WHAT A HEEL!: Steve Jobs: You Lose When You Don’t Snooze
Sometimes, it pays not to be the first one on your block to get a hot, new gadget. Just ask the chumps who waited on line (that is, on an actual line, not online in their jammies at home) for days for the privilege of paying $200 more to buy the Apple iPhone than others who waited a couple of months. Adding insult to injury, mega-millionaire Apple CEO Steve Jobs copped an attitude in response to the howls of protest from the company’s most loyal customers, lecturing them that coolness costs:
This is life in the technology lane. If you always wait for the next price cut or to buy the new improved model, you'll never buy any technology product because there is always something better and less expensive on the horizon.
Jobs then issued as close an approximation of an apology he could muster:
The bottom line: Jobs still has $100 of your hard-earned money, and the only thing you can do with your rebate is to put even more of your money into his pocket.[E]ven though we are making the right decision to lower the price of iPhone, and even though the technology road is bumpy, we need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone customers as we aggressively go after new ones with a lower price. Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these.
Therefore, we have decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store.
You know, PC Guy is starting to look kinda cute.
Editorial Note: The Heel, an Ivy-educated attorney with a prestigious New York firm and sometime contributor to The Stiletto Blog, was at Apple’s flagship store on Fifth Avenue and 59th Street in NYC scoping out the iPhone about a week after it went on sale when a store employee spotted his Casio G'zOne and remarked, "That's a badass phone!" And so it is.
I have a PC now, but I miss my laptop, "Mac-Honey."
I think that Apple is just clever and all of the people who work there are clever. I like their originality, most of all. During the late '80's, I went to several Apple parties. They were super! My ex boyfriend was employed then as an industrial engineer and he had designed two of their plants.
I miss a certain kind of interest and excitement that I used to experience with the Apple people. I stopped missing my boyfriend, who wasn't so exciting, but was a very good man.
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