Fuck You, Apple

I bought an iPhone on August 17th for $599. Yesterday, nineteen days after I bought it, Apple dropped the price to $399. I’m really, really pissed. There’s a difference between a $50 initial price cut and dropping the price by a third straight off–I would have shrugged it off if this price cut had been $50, $75, or even $100.

I was fully expecting the price to drop eventually. I thought it would be a hundred bucks after six months, followed by another fifty here and there for the next year or so. As it turns out, Apple simply decided they’d rather just screw over all of their most loyal early adopters. They offered a product at an initially very steep price, fleecing anyone willing to pay it, then immediately reduced it by a third to pick up everyone else.

What does Steve Jobs have to say about this? “It’s technology.”

No, Steve, it’s not. It’s greed, and it’s a really excellent way of losing the trust of your customers. I had been eagerly awaiting the purchase of a MacBook once OSX 10.5 arrived, but now I’m going to go with another manufacturer. You fucked me, and now you don’t get any more of my money.

I’ve already tried calling AT&T to see if they’d offer a refund or a credit to my bill–they wouldn’t. I tried calling my bank to see if there are any consumer protections or price adjustments available on my debit card–there aren’t. Next up is calling Apple, then dropping by the AT&T store where I bought it for a “friendly chat.”

Update: Steve Jobs apparently received so many angry responses that he posted open letter to all iPhone owners. Apple is now offering a $100 credit towards any purchase in any Apple retail store, their online store, or iTunes.

Cynically, I can’t help but wonder if this entire fiasco and subsequent apology had been planned from the beginning. Even with this “generous” offer from Apple, they still stand to keep a minimum of $100:

• Since very few Apple products are $100 or less (the iPod Nano starts at $149, for example), Apple will receive an extra $49 from the sale.

  This, by the way, is why retail stores love to sell you gift cards: in order for you to fully redeem a card, you nearly always have to spend more than its value. If Aunt Millie gives you a $25 gift card to JC Penny for Christmas, you may have to pay $32 for jeans and a tshirt because the tshirt was only $19. Either that, or the store simply keeps Millie’s extra six dollars.

  If you use most of the credit without going over, Apple keeps your money.
  If you go over, you end up paying Apple even more money.

• Even if the entire $100 is spent on iTunes, only around $66 goes back to the copyright holder. (And only about $6 of that actually goes to the artist.)

  So Apple is really only giving up about $33.

• Some people simply won’t use the credit at all.

  And Apple keeps all $200.

• By only offering this credit to early adopters, Apple has picked out the cream of their client base–people who have money, and are willing to spend a lot of it on Apple products. By offering the credit to this very specific demographic, they know these people are much more likely to over-spend the credit, ala point #1.

Anyway, I still feel like Apple screwed me a bit, but I may end up using the credit toward that MacBook anyhow. Preplanned or not, I appreciate that Steve Jobs was willing to apologize for such a dick move.

And on that note, I apologize to all of you for whining about my ultra-premium phone.