Steve Jobs: “More Affordable” = “An extra $15/month”
posted on June 17th, 2008
If you were offered a one-time gift of $200 all at once or a gift of $360 spread out over two years, which would you pick? Even if, for some reason, you needed the $200 right now, you’d know you were giving up $160, right? Well, Steve Jobs is hoping you don’t notice.After all, I’m sure you’re aware that the new iPhone will be selling for only $200, but were you aware that:
- A new, 2-year agreement with AT&T is required to buy the new iPhone, even if you are already an AT&T customer
- The mandatory data plan is increasing in price by 50%, from $20 to $30 per month
- The number of included text messages is dropping from 200 to 0; you’ll need to buy 250 SMS messages for $5 per month
To be fair, this is on par with pretty much every other unlimited 3G data plan out there. And the phone is beautiful. As usual with Apple, my complaint is not with the device, it’s with way they treat their customers. They haven’t made the iPhone 2.0 “more affordable”, as Jobs said in his keynote, they have instead issued customers a mandatory, high-interest loan for $200.
This rant filed under: Apple
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June 23rd, 2008 at 4:19 pm
That’s just the current consumer culture, right? A low down payment in exchange for higher monthly payments and/or a longer loan term even though just saving up a bigger down payment would save you in the long run.
It’s definitely somewhat appealing to me. The $200 “down payment” is a lot easier to swallow than $400, while the $10/month is fairly easy to forgive and as you said not really out of line with other unlimited data plans.
Still not jumping yet…switching providers is a hassle and frankly 2 years is way too long for an Apple product given how quickly they seem to update their products.
I guess I am still holding out for an “open” phone!