iPhone iNsanity

So, apparently Apple's decided to drop the price on the iPhone (yee gads, it was $600? Just for the phone?).

And apparently the people who went out and bought them at $600 are unhappy, and feel they are entitled to some money back.

I have but one thing to say to them:



HA-ha < /nelsonmuntz >



More seriously: Have you EVER seen a technological item that didn't become cheaper as time went on? My father talks about the first calculator he ever bought (in fact, I believe it was called a "desk calculator," rather than a "pocket calculator," because it was about a foot square). It was about $100, and as I said - about a foot square. A couple years ago, when he renewed one of the newsletters he reads, he got a "freebee" calculator with the renewal - that was more powerful than the $100 calculator from the 70s.

Okay, that's an extreme case. And I suppose the iPhone iPhreaks didn't expect the price to come down quite so fast. But as someone who knows someone who actually WAITED IN LINE to have one of these on the first day and has been subjected to "look at this! look at this! Isn't it cool! Don't you wish you had one?" (answer: no, not really), I'm not that sympathetic to claims that they're due some kind of restitution from Apple.

Back to my father. One of the most valuable pieces of advice (well, one of many) that he gave me over the years was: when you are planning to buy something, ask yourself if it is worth the price to you. If not, find a cheaper alternative or wait and see if the price comes down.

That's why I have the el-cheap-o cell phone offered by my cell-phone company for a penny with my monthly plan. It doesn't have a camera, it won't surf the web. I don't even have text messaging enabled on it - because why would I need to do that? I have a phone. If I need to get in touch with someone I will call them - or I will go to my computer and send an e-mail.

I mainly have the phone so that if my car breaks down when I'm out in the middle of nowhere, I can call someone to come help me. (Although I will admit I've used it more than once to order carry-out ahead as I'm leaving work at the end of the day).

I guess my attitude is this: either you really wanted the iPhone, and so the $600 you paid should be seen as the cost of having a really cool thing before everybody else, or it wasn't worth it to you and you didn't buy it at $600.

But don't demand money back just because "I'm a really big Apple supporter and Steve Jobs OWES it to me!" No, he doesn't. He's in it to make money. Obviously you were willing to help him do it.

This is not like some shady furniture store that sells you a couch one week for $1000 and the next week sells it for $500 without any hint that there will ever be a sale - we all know that the price of technological stuff drops over time.

And even then - if you bought a couch for $1000, it must have been worth $1000 to you at the time. It's not like there's only one couch supplier on Earth, and it's not even like the couch is necessary to the continuance of your life. (Now, if the water company started jacking up prices - without any reason why - and prevented competition, even in the form of bottled drinking water, THAT might be a problem. But we're talking about cell phones, not water.)


And even at the cheaper price, I really don't need an iPhone (nor do I really want one), so I won't be getting one. The little blue Nokia that my cell-phone company issued me is just fine.