Nontrivial Exercises

THE Biggest Stevenote Surprise - iPhone $400

I watched Gizmodo’s live coverage of the Apple Media Event / Stevenote extravaganza this afternoon during lunch and conference calls. Of the 3 sites I watched - Gizmodo, Engadget and Macworld - Gizmodo was by far the best coverage. They updated the fastest, had the best photos and the blog post was organized with the most recent updates on top. This made it faster to see the latest info as I didn’t have to wait for the rest of the page to load and all the adservers to dish out their content.

First, for the second most surprising announcement: the iPhone Fatboy, er, uh Nano. The leaked pictures were amazingly accurate - it’s an iPod nano that’s suddenly become vertically challenged and horizontally endowed. It looks a bit weird, but I must say that the thinness of it redeems the overall design and isn’t half bad. I’d like to reserve final judgement until I see one in person.

Next, we had the iPod Classic, which proudly shows off the latest in micro-hard drive technology, sporting an 80G and 160G offering in the more traditional iPod form factor. Interesting, but it seems more like a way to fulfill a big contract with Hitachi (or whoever they buy their hard drives from) and find a way to use some left over hard drives. This will make a very nice portable storage device that also plays music, however.

Then, the least surprising announcement of the day is the iPod Touch - essentially the iPhone without the phone, a bit thinner and with some extra flash memory. There is an 8G and a 16G model and both have WiFi. I surely saw this one coming, as I’m sure most people did. The 8mm depth and extra memory compared to the iPhone are nice extras.

That brings us to the third biggest surprise of the day - the mobile iTunes Music Store. While not as unthinkable - to me, at least - as the iPod Fatboy coming true, I didn’t see it coming today. I don’t think I need to espouse the coolness of being able to buy music right from your music device, but no one else can do this (see Zune).

And, to add to my boring enumeration of surprises, I’ll say the fourth biggest surprise of the Stevenote was that Steve wants one to pay another $0.99 just to make a 30 second ringtone from a song we’ve already paid $0.99 for. Forget that.

The Starbucks integration and FREE access to a STORE (insightful comment originally made by Jason Chen on Gizmodo’s coverage) when in Starbucks is very interesting and I think very innovative. It’s a sign of Apple’s interest in partnering with others, in a very controlled, Apple-beneficial way, but still partnering. Returning to my strange rankings, I’ll put this as the most interesting and innovative announcement of the day.

Which now brings me to the #1 most surprising announcement of the day: iPhones for $400. 33% price reduction after 68 days on the market where demand has been almost unfulfillable. Simply amazing, especially for Apple.

I’m guessing they are feeling some of the upcoming pressure from competitors, e.g. Helio Ocean, Nokia, new HTC models and other yet-to-be-revealed knock-offs. There will be a much smaller gap between the iPhone and other wanna-be’s compared with the distance between the iPod and other also-rans. Maybe putting 16G in the iPod Touch made the 4G iPhone simply unmarketable and the 8G seem a little bit flash-challenged compared to the 8G and 16G iPod Touch.

The big question in my mind is did the Apple Master have this up his black turtle-necked sleeve from the beginning or was this a sudden change in pricing strategy? His Jobsness doesn’t do much on a whim, especially when it involves eating into his extremely rotund profit margins, but it certainly feels a little strange and early to slash the price on your flagship of innovation.

Whatever the reason, I’m just about as close to getting my hands on an iPhone now as I am to eating another one of those Almond M&M’s sitting innocently in my pantry. Both will cost me (I’ve efficiently downed my weekly - perhaps monthly - allotment of 45 of these goodies this morning while on my endless stream of conference calls) but both are now within reach.

I’ve been very disappointed that my budget hasn’t yet supported an iPhone, and now I’m extremely excited that’s it’s actually within my reach now.

Beans and rice for lunch through the end of the year? Well, after today, I’ll be able to eat Subway again by Thanksgiving!

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