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The real prices of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 mini

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Re: The real prices of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 mini

#311

Post by chrisseaton »

saagarjha wrote: post #299
chrisseaton wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latest iPhone is not even remotely an essential item. 'Price gouging' as a concept does not apply, and you're watering down the term by trying to do that, which is dangerous.

You don't have to have an essential item to price gouge, though, you just need to charge more money than you otherwise would have to make extra profit. Whether the choice to remove the adapter in this iPhone was just for the profit margin can't be known for certain, but the fact that they removed it in other phones while keeping the price the same makes it seems like it was.

I don't think the definition of price gauging is simply 'it's a bit more expensive than I think it should be compared to what it used to be for this optional luxury item' - if it is then it's a useless concept and we shouldn't worry about it!

Re: The real prices of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 mini

#312

Post by notJim »

ghaff wrote: post #295
notJim wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it's a little strange, but the included cable is also the one most people won't have, and the forward-looking option. I would guess the vast majority of iPhone users have many USB A -> lightning cables, but few or no USB C -> lightning. The new cable fills a gap, in other words.

There's also the whole issue of universality of USB-C chargers and the like. Do you ship a big 100W charger with an iPhone? This issue has existed previously with USB but it seems trickier at the moment. Maybe better to punt from the perspective of Apple. And at least "we're providing a charging cable from an increasingly common standard plug." (And yeah, if I bought this phone, I'd have a couple USB-C chargers but n…

I don't think the USB-C charger thing is a big issue, Apple already has several different sizes of USB-C charger. I have an iPad pro, 13" MBP and work-issued 15" MBP, and all have different sized USB C chargers. You can charge them with any of the above, but the smaller chargers can't keep up with the more demanding devices. This was already the case with the iPad vs iPhone charger, and the older magsafe chargers as well that came in different sizes.

Re: The real prices of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 mini

#313

Post by wruza »

saagarjha wrote: post #299
chrisseaton wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latest iPhone is not even remotely an essential item. 'Price gouging' as a concept does not apply, and you're watering down the term by trying to do that, which is dangerous.

You don't have to have an essential item to price gouge, though, you just need to charge more money than you otherwise would have to make extra profit. Whether the choice to remove the adapter in this iPhone was just for the profit margin can't be known for certain, but the fact that they removed it in other phones while keeping the price the same makes it seems like it was.

When you rise prices, you lose sales. When you drop prices, you gain sales. The market price is where a product of these two maximizes. You cannot make more profit by simply rising prices beyond the equilibrium point. That was economics 101 when I was taught it. Is that knowledge now deprecated? Or is iphone now an essential item?

Re: The real prices of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 mini

#314

Post by koyote »

kube-system wrote: post #202
epanchin wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they wanted to be enviroment they would have switched to USB-C. I'm personally happy about the lack of charger, all my Apple ones go into a drawer never to be seen again.

I doubt that USB-C would be more environmentally friendly. I am fairly sure that the vast majority of people buying new Apple phones today are people that currently have Apple phones. Lots of Apple's customer base have been iPhone loyalists for longer than USB-C has been commonplace.

But USB-C is used for literally every other new device and even other Apple devices such as their laptops and ipad pros.

It's the defacto standard for charging any kind of electronic device.

Re: The real prices of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 mini

#315

Post by samatman »

mmm_grayons wrote: post #307
soperj wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is the point of standards Except apple doesn't use standards. They use their own proprietary ports.

In fairness to Apple, they didn't just make other ports for the sake of it. When lightning mini was made, it was objectively better than mini-USB. When magsafe was made, it was objectively better than barrel plugs (and for charging, it's still better than USB-C.) Now that the standards are better, Apple is slowly transitioning to USB-C, which is a standard.

If by "slowly transitioning" you mean "massively and publicly driving adoption of USB-C", then yes, I agree.

Apple has been pushing for the interoperable USB standard for as long as it has existed. The original iPhone was either the first phone to charge from USB, or at minimum the first successful mass-market phone to do so.

Re: The real prices of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 mini

#316

Post by samatman »

acomjean wrote: post #286
duxup wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel weird about sort of defending this practice but ... I don't have a problem with it. There it is, the phone without a charger is the offer, you know it, I know it. We all know the price and the product. There's no mystery here. This stuff about if it was a hard decision or not, I don't see how it matters. Folks who take this kinda of marketing to heart, I just don't get it.

I kinda don't have a problem with the omissions, but the "marketing spin" seems a little over the top. How standard are these usb-c bricks and are people going to be worried about cooking their phones? (Apple's chargers are of pretty high quality, but it seems weird to plug a phone into a usb c device that can charge a notebook). Also I feel that the headphone ommission to save the environment would be more believabl…

Here's how I see it: the phone industry is in a bad Nash equilibrium.

Chargers should be sold separately, they tend to last longer than a phone, cheap ones are dangerous, and people buy phones, the chargers just come with because everyone sells phones with chargers.

Apple is big enough to shift out of that equilibrium, by pulling the good-ol' reality distortion field and encouraging everyone else to stop bundling chargers on environmental grounds. Which grounds are actually valid, though not the actual motive in play.

A world where chargers aren't included is better than one where every manufacturer feels bound to bundle one in to every single phone purchase. So I think Apple is doing a good thing here, just like when they were the first to stop including floppy drives.

Re: The real prices of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 mini

#317

Post by PascLeRasc »

mangoman wrote: post #2

I saw that on their page - I wasn't as offended about the pricing differential as the post, but I was groaning during the whole verizon pitch. I wonder how much verizon paid for that placement. It felt extremely out of place and very cringy IMO.

I had forgotten how much I hated Android manufacturers making "Verizon versions" with the carrier name on the forehead and back case. That part of the event felt really cheap.

Re: The real prices of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 mini

#318

Post by UweSchmidt »

acomjean wrote: post #286
duxup wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel weird about sort of defending this practice but ... I don't have a problem with it. There it is, the phone without a charger is the offer, you know it, I know it. We all know the price and the product. There's no mystery here. This stuff about if it was a hard decision or not, I don't see how it matters. Folks who take this kinda of marketing to heart, I just don't get it.

I kinda don't have a problem with the omissions, but the "marketing spin" seems a little over the top. How standard are these usb-c bricks and are people going to be worried about cooking their phones? (Apple's chargers are of pretty high quality, but it seems weird to plug a phone into a usb c device that can charge a notebook). Also I feel that the headphone ommission to save the environment would be more believabl…

That's "greenwashing". It's everywhere.

Optimistically I think that's just the process of rethinking everything and retooling every single industry and changing deeply ingrained consumer habits to tackle our enormous environmental problems. This "marketing spin" in the iPhone 12 keynote is a commitment that paves the way for truly environmental friendly products, behaviour and legislation.

Re: The real prices of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 mini

#319

Post by samatman »

epanchin wrote: post #158
stetrain wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"decided to not pass that savings onto the customer" Do you have access to the BOM? Sure it was likely a cost-savings measure, but it may have been to combat rising prices elsewhere. It's a two-sided equation and we can't see the whole thing. If Apple did want to be environmentally friendly though I would think offering a reasonably priced multi-device (4-ports?) charger would be more effective than just selling a si…

If they wanted to be enviroment they would have switched to USB-C. I'm personally happy about the lack of charger, all my Apple ones go into a drawer never to be seen again.

They did, the cable which comes with the new phones is USB-C on the charge end.

Forcing an ecosystem of about a billion devices to throw away all their cables and accessories isn't environmentally responsible, however you want to spin it.

Re: The real prices of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 mini

#320

Post by edhelas »

mmm_grayons wrote: post #307
soperj wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is the point of standards Except apple doesn't use standards. They use their own proprietary ports.

In fairness to Apple, they didn't just make other ports for the sake of it. When lightning mini was made, it was objectively better than mini-USB. When magsafe was made, it was objectively better than barrel plugs (and for charging, it's still better than USB-C.) Now that the standards are better, Apple is slowly transitioning to USB-C, which is a standard.

To the point that you can easily find a USB-C port on all their iPhone, iPad and other devices yes ! Wait...
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