would he?
No, it isn't possible. It couldn't be. It just couldn't.
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I'm calling Sony!
My first DVD player was, like, $400 and now you can buy those things for, like, $70! Friggin' gyp!!!!
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Get $200 Cash Back — Really
I can't imagine anyone swooning over a $100 store credit.
The really interesting thing is that Steve Jobs apologia doesn't mention that if you bought an iPhone in the 10 days before yesterday's price cut, Apple's policy is to give you the total price difference back. That is, if you bought the phone since August 26.
See this link:
http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/salespolicies.html#topic-15
But you have to move fast: You only have four days after the price cut to claim your full cash rebate — that is, until this Sunday.
Curious that Jobs was full of contrition and self-congratulation as he issues a store credit, but fails to mention that recent buyers are entitled to real money back.