| Home > Technology > A message for unhappy iPhone early adopters: Even with your $100 "apology", your kvetching has only just begun |
| A message for unhappy iPhone early adopters: Even with your $100 "apology", your kvetching has only just begun | | Date Created: 07 Sep, 2007, 10:33 PM |
 Australians have a dual relationship with technology.
We tend to be early adopters (we ramp up the inflection point of technology uptake toute de suite!), but we get new technologies late.
We were late to colour TV (but we got the superior PAL system), we got cable TV way after the US (it's just turned up a profit in a no-competition environment - go figure), we got Caller ID and conference call for our phone system (a previous monopoly too) very late, and we used to get Hollywood movies six months after their release.. until Bit Torrent came along and now we're no more than a few days behind.
Even the Mac-loving Californication is only two weeks ahead of its showing on Aussie TV. Neat!
But like Europe and Asia, we're late to the iPhone party.
Given the early adopter tax now being levied on iPhone buyers, less the $100 "we sorry" rebate (talk about marketing on the run!), sometimes being slow off the blocks can pay off.
Have you witnessed all the "new to the Apple fold" kvetching going on due to the surprise iPhone price reduction (and negating of any resale value on the 4GB version except as a collector's item).
Old Macheads knew full well a price reduction was on its way - it's the Apple way. Mind you, Dell does it all the time, except it telegraphs its punches with its special magazine inserts letting you know its prices will go UP when the month's out.
And it never lets you know when it's got new models coming because... who can tell the difference between them and the one's they're replacing? Or who cares? |
 So old Macheads hold off from getting Apple 1.0 products knowing full well a price reduction will occur in a reasonable time once the early adopter tax is paid (thus enabling better economies of scale to operate in Taiwan once the R & D has been well and truly paid for), and secondly, while some might say that Apple 1.0 products don't suffer any deficencies in design or quality control, try telling that to Titanium Powerbook owners (I had two of them).
The question of course is what constitutes a reasonable time? This is a question of Seinfeldian proportions since there is no code book on the ethics of timing the updating of hardware. So where to turn to?
Well, since it was a New York Times journo who outed Fake Steve Jobs, why not turn to the Times Sunday columnist, Randy Cohen also known as The Ethicist. I can imagine El Jobso secretly writing to Randy thus: |
 "Dear NYT Ethicist:
I am the leading technology CEO in the country, but please don't publish that because then people will guess who I am.
But I take pride in designing insanely great products and moreover, knowing how to market them like no body's business. Heck, my most recent product was nicknamed "The Jesus phone" so that should clue you in.
But here's my dilemma. The pre-release hype over this phone, which we kept rolling along for six months (we usually don't pre-announce products preferring to play legal funny buggers with rumour sites and bloggers which we've raised to an artform, but that's another story) saw people standing in line to buy our game changing product. That's nothing new, by the way. And given the hype, we priced the product so that only true believers, fan boys, and people new to my way of design and production would pony up a very large chunk of change (and be on a two year contract with a lame telco, but that's also another story).
Well, against the wishes of many naysayers, the product's a hit, people are eating their words, and our competitors are worried that our efforts to have 1% of the market may succeed, if not exceed predictions. So in our wisdom I decided fairly late in the piece to really put a rocket where the sun don't shine and massively reduce the product's price by 33%, only six weeks after we released it.
Instead of people being grateful, I've copped a bucketting from the early adopters (some of whom got laid I'm sure just by showing the product at their nearby coffeehouse), and I really don't get it.
Did I make an ethical faux pas in reducing the price so soon in order to make late comers happy and my competitors freakin' miserable? (Oh, I also dropped one of the lesser models rendering its resale ferkuckt)
Namaste.
Signed: The CEO who designed the jesusphone. Do you know it?
And the reply from Randy Cohen?
Dear Designing CEO:
While we live in a free market economy and you are entitled, nay encouraged by our financial system to plunder and pillage your competitors, the same result should not be metered out to your loyal and new customers alike.
While the concept of Moore's Law is well known within and without the technological firmament, leading one to make educated assumptions about the life cycle of silicon products, you have erred in two ways: You have engaged in steep discounting of an unprecedented and thus unpredictable fashion, and you have done so in such a swift fashion as to convince some people your product is not selling well. No doubt this has been reflected in your share price. This may be despite your best intentions to have more people avail themselves of your lust object by reducing its price, something that would have occurred later than sooner.
That your new and existing customers are upset ought not come as a surprise. Like any new technology adopter, their purchase was part ego, part self-identity, and part-foolish, but this ought not be held against them.
Indeed, it calls for a gesture of conciliation, in the knowledge that when you design a product with strong emotional valence, some will purchase it without much forethought. While it could be argued that many people derived much pleasure out of their six weeks of exclusive ownership and you owe them nothing more than a product that delivers on its promise of changing the technology landscape, it could also be said that you will lose nothing but gain much good karma if you acknowledge their current suffering and emotional perturbations.
Meet them half way by offering a $100 acknowledgement of their suffering. No need for cash rebates lest you encourage future unhappiness whenever you release a new product. But perhaps a voucher for use in your retail outlets would go some distance to assuage their disconsolate spirits.
Peace, my friend."
And so it came to pass.
Except.... this is only the start of the kvetching. What happens next one wonders when the iPhone for Europe and Asia is released, with 3G high speed connectivity, 16GB of flash memory and who know what else to help it compete in a much more challenging set of markets.
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 They'll be so much kvetching, grimacing and clenching of enraged fists (and sphincters) that sales of Pepto-Bismol (Mylanta to my Aussie friends) will go through the roof.
To new comers to the world of Apple products, get used to swift changes, secrecy and no maps to guide your journey through Macdom. It's rough and turbulent, but once you get used to the bumpy ride, you kinda get to like it... sort of lets you know you're alive.
If it's all too much, the cadaverous world of Dell awaits your return. |
UPDATE - September 9, 2007: The Electronista website reports a "leaked" advertisement for T-Mobile (Germany) shows a 16GB, 3G-enabled iPhone being prepared for European release in mid-November (below). Now, take the link with a grain of salt since sich advertisments can be easily constructed in Photoshop, but it does pose questions as to whether 8GB iPhones in the US will drop in price, or whether 16GB 2.5G (but upgradeable to 3G) iPhones may be released in the US after that date, at the original $599 (or better yet, $499).
Whatever the case, Apple's move into the cellphone market has certainly ruffled feathers, and necessarily so. |
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