The Costs and Dangers of Being an Early Adopter
Charles W. Moore - 2007.09.10
The perils of early adoption were underscored again last week when
Apple dropped the price of the 8 GB iPhone by a whopping 33% just
68 days after it had been first put on sale. This steep a price cut
that soon was to the best of my recollection unprecedented in any Apple
product,* so it is an extreme example - precipitated presumably by
slackening iPhone sales following the initial euphoric pent-up and
hype-driven demand.
Bloomberg news on Friday quoted Sandy Shen, research director at
Gartner Inc. in Shanghai, observing that iPhone "have dried up, which
is why Apple is cutting the price by so much, and so soon. This of
course has the risk of alienating loyal customers, and that is why the
company has apologized and offered the rebate.''
Rebate? Yes, more uncharted territory for Apple. Responding to
understandable howls of outrage from early adopters who complained
(with considerable justification!) that they had essentially paid a
$200 premium two months ago or less for the dubious privilege of being
late beta testers, on Thursday an open letter signed
by Steve jobs was posted on the Apple website announcing that Apple
had decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from
either Apple or AT&T - and who is not receiving a rebate or any
other consideration - a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any
product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store. Details are
still being worked out and should be posted on Apple's website this
week.
Mr. Jobs noted that "even though we are making the right decision to
lower the price of iPhone, and even though the technology road is
bumpy, we need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone
customers as we aggressively go after new ones with a lower price. Our
early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our
actions in moments like these.
"We want to do the right thing for our valued iPhone customers. We
apologize for disappointing some of you, and we are doing our best to
live up to your high expectations of Apple."
Well, a $100 rebate credit is better than a poke in the eye with a
dirty stick or Apple's customary supercilious stonewalling of consumer
complaints, and I think it is a reasonable peace offering, but if I
were an early iPhone adopter, the precipitous price cut would still
sting.
Late Adoption
However, I'm not an early adopter by nature or temperament. I like
to have an established frame of reference to go on before making
purchase decisions, especially for big-ticket items, and I am virtually
immune to impulse-buying.
PowerBook 5300
I bought my first PowerBook, a 5300,
as a discounted leftover in November 1996. While the 5300 served me
well (and my daughter likewise after she took it over, and still works
now approaching its 11th anniversary), that purchase was one instance
where I would almost certainly have done better as an early adopter;
the PowerBook 1400 that immediately
succeeded the 5300 in autumn '96 was an altogether better computer and
would have justified the extra cash outlay.
On the other hand, the later revision 133 MHz and 166 MHz 1400s with
their level 2 caches were much superior to the original entry-level 117
MHz model, so in a context limited to PowerBook 1400s, early adoption
still wasn't the best deal.
PowerBook G3 Series
My next computer wasn't a leftover, but I did wait until the
second "PDQ" version of the WallStreet
G3 Series PowerBook had been out for a few months before placing my
order. Actually, the original
WallStreets were pretty solid and reliable computers from the
get-go, save for some troublesome issues with the 13.3" screen models.
My son and my nephew both purchased 233 MHz G3 Series PowerBooks
identical to mine. Two of them are still in the family in working
condition, passed on to other members, while the third was stolen.
Pismo
By the time the widescreen Titanium
PowerBook G4s debuted in January 2001, I was in the hunt again for
a system upgrade. I thought the super-slim, metal-skinned TiBooks were
way cool, but after the initial dazzle subsided, I also deduced that
such a radically new design would probably have reliability issues, so
I put in an order for a leftover PowerBook
G3 Pismo from MacWarehouse Canada. As it turned out, their
remaining stock of 500 MHz Pismos got overbooked with sales orders by a
factor of six to one, and my order was one of the canceled
majority.
I eventually did get my Pismo, ten months later, after detour
purchase of a G4 Cube, which wasn't as
satisfactory a substitute for a laptop as I had hoped it would be. I
traded the nearly new Cube for a year-old used Pismo in pristine
condition in October 2001. I still have it, now upgraded to 550 MHz G4
power and with an 8x SuperDrive, and I still use it every day for an
hour or two. It wasn't a leftover, and certainly not a low-end laptop -
being the highest-spec. Pismo Apple offered.
I liked the Pismo so much that I bought another one last spring and
hope to continue using both for several years to come. They're getting
a bit long in the tooth, but they run OS X "Tiger" surprisingly
well and are still excellent utility computers for routine tasks.
As it turned out, the Titanium PowerBook did have some issues,
although not so much with its internals (the original motherboard used
in TiBooks was essentially the reliable architecture introduced ten
months earlier with the Pismo, reengineered to support the G4 CPU and
to fit inside the thinner titanium case), but things like lid hinges
seizing and and tearing away from the thin metal case, battery contact
problems, optical disks fouling the inside of the case, and paint
prematurely wearing off services. I've never regretted going with the
Pismo instead.
Dual USB iBook
By the time I bought my next laptop, the dual USB iBook had been in production for 19
months, although the 700 MHz G3 version I got was just a couple of
months out. The original 500 MHz version
1 in this case was statistically a more reliable machine than the
"revision C" unit I ended up purchasing, but despite that model's
spotty reputation, mine has been completely trouble-free, now bearing
down on its fifth anniversary.
I still have nothing to complain about in terms of dependability,
but the 700 MHz G3 CPU, 16 megabytes of video RAM, and the system RAM
maxed out to 640 megabytes weren't quite cutting it anymore
performance-wise as it passed the three year mark as my main production
machine.
Titanium PowerBook
Apple's switch to Intel chips was a complicating factor in my next
upgrade decision. With the MacBook
Pro having just been introduced at Macworld Expo 2006, and the
MacBook replacement for the than nearly five-year-old white iBook
design imminent, I was faced with the conundrum on whether to roll the
early adopter dice and go with a Macintel 'Book or follow my cautious
instincts and get one more Power PC machine.
After ruminating over it for a month or so, I went with my gut and
ordered it a refurbished 1.33 GHz 17" Apple
Certified Refurbished PowerBook from TechRestore, and hindsight confirms that
the old gut was right.
The version 1 MacBook Pros challenged many of their owners with
extreme heat, "mooing" and whining noises, a battery recall, and
other issues. All of these problems
have been addressed, but Intel Mac notebooks still run hotter than I
prefer.
I'm in an area where there is still no broadband Internet
availability, so the PowerBook's internal modem was another reason I
chose it instead of a modem-less MacBook Pro. While a USB modem dongle
is available, it adds another C$60 to the purchase price and hogs a
precious USB port, as well as being much less elegant than a built-in
modem for folks like me who remain stuck in the slow lane of the
information highway.
The early MacBooks also had a "sudden shutdown" glitch. Everyone I
know who bought a version 1 MacBook had problems with it, which was not
an auspicious lookout, nor was the fact that refurbished MacBooks began
showing up on the Apple Store website only a few weeks after the
machine's May 2006 introduction (as had MacBook Pros earlier in the
year, and there still seems to be a copious supply of most Macintel
models as refurbs)
The subsequent revisions B and C of both machines with their Core 2
Duo processors have proved pretty reliable.
However, I've not regretted buying the big G4 AlBook, and after
nearly 20 months of virtually flawless service, I have to say that this
17" machine is simply the best computer I've ever owned. If a computer
ever epitomized the old Apple "It just works!" slogan, this is it.
Upgrading through several versions of OS X 10.4 to the current
10.4.10 has been painless with no issues or problems encountered. Aside
from the modest 512 MB of RAM soldered to its motherboard (I upgraded
to 1.5 GB), the 1.33 GHz Big Al came pretty sumptuously equipped, with
a RADEON 9600 graphics processor and 64 MB of video RAM, an 80 GB hard
drive, a SuperDrive, gigabit ethernet, built-in Bluetooth, 802.11g
wireless, FireWire 400 and 800, and USB 2.0.
And, of course, there is that glorious, 1440-by-900 display. That
resolution is nothing to get up in the night and write home about these
days and is now standard on the 15" MacBook Pro, but I've found it
luxuriously expansive after years of working with 1024 x 768 and 800 x
600 laptop displays.
Folks who buy the early production version of any complex machine
more often than not end up being late beta or prototype testers - and
paying top dollar for the dubious privilege. I have a low tolerance for
reliability problems, and I attribute the almost flawless dependability
I've enjoyed with my PowerBooks and iBook over the years to resisting
the urge to surf the bleeding edge.
* Editor's note: There was one price drop of similar
magnitude nearly 15 years ago. Apple had introduced the 32 MHz
68030-based Macintosh IIvx in Sept. 1992
at $2,949 for the base configuration. When the 25 MHz 68040-based
Centris 650 was introduced in Feb.
1993 using exactly the same enclosure, the IIvx was slashed to $1,899.
That's a 35.6% price cut, the only one I know of that surpasses the
33.3% drop in the iPhone's price. dk
