Quid Sit?

To the left, you’ll see what happens when an unprotected iPhone 3G meets the linoleum floor.

I had a few choice words for my bathroom when it happened, but in the end I didn’t feel too bad about the catastrophe. I’d decided to upgrade a couple of weeks ago, and this gave me even more incentive to get it done on my day off.

The reason I wanted the upgrade before the carnage: speed. Even with v4.1 of Apple’s OS installed on the phone, the delay between touching an icon and getting any kind of productivity out of the old 3G was immense. The delay in opening up my calendar or any website (to check for an email telling me where to go, a common occurance) was maddening.

A cellphone is an indispensable part of my work as a priest. This might sound crazy since the human race (and the Church) did just dandy for a long while without them, but it has become a standard must-have for ministry in the 21st century. It allows me to be away from the office doing things either for myself or others, and yet I’m still connected to the office. When parishioners get sick, or a funeral comes in, or the schedule changes because of some general calamity, it’s good to know that your priest has a cellphone. I didn’t carry one with any real tenacity until it became clear to me that others would benefit from my doing so.

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Now, back to the main reason for this post.

An iPhone user can text Apple to determine whether they qualify for a discounted upgrade, and here’s the feedback I received:

A full discount on a standard handset or iPhone upgrade is not available at this time but you may qualify on 01/25/2011. We can offer you a discounted iPhone upgrade at a higher price with a 2-yr commitment and an $18 upgrade fee. Please visit a participating iPhone sales location for pricing on this offer.

Because this is worded so vaguely, and because they did not include pricing options, I took the above to mean that I could upgrade to the 4G for $18.

Looking at it now, I know better. It wasn’t $18 to upgrade: in the end, it was $218. Two-hundred and eighteen dollars. Thus, the 16 GB model jumps from $199 to $417, the 32 GB model from $299 to $518. If $518 qualifies as a “discounted iPhone upgrade,” I don’t even want to know what they run without a discount.

To their credit, AT&T staff explained that they don’t set the prices on the phone: Apple does. So I am not at all displeased with AT&T (this time): it’s Apple who has stirred up my ire.

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According to CNet, a 16 GB iPhone 4G costs $188 to build. This means that neither Apple nor the retailer make much on standard upgrade models, but they sure do make a killing on early upgraders such as myself.

Far be it for me to criticize capitalism at its finest, but this seems like a poor pricing structure. If Apple were smart, they’d raise the qualifying upgrade price and reduce the non-qualifying upgrade, because this would give more incentive for people to upgrade earlier. I know that at $518, I’ll be waiting a good long while before I replace this piece of equipment; at $300, however, I would be more inclined to purchase their next newfangled release in a year or so.

Besides, Apple truly makes its money in all of those $.99 purchases you make over time. And because I have so much invested in applications, I couldn’t walk away from Apple even though the cost of staying was so dreadfully high.

Apple has a good business strategy overall, but we need to be honest about it. They make products that are easy to use with stable operating systems (stability resulting from a small hardware spec set), and package them in sleek designs. Under the hood, Apple employs middle-of-the-road hardware, which is why I will never buy a computer from them.

That, and they sell their mediocre tech at a hellacious price.

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Ultimately, I’m not dissatisfied with their business strategy: I’m dissatisfied at how useless they made the 3G. Because they began designing their OS for bigger, better hardware, the 3G suffered. Big time. Even the simple act of typing a text message became dreadful, with the OS hanging for seemingly no reason on every single character I typed. I’d even regularly miss calls, because the slider-bar hung while the phone attempted to establish a connection.

With the 3G, Apple effectively rendered its own hardware inept.

When the AT&T sales rep told me what it would cost to replace the phone, I was faced with a decision: replace the glass at a small price and continue to slog on with an obsolete piece of hardware, or pay through the nose for a new one.

I chose to pay, but I never should have had to make that decision at all.