Apple.

UPDATE 4: Well, looks like unless you happen to have bought your iPhone in the last 10 days, sadly no soup for you. But if you did, head on down to your Apple store and get yo’ money.

UPDATE 3: Huh, well TUAW is on the case with seeing if there’s anyway that people who paid $600 for the iPhone get any kinda money back. I just tried the AMEX route, but the BVG program was cancelled last year. Sad. They’re still seeing what the options are with the store to deal with the big price drop - the official word has not come down to them. I suspect that there’s no getting that $200 back, but I’ll keep my eyes on that page.

UPDATE 2: Just saw that Gizmodo is running a poll on the very topic of this iPod overlap. Looks like the Touch could be a hit.

UPDATE: You know I was thinking a little more about this and it’s the first time in awhile where there’s been any kind of overlap in the iPod lineup. Between the shuffle, the nano and the touch - it starts to get a little murky about which one, one might want. Pre-touch it was pretty clear, the shuffle was tiny and screenless the nano less so. But now? It seems like there’s more decision making to be done.

Wow. That was a pretty interesting show. All sorts of new stuff, read Engadget if you want to see it all or here’s a summary:

To refresh, iPod Shuffle ($79), iPod Nano ($149, $199), iPod Classic, ($249, $349), iPod Touch, ($299, $399), and iPhone ($399).

New shuffle colors, Nano’s get all squat and with a 320×240 screen, Classic goes up to 160GB, Touch is like the iPhone w/out the phone and the iPhone gets a huge price cut.

The thing that I love about Apple that Scott pointed out to me once was that they have no problem cannibalizing their own products. They just came out with the iPhone and here they are putting out the iPod Touch which is pretty much an iPhone with bigger capacity (8 and 16GB) without the phone and they aren’t worried that it might slow down sales of their phone. They simply put out the best products they can with the philosophy that if they don’t someone else might and then someone else would be taking their sales away.

I think that’s how they stay on top - they don’t wait for their product line to mature and start fading before they introduce things that compete with it. They just keep building and killing off products that no longer make sense to make room for their new ones, even if those old products were doing really well. Remember the mini? People loved those!

It’s also pretty interesting their deal with Starbucks. It’s where everyone goes to get their WiFi round the world - it’s interesting tech to let you see the last ten songs that were played and let you buy them on the spot. It’s that sort of thing, I think, that’s really user friendly and I’d like to see in more places. How many times are you out and you hear something and you try to find out what it is, how to get it, etc.. but you can’t. Well it happens to me a lot, sure it isn’t in Starbucks where it happens, but it’s a start. Maybe the technology can roll out to more places. It certainly makes Starbucks a more compelling place for artists to try to get heard and if it becomes more widespread firms up even more iTunes lock on the music industry.

I’d like to have seen some kind of deal to get cheaper WiFi at Starbucks for Apple owners, now that’d be another coup! Well, we’ll see how things go, at any rate I imagine that iPhones will be selling like hotcakes this christmas. $400 dollars, that’s a big price drop! Sheesh! If I didn’t love my iPhone so much, I’d be a little pissed. :)

Sep 5th, 2007 · Comments RSS · · · · · Tags: apple · iphone