Appease the Cult

Apple’s iPod revamp is impressive, but one of the announcements bound to piss people off is the new iPhone pricing. The 4GB iPhone is dead, dead, dead, and the 8GB iPhone has dropped to $399 from its launch price of $599. That’s a 33% price cut – $200 – just 2 months after launch.
Yes, you pay to early adopt. Price cuts are a reality of technology – costs of flash memory and other components have likely dropped since iPhone pricing was established earlier this year. Not to mention the price point had to be aligned with the iPod Touch.
But the scale of this price cut is pretty big – I’d hazard that $100 would have been easier to swallow. $200, to judge the responses so far, makes the early adopters – the “Cult” that has helped promote the iPhone to friends and strangers – feel stupid. It would be good if Apple could address this, even in a symbolic fashion.
And they can.
Every iPhone had to be registered with Apple via an iTunes account. Apple knows when each iPhone was registered. Apple could easily announce that any iTunes account that registered an iPhone before September 1st receives a credit for the iTunes Music Store – some placating amount – effective upon the launch of the wireless version of the store.
There’s the gimme. Acknowledge the early adopters, don’t piss off what Guy Kawasaki long ago described as The Cult.