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Originally Posted by brundles
I'm not an Apple fan (don't have any iPods, iPhones or general Apple gubbins), but I'm not convinced they have done anything particularly evil in this instance. They offered a partial refund for the difference after the price drop which is more than most companies would have done. Admittedly I'm a but dubious about the speed with which the 4GB model was canned - why bother with it in the first place?
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The main problem for me is that they virtually halved the price about 60 days after release. The speed suggests they could have made the phone cheaper in the first place. The other problem is they limited the refund to those who had bought the phone within the 14 days prior to the announced price drop.
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Everyone seems to be focussing on Apple as the culprits when, as highlighted in the contract (and I quoted above) the real sting is the 2 year contract with AT&T. To be fair, AT&T need to do this to cover the costs that Apple have imposed on them.
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Apple weren't forced to go with AT&T, and bearing in mind the facilities of the iPhone (hardware wise), combined with the fact that AFAIK, US mobile carriers don't subsidise phones heavily, I doubt AT&T have actually subsidised the phone at all. So, I doubt AT&T have massive costs to cover.
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The overall cost of the package might be high, but very few new, high profile cutting edge products aren't. I don't see anyone accusing Sony of nasty behaviour for the high price of a PS3.
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That's just it. Apart from the memory size and the screen, the iPhone
isn't cutting edge. Even the much hyped OS is just a pretty interface running on a seven year old OS (Mac OSX). The PS3 has it's faults, but it
is arguably cutting edge.
I am not complaining so much about the hardware/software side of Apple (I love Apple hardware and software), but the business side of Apple leaves a lot to be desired.