iPhone Pricing

When Steve Jobs announced, at the September 5th Apple media event, that Apple was cutting $200 off the price of the iPhone, many a cheer was heard across the US. However, almost as resounding were the jeers of early iPhone adopters who had essentially paid $200 for the privilege of owning an iPhone for two months or less.

Though penalizing early adopters financially isn't a foreign concept to Apple, and is in fact a reality that many Mac faithfuls accept, the magnitude of this scenario exceeded anything seen before by Apple customers. As a result, countless emails and complaints were reportedly received by Apple by customers who had purchased the iPhone previous to the price reduction.

In an open letter, published on the Apple website, Steve Jobs has offered an apology to the community. In the letter, he states

After some technical difficulties yesterday, we're back online and are going to endeavor to update readers throughout the day on some of the more interesting items that came out of yesterday's Apple media event.

We'll start with the price slashing Apple announced to close the media event (yes, sort of backwards, but so be it).

Jobs announced that Apple would be discontinuing the production of 4GB iPhone models. Though not particularly surprising, this may have seemed daunting to those who wanted to get their hands on an iPhone without paying $599.