Today’s WWDC delivered. We had heroes and villains. We had guys with funny accents, failed demonstrations and amazing technology applications. We stared on, slack-jawed, faithfully drinking whatever the Apple Kool-Aid company deliverith. Deficiencies were sold as new features, and we loved it. Nobody knows what good a compass is in a phone, but what the heck, why not. Yaaay! Cut-Copy-Paste, just like a real phone! A better camera, with video! It’s all faster, it’s all euphoric. TAKE ME NOW!! Best day of my LIFE!! It was definitely worth hunching for 2.5 hours over my Macbook watching Gizmodo‘s coverage trickle in every few seconds… I felt like a child furiously sucking every last drop of Nyquil-infused Purplesaurus Rex out of an empty sippy cup.
If this was a house party, we were all invited. Apple brought the “good stuff”, and we all got drunk and lost our inhibitions. In the end, however, the house belonged to AT&T. AT&T was acting like the guy at the party who just because it’s his house flexes his authority just because he can. Nobody likes him, but he is the host so we have to play by his rules. Rules such as “no MMS until later when we say so” and “$70 for a tethering plan”. Aside from these asinine buzzkills, they brought us to some other stern, sobering realizations.
The original iPhone went on sale June 29, 2007. The iPhone 3G came out July 11th, 2008. AT&T allowed us to upgrade to the 3G if we wanted to for a good price with another 2-year contract extension. Now, the 3GS is scheduled to drop on June 19th, 2009. So. Presuming you’ve signed a 2-year for the original iPhone in 2007, and renewed again for another two years in 2008, they are NOT going to let you do it again in 2009 without paying out the nose. A new year, a new iPhone, a new 2-YEAR renewal? At the advertised price point? No. Instead, AT&T so graciously allows the vast majority of us who are not eligible for an equipment upgrade to upgrade early for $399 for the 16GB and $499 for the 32GB. (Plus $18 for the trouble.)
So the advertised $199 and $299 price points? NOT FOR YOU.
Recap: I imagine that nearly ALL people who have the iPhone 3G are expected to pay $399 and $499 (+$18) for the iPhone 3GS. I highly doubt that most people are going to buy into this. I think that the 3GS will not sell nearly as well as its predecessors because of this stipulation. My screen is broken, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to get the new one… I won’t pay that for it, though. Even to get a replacement now, they want $349 for the same phone that I got for $200 a few months ago when I upgraded to the 3G.
We are reaching a point in technology where “good enough” tends to work for a lot of people… and I think because AT&T can’t or won’t adapt to the culture that is Apple fanaticism, Apple will have to settle selling to the minority of people with endless cashflow for this kind of thing instead of really getting this technology out there. I think that people will get the 3.0 upgrade and be very happy with that. AT&T is acting as the bottleneck here – not only in pricing but also with their network, which is apparently incapable of delivering the available functionality that everybody else does already. I don’t think that AT&T is going to gain a lot more customers that it hasn’t already with the previous 2 iterations of the iPhone.
I went home today, looked at my broken screen, picked out a glass sliver, and wondered… what the heck I am supposed to do now?
