From the Headlines: Apple cuts $200 off the price of its 2-month-old iPhone, then tries to appease the outraged early customers by offering them a $100 store credit. Where’s the line?
Steve Jobs, Apple’s viciously brilliant CEO, has a way with words. When his most zealous customers — the Apple fetishists who camped out in line to be the first to spend $600 on the phone that would change the world — got a bit testy after Jobs cut the iPhone price by a third only two months after its launch, he issued an open letter to those customers lecturing them on the costs of being an early adapter of a new product. Too f-in bad, he seems to say. That’s “life in the technology lane.”
Then he sort of apologized and offered them a $100 store credit.
Oh, Stevie!
But we’re not here to discuss Steve Jobs’ people skills. We’re here to discuss whether or not Apple made the right decision in extending a $100 peace offering to its iPhone customers.
The short answer is no. You wanna know why? Because there’s a cost to being an early adapter of a new product. And if the price drops or the product improves, that’s just too f-in bad.
I repeat Jobs’ mantra to remind you that it’s an obvious point, and to remind you that obvious points don’t have to be verbalized. Hence the phrase “it goes without saying.”
People tend to forget the rules of “goes without saying.” First off, you don’t have to say it. Second of all, you don’t have to apologize when that inevitability — the one that goes without saying — comes true. And lastly, you don’t then need to compensate someone because that inevitability came true and they don’t like it.
If you break the rule of “goes without saying,” then you’re setting a precedent. If you’re the CEO of Apple, that’s a dangerous precedent. Apple is a company that lives off creating must-have products, and then releasing new versions of that must-have product every five minutes. If you buy the hottest iPod today, it goes without saying that there will be a better one very soon (and, being Apple, it will probably be thinner and prettier than the last). If they can’t improve the features that dramatically, then they will give consumers the next best thing: a lower cost. This is how Apple works. It goes without saying. It’s been parodied on Saturday Night Live, for goodness sake.
I can understand the sting that those iPhone owners felt when it was announced that they could have saved $200 bucks if they’d waited a few months, but they knew it was coming. In fact, I dare say it’s better for them than the sting if Apple had drastically improved the phone. At least now they don’t own an inferior product; they just own an equal product that cost a third more.
Jobs blew this one. He created a big story, and one that will multiply. Every time Apple releases a great new update, or drops the price, the media and his customers are going to expect a little something-something. He should have stuck with rule #1 of “it goes without saying”: don’t say anything.
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