Some early iPhone 3G S adopters subject to $200 "Apple tax"

Since last year's announcement of the iPhone 3G, customers have grown accustomed to a price tag heavily subsidized by AT&T. Similarly, the just-announced iPhone 3G S will be offered in a 16GB model for $199 and a 32GB model for $299--but only if you are adding a line to your AT&T service or you are a new AT&T subscriber. Early iPhone 3G adopters seeking to upgrade will face serious sticker shock.

If you purchased an iPhone 3G on or after July 11, 2008, you will not be able to purchase an iPhone 3G S at a reduced price until you reach your one-year anniversary. (We've determined this cutoff by checking a sampling of existing AT&T accounts via AT&T's myWireless Account Web site.) If you want the new iPhone 3G S early, you will have to pay an additional $200 for the hardware, raising the cost of a new iPhone to $399 and $499 respectively. The only alternative to this price increase is to wait for your first iPhone anniversary before buying. On top of the price increase, you will--as expected--have to sign another two-year service agreement.

The pricing history of the iPhone has been tumultuous from the beginning, hitting its pinnacle quickly: $599 for an original 8GB iPhone. Apple and AT&T significantly reduced its price shortly thereafter, angering enough iPhone buyers that Apple gave away $100 rebates to the angry hordes.

Is Apple and AT&T trying to take advantage of loyal customers by releasing the new iPhone 3G S nearly a month before existing customers--many who are loyal and anxious to upgrade--are eligible for reduced pricing? Let us know what you think about this situation in the comments.



Ugh.

to your loyal customers to myself. Makes me just want to keep my iphone 3G until the contract runs out and upgrade then.

The concept of "loyal customer" is a double-edged sword. On one hand, they know you're good for repeat business, so they want to keep you around. On the other hand, they know that you purchase irrationally in their favor (as "loyal" implies you will purchase from them even if something else is a slightly better deal), meaning that they know you are willing to pay more than most people are.

I like Apple, but I've learned that you shouldn't buy anything they make in the first three months; that's when they're concentrating on wringing money out of the early adopters/brand loyalists. Either your new toy will be shoddy/buggy, or they'll cut the price by a few hundred dollars a week after you buy it, or both.

I'll spare you the ugly details. Besides....just pisses me off all over again.

not AT&T. Of all my cell providers, AT&T has been the best to me, but experiences vary so widely for customers.

This is AT&T....and they're getting their cut on the pricing as well.

AT&T.....SUCKS.

One-year anniversary? That's all? No, definitely not crying over this.

Ever since the introduction of the Macintosh it has been the Rodeo Drive boutique of the computing industry.

While I am not an iAnything owner as I detest their pricing policies and lack of flexibility in service delivery, I know that many people just LUVZ anything Apple makes. Without this loyalist base, Apple would find itself defunct.

The only way to get Apple to lower its prices and offer the flexibility of service providers (iPhone owners biggest complaints) is to stop buying the damn things until they get the proper message, that even their most ardent fans will eventually vote with their feet.

But of course... this won't happen.

when I realized I could get a much more powerful piece of hardware for about half- or less than half- the cost.

Somebody here once tried to brag about getting a Mac Mini for "only" $599, and then got all offended when I told them I built a quad core, 4GB RAM, SLI rig for less than $500. They were... displeased with me, but then, getting your illusions shattered usually hurts a lot.

Holy crap, this is nuts. I just went to the Mac Mini Apple Store page and took a look. Here's what they're touting:



I then selected the lower tier, went to their customization page, and became embarrassed for them. $98 for a keyboard and mouse, and the standard one doesn't come with a numeric keypad? Are you kidding, Apple? Really??

Now, just to drive the point home, here's the PC I recently built using TigerDirect (I'm copying from my receipt):



I already had a case, a CD-ROM drive, keyboard, mouse, monitor, and half a terabyte of hard drive space (most PC users already have many of those same items), so those prices weren't included. Still, I basically rebuilt my old PC for a lot less than I could have gotten with a Mac Mini.

Color me unimpressed with the Mac Mini. Just out of curiosity, I next took a look at the Mac Pro page in the Apple Store. That comes closer to what I bought- although still with less RAM and hard drive space, an 18x double-layer drive (why do PC users take 56x or higher as a matter of course?), and its video hardware is nearly identical to mine per their respective NVidia specifications pages- but the base model of the Mac Pro still manages to fall short, and costs five times as much.

Frankly, I'm sad for Apple users. They're paying far too much for the lack of performance... and by their reactions when this is pointed out to them, I think deep down they know it.

Hell, I've still got my Mac 1, and it still works great. While I continue to work and be productive on my six year old eMac, I see my friends having to struggle with crashes, viri, updates, patches, on and on the list goes. Not to mention that PC people seem to have to get a new computer every other year, my Mac is robust enough to last for a decade or more.

You get what you pay for, and overall I think that a Mac is a much better piece of computing machinery.

Most people who own a PC don't know the first thing about computers in the first place. I've tried to tell everyone I know that owning a PC is like owning a car, take care of it, maintain it, and don't do anything stupid with it (like taking a Lamborghini off-roading).

Yet they continue to download everything on the internet, use IE (which no sane PC user with half an ounce of a brain should), and fail to even defrag the drive once in a blue moon. The REASON why PC people get a new computer every other year is twofold.

One is ignorance. I have a PC running XP/Firefox/NoScript and it has done so WITHOUT CRASH, virus, or spy/malware for 5 years straight. My hard drive took a dump once, but that's about it. It was also backed up, another thing your average PC user doesn't do. But most people think that their computer is "borked" when it's really not. They either downloaded a mess of IE toolbars and spy/malware because they clicked on the shiny thing thinking they won a million dollars, or their drive is so fragged up from all of the installing and uninstalling they did when they thought it was messed up that their drive heads are doing the riverdance. They think their PC is slow when it's the ISP that's behind the hardware curve and bogging down. Most PC users think that that thing is a magic box that simply serves them. Computers are tools, and tools require proper care to be at their best. Perhaps Macs are more "idiot-proof", but that's hardly a way to say one platform is better than another. I know a pile of Linux fanbois who will swear by its awesomeness, but I'd love to see an average PC or Mac user attempt to configure a Linux distro. Linux has a few "user-friendly" distros, but they're still beyond the realm of understanding of most average users. However, I hear it is the shizzle once you get it configured up right. So is it better? Again, it seems like a poor place to make the "better/worse" comparison.

Two is gaming. Unlike console game makers, PC game makers are free to use any hardware they like and have it be "minimum spec". Invariably, to increase the "wow" factor, they develop the game on high end gaming rigs and the gamers that luvz them are forced to buy ever more high end hardware just to play them. Since I use consoles for "hardcore" gaming, limiting the PC to just the casual Flash/Java games, my computer is still plenty fast for the current state of the utilitarian universe. It will probably be another five or more before I'd even begin to consider getting a new rig. I may, however, replace the CRT monitor with an LCD flat panel though.

Mac suffers from one thing that prevents it from garnering market share, and that is that there is Apple... and that's it. In a Windows environment, there is Dell, Gateway, and a bunch of other OEMs, ORRRrrrr... if you're feeling saucy... you can buy your stuff a la carte and put it together yourself, or cobble it together from used parts. What Apple makes, from a hardware and software standpoint is not worth what they charge. The only reason they can charge that much is that they essentially have a captive user base and control all of the manufacturing of their products. No competition... no reason to lower the price.

Angry Hordes are #5 on the Billboard Top 10 this week.



Anxious consumers line up for original IPhones (2007)

I am not switching my service so I can have an Iphone. screw that.

You won't get subsidized, of course, so you'll pay for the privilege
of going "SIM-free".

Tesha

(Typed on a Macbook Pro/Safari 4).

Whine a lot.

They go through this argument every time a new model comes out so it's nothing new. It's AT&T's sucky agreement, they are the ones who subsidize the iPhones so it is on them.

Why can't people wait a couple of fucking months?

I... I... I... MUST possess it!!! It contains... mana... and delicious gravy... and the keys to enlightenment... Praise be to Stevus Jobus in Excelsis Deo....

:banghead:

:rofl:

Oh wait, I forgot, Apple is headquartered in CA, not America. Sorry, I got a little confused there and thought we were talking about cars. Carry on.

Boo friggin' hoo.

My old Sprint account wouldn't allow me to get the cheaper deals on new phones unless my previous phone was 2 years old. Getting the nice phones for cheap is usually for new customers, isn't it?

You get a discount if you're eligible for an upgrade, and usually a bigger discount if you're a new account. If not, you don't get the discount ...

What is it with Mac people that makes them spend half their bank accounts on new gadgets?

Why don't these "early adopters" fucking learn from the last hundred times this shit happened?

And I bought my iPhone 3G a week after it was released last year, and I bought the first version a year earlier.

If others are eligible for upgrade a year into their contracts, and I have to wait an additional six months, ATT is going to catch some hell from me.