Apple IPhone Whiners!

So Apple is now slashing the price of the Iphone by 33%.  Read about it here on Fast Company’s blog.  A bunch of people who just couldn’t wait to get theirs are now upset with Apple and Steve Jobs because they feel they paid too much in June for theirs.  Tough!  It’s called the free market system.  Get over it.

I said in the early going that the IPhone was overpriced and too expensive to operate.  It’s the reason I avoided the fancy ads and the gushing of people with far too much money on their hands lining up in the early morning hours for a phone!  Let’s see, I already had an MP3 player, I had a decent cellphone I had just purchased last December, and I have wireless internet available to me everywhere I go to work on my laptop.  Why on earth would I need to run out and purchase this when I could go waaaayyy cheaper with a blackberry (if I even wanted to spend that much?).  Efficiency isn’t measured by how expensive and up to date your gear is.  Efficiency is measured by how you get things done!  An Apple Iphone could definitely up the productivity quotient in your life but it could also keep you right where you are if you’re lazy.

In any event, Steve Jobs heard the whining after the announcement so now he going to give every early buyer (through Apple or their exclusive carrier AT & T) $100 in Apple stuff to make it up to them.  Yea, you can go in and get some new headphones for the old IPod you don’t use any more because of your cool phone. Maybe you can get a charging stand for some other item.  Pick up some Apple stuff today!

My thought when I read this was “So he’s giving in?”  I mean, anyone who’s in business can do what they want but why reward people for overpaying for their technology?  These people were foolish enough to purchase them on the day of their release…they wanted them badly enough to wait a loooong time for them.  They chose to part with some of their hard earned cash to trade it for a product they thought would make them ‘tre chic and now, they want free stuff because the thing isn’t selling well because it was overpriced to begin with.   To tell you the truth, I have yet to see anyone using one of these phones though my AT & T store assures me many have been purchased.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not knocking Apple.  I love their PC’s and Notebooks.  The next computer I buy may very well be an Apple though I’ve not decided just yet.  I think Apple hit a note with their “I-Pod” brand of digital music players and now, they are cool again.  But the IPhone wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.  Sure it looks great on those TV ads.  I love the one where the guy looks up a seafood restaurant online after watching “Pirates of the Caribbean” on the little screen.  But I could tell right away this was going to be a pricing nightmare.  When you break it down, I’m not going to pay that much for a phone and all of the related add on costs to make it work to its full potential on the AT & T network.  It’s just too much.

Hopefully, the nuts who purchased these things early and the whackos who really paid too much on Ebay the day afterward realize that technology is fleeting.  These first IPhones could very well end up with the Apple Newton on the tech heap.  Remember the Newton?  The 1993 PDA that could do it all but never caught on.  I’ve thought about buying one of those on Ebay for $10 or so just to have one again.  They were great technology but rarely used and are largely forgotten in today’s marketplace.

I guess Apple’s worried about losing customers but for me, I sit and grin with my trusty little Samsung phone that’s still clicking for much cheaper…Oh yeah, and my MP3 player, A SanDisk model I purchase at Comp USA for under $80, is doing just fine with my audio book collection!