When a Price Drop is Really a Price Increase
Since you can’t buy a phone without activating it, and without committing to a two-year AT&T contract, the actual selling price doesn’t mean much. What counts is the total price over time. And Apple’s clearly caved to AT&T to allow this to happen. I guess it’s part of the price they have to pay to get more users of the iPhone, but it’s still dishonest.
I don’t live in an area with 3G coverage. It would be nice to have the GPS receiver, but I don’t mind waiting until there’s more software for it than Google Maps. The other hardware changes in the iPhone 3G were minor. App store aside, the software improvements in iPhone 2.0 were also minor, at least as relates to me, and they’ll be available on the original iPhone. So, although I like the iPhone 3G, yesterday’s announcements had the perverse effect of making me glad to have purchased the 1.0 hardware. It was kind of like getting a 2 GHz PowerMac G5, and a year later they weren’t at 3 GHz after all.
