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It has been said that there's no such thing as bad publicity . . . but this SJ/Apple move comes perilously close, methinks.

Early Adopters,
While I feel your pain and the $200 price drop is truly remarkable for Apple, you have to accept that things like this may happen when you live on the bleeding edge of technology.

I'd like to hear more people applaud Apple for their 14 day price drop policy. That is certainly in line with many other businesses (tech and non-tech) and is not something that they are compelled to do. Anyone who bought their iPhone more than two weeks ago and gets anything out of Apple should consider themselves extremely lucky!

In other words, stop your bitchin'!

@ Damacles

truly. In the long run it makes sense, but a risky move.

quit whinning and buy some AAPL, your 200 will come back in no time

Only to those who don't understand how the consumer electronics marketplace works. Those are the only people who could take offense to what has transpired.

Just buy a Zune or other SmartPhone with media player and you can see your 200 bucks was worth it.

Good for Apple! Now that they're gonna be selling so many phones and making so much money, they can afford to give back the $200 that they've fleeced from us loyal customers.

I've learned my lesson, and I've been a sucker. I'll take responsibility for my actions.

But NEVER AGAIN will I purchase an Apple product on day one.

As a life-long Apple/Mac user and loyal customer, my brand loyalty has been tarnished.

I'm an early adopter. At first, I felt a tweak of pain with the announcement, almost like a spurned lover. But then I realized this past summer with my iPhone has been awesome. Met a lot of ladies with this phone! I guess soon it won't be quite as much of a status symbol, and that is good. I'm glad that more people are gonna be able to afford it. It's really amazing, and I'm sure this will be even more of a switcher device than the iPod could ever hope to be.

This price cut is a clear symptom that the new Apple is not the old Apple. In Scully's, Spindler's, (et al) day, they would have milked the fat profit margins for years on the iPhone. Now, they are going for the jugular of the competition (and probably still making some pretty good margins.)

I honestly don't see anything that the competition can hope to get to market in the next year that will come close to Apple's iPods and iPhones. I mean, look at the Zune now. A week ago, it looked passé. Now it looks downright retarded, like someone wearing a three-piece, polyester leisure suit to a tropical luau.

Nokia, Motorola, Sony, Creative, MS, Real, etc. are gonna have a lot of coal in their stockings this Christmas.

The greatest thing with the iPod Touch is...

..you don\'t have \"Big Brother\" cohorts AT&T;and Cisco tracking you and tapping into your sensitive iPhone data info via cell.

Eventually a device/service will enable VOIP on the iPod Touch, allowing one to make and recieve calls via numerous free WiFi locations. Turn it on, turn it off. Your safe.

Heck even over Bluetooth on your cell.

Check this out..

http://www.hardmac.com/articles/73/

@ Sunlokyee

That's the best strategy of all, especially since the stock went down a couple more bucks today.

(You might also want to throw in a few shares of Starbucks.)

I asked myself a question earlier. If I knew ahead of time Apple would do a 200 dollars price drop 2 months after launch date, would I have been able to stop myself from buying the phone for 599 on day one? Probably not, that is how much I wanted this phone. While most people may not feel that way, but I'm sure theres plenty of people on this site who may feel the same way.

The whiners just don't get it, but who cares about them and all their loyalty? They're the first to pee in their pants when Apple does something that they don't like. You see, there's a difference between fanaticism and support. Apple needs more supporters and fewer fanatics, especially considering how vocal the fanatics are and how much attention they get in proportion to the validity of their statements.

Wah, wah, wah! Go on and complain about how much it sucks that the iPhone can be bought by more people! A few weeks ago you were complaining about how much it cost. Just do us all a favor and take your "I've been an Apple guy since.." self-promoting martyr complexes somewhere else. No-one cares nor wants to hear your whingefests about jilted computer love, ok?

My only solace is that I'm a shareholder since last summer, and Steve J. just got a little bit of the increase back that i've earned off his stock, as if he didn't already have enough!

I don't understand all the whining. You agreed to the price. They agreed to sell you a phone. You made the decision. Done deal.

Apple should give all early adopters of iPhones $200 worth of free iTunes ... that should keep loyal users happy.

I was at the Apple Store on Saturday showing off the iPhone to a friend who wants a new cell phone. She loves it but said she couldn't afford it at $499 or $599. Fast forward - she's buying an 8GB refurb tomorrow for $350

<<Of those, maybe 150,000 will get some sort of rebate or refund through their credit cards or price protection>>

Did the whiners notice the above, that was mentioned in the Blackfriar's blog?

If you used your credit card, you might have 90days of price protection and/or purchase insurance. I have both with my AMEX card, but my price protection is up to $300 items, but purchase insurance is for $1000. In other words, if your iPhone gets stolen or damaged beyond repair in the next how many days, you get a full refund. Some of you whiners might even have better price protection, and be able to get your $200 back.

"Nokia, Motorola, Sony, Creative, MS, Real, etc. are gonna have a lot of coal in their stockings this Christmas."
Absolutely sends them all back to the drawing table again. This really stomps on Nokia's cloner copy...who would imagine, a computer company making a phone and putting the real OS inside along with an interactive touch screen to run it...that is leverage upon all leverages. No one has all those goods combined. AAPL will go beyond 200 when folks realize this. Steve cut the throats of the competition before they could even breathe...they didn't even get any last words. This is a history making product, and, in the future, with one of those low power Intel combined processor/graphics chips integrated...this thing is going to be a real computer.

I think this article makes a lot of sense.

Price is now $499....yawn.
Price is now $399....WOW. And 100's of articles about it...good or bad, it's free publicity.

I'm one of those that got "burned" by this iPhone price drop.

I'm not crying about it. If ANYONE bought an iPhone for full price and seriously didn't expect a price drop, you're just insane.

True they could have waited 6 months for this, and burned 6months worth of more people and lost out on a tremendous volume of holiday sales...

But without the sale of nearly 1 million iPhones they would not be able to justify ramping up production to a high enough volume to be able to offer these steep discounts. There's no way they could have offered this price during launch.

Remember that.

And if you paid the 600, you must have thought it was worth it or you have a hole in your head.

Either way, seriously stop the complaining.

i was a little disappointed at the announcement too, but i shrugged it off as "oh well, that's how it goes." as it turns out i'm fortunate enough to get price protection (bought mine last week), but even if i didn't i knew what i was getting into.

a few quirks in the interface, no email alias support, and AT&T;'s coverage isn't great out here...but i'm still liking the phone a lot.

This is the Taming of the Shrewd.
I'll wait at least a week now before buying a new Apple product. Except ringtones. Mainly because Marimba is really enough for me.

@Synthmeister

"I mean, look at the Zune now. A week ago, it looked passé. Now it looks downright retarded, like someone wearing a three-piece, polyester leisure suit to a tropical luau."

Classic. :D And correct. It's funny, because as of yesterday, even the delusional Zune fanatics (there actually were about six or so of them I believe) have finally gotten the message. I slummed on a few Zune boards last night (I still feel dirty) and once I got over my surprise that there actually WERE Zune message boards, I began to read the posts.

They all, by and large, realize that Apple has killed the Zune. Many are even saying that they are done, and are going to purchase an iPod Touch. It's all doom and gloom over there in Zuneland.

Apple wins. It's over. Goodnight.

@clinicaltechmaster

I agree with you....another alternative would be to give the early adopters a $200 credit towards an Apple Purchase or towards their AT&T;phone bill.

In any event Apple should do something to save the embarrasment of the early adopters. I think many of them will remember this and not buy 1st generation Apple products in the future.

Anyway you don't want your customers to ever feel bad about buying your product.

On the other hand, I think the iphone was worth $600 dollars compared to all the highend phones on the market and I think many people also believed it was worth $600 dollars based on the current sales.

However, I think Apple should bail out the early adopters with some sort of credit....its reasonable and it will help the early adopters from feeling like they were cheated in some way.

I am glad I waited....I am still waiting for the 2nd generation iphone before making a purchase. By then my Sprint Contract will be up.

Sunlokyee, I am with you. Even if I had known this was coming, I still would have bought the phone. I was out of the country, and at 6:01 pm PDT, I found a computer in our hotel, and ordered one for my wife and one for me [both 8gb]. They were waiting for us when we returned, and were activated easily. My summer of iPhone has been great, and although she is no tech nut, my wife loves hers. ZERO regrets.

As for MikeK, oh boo hoo, your "brand loyalty has been tarnished." That's all on you. Apple has done nothing wrong or even negative. If you somehow see less value in your purchase, maybe you should not have bought it in the first place. That's the only way anyone who bought the phone could be mad now, i.e., that they didn't actually think it was worth the price in the first place. Same goes for high-demand items like the Prius, the Mini, the Wii, you name it. In those cases, the market actually commanded higher-than-retail pricing, and they still flew out the door. Are those purchases worth less now that retail has stabilized? Of course not. I bought Aperture at its initial price. Later, Apple rewarded me with a $200 refund when they lowered the retail price. I was very happy, but solely because I was not expecting that. Apple had no obligation to do that.

You, and only you, made the decision to buy the phone on day one. The fact that you have vowed never to do that again only means you lack confidence in your own decision-making prowess.

MW: "price" How do it know?

We all know Apple is different (better) than companies like HP, Dell, etc and Microsoft who can screw their customers and nobody really cares...maybe their customers are used to it.

However, I think people percieve Apple to play at a higher level and handle its customers much better than Dell/HP, etc.

I don't think Apple customers are used to this type of treatment...Steve Jobs described the electronics busines as cut throat, which is true, but people don't expect Apple to be cut throat with its most loyal fans....

Poor Microsoft. Their Zune had Wifi for months and couldn't figure out how to do anything useful or cool with that feature. Kind of like they invented the wheel and just sat there mesmerized just by it spinning around. Now Apple comes along and builds a Ferrari or a Mack Truck using the same wheels while MS sits there and watches all the pretty colors go round and round.

To add insult to injury, Apple tacks on the option to purchase tunes over wifi, further allowing them them to monetize the device in a way that must have the MS R&D;departments and beancounters foaming at the mouth (and at each other.) Can you imagine the conversations at next week's brainstorming sessions? Why didn't we have a partnership with Starbucks? Why can't the Zune locate anything? Where's our one-touch-download-to-purchase-option? So many questions but so much convoluted software to prevent any answers.

I bought a 30 MB iPod 45 days ago. I want it updated for an 80 MB (which costs the same now) for free.

I also bought a Shuffle, and I want it red.

How's that different from the iPhone thing?

I mean, sucks to lose money, but it's also about the opportunity of spending it.

The way I see it: The iPhone could either fly or drop (anything's possible), and Apple needed a price to match the production volume.

The product flew, so, now there's a bigger demand, a bigger market, and a bigger production scale. So, the price drops.

A DVD player was over $500 when it was released (man, I even remember CD players!) And today you can get a DVD player with the same (or more) features for $50. And CD players are even cheaper.

It doesn't mean DVD players could be sold at $50 back then.

In the case of the iPod, it's perhaps the most successful portable device ever invented. How fast would you think the price would drop?

Of course, it doesn't mean it doesn't suck to lose money, and it doesn't mean I don't feel bad for early adopters.

Agree fully with MDN take and Grifterus.

Hey, you know that 50" plasma TV you just bought ...

Hmm, thousands of Apple's very best customers being extremely pissed off doesn't sound like the kind of free publicity that Apple should be looking for...

Nice Spin MDN - nothing like being the first on your block to pay top dollar for a disposible gadget.

"MDN Magic Word": iSucker

Synthmeister, you are making my day - lolz

Over the course of time, what's 200 clams? Hell, my utility bill costs more than that.

Is there a 16 GB iPhone in my future?

For me $399.00 seals the deal...

Just watch - in the near future Apple will release an 16GB iPhone priced at $499. The price reductions and the discontinued 4GB model, along with the pricing of the iPod line makes this a no brainer.

my 2 cents.

@thgerepguy

You hit the nail on the head.

For every PO'd early iPhone adopter, there's gonna be 10 new customers who will buy a $399 iPhone. Not to mention the other 10 new Apple customers who don't want to change phone carriers and will buy an iPod touch.

I need my iPhone NOW! So that I also can start whining about it! Damn It! Just a simple thing to start selling it here in The Nokialand!

I promise that I will whine about it everyday! Especially if it costs 999€ as I was ready to pay for it. (amazon.de sold iPhone 8 GB model 999€ and 4 GB model for 899€)

Excite's CBS 'Top News' and at http://cbsnews.com - lead story


Wall Street Dismayed by iPhone Price Cut


Mr and Mrs Middle America will not care squat about whether or not Wall Street is 'dismayed' or not by anything - they all know Wall Street perpetually lives with their head either in their wallet or up their ass.

BUT - Hey Ethel, what's that about that iPhone price CUT ?

MDN - $100 BILLION won't buy this kind of publicity. Now the World is really another step closer to The Revolution we all know is coming, all brought to us courtesy of OSX.

But, Steve, you sly dawg you, last night while watching the stream - got to see it like a virgin, of course, is the only way (and that Turnstall is hot) - when you announced the new prices I almost squeezed out a zune. Thanks Bro. Appreciate it.

Now I'm off to the local AT&T;(yuk) to become a semi-early adopter.

Later Folks
BC Kelly
Tallahassee Fla


MDN MW "girls" - as in don't be one and get your panties in a wad over few bucks, sheez, $200 these days ain't chit, bet you spent almost that much last week at Starbucks

How about they put my $200 into delivering searchable contacts and a to-do list? And, how about ringtones from CDs imported into iTunes? That'd make my day more than a $200 rebate.

Oh, and the ability to transfer customized EQ settings from iTunes. Been waiting a LONG time for that one.

Digital and analog out from the dock to a stereo?

On-The-Go editable photo slideshows, à la On-The-Go playlists?

So far, half the reports I've seen on the price cut have been couched in the idea that sales were not meeting their mark, or the iPhone is in a sales slump, or Apple is attempting to boost sales on a flagging product. A lot of negative spin out there that is offsetting the positive news of a more affordable iPhone. I can see a lot of people concluding that the iPhone must not be "all that" if they are slashing prices so soon.

Not like I'd like to keep beating a dead horse, but....

... how come Microsofties never asked for a refund for their crappy OS?

Just wondering....

Thgerepguy and TripleHead:

You've both nailed it. Look for the $499 (maybe $599) 16GB iPhone within a few weeks.

Apple is definitely putting on the full court press with a 30 point lead right now...lowering the price on the iPhone already? Are you kidding me? And the iPod Touch, the fabled "iPhone without the phone?" WITH wifi? It's "check" and "mate". It's like the newest franchise in the NFL winning the Super Bowl in their first season over storied franchises that've been around forever.

The rest of the pseudo-music-device-making cell phone companies may as well cancel Christmas now, 'cause there ain't gonna be one, not for them.

Remember George Burns? "Say goodnight, Gracie." Gracie: "Goodnight, Gracie." That's what they're all saying right now.

Peace.
Olmecmystic

Stop whining and check out http://www.apple.com/hotnews/openiphoneletter/