And, now, they feel betrayed when Apple CEO Steve Jobs announces a US$200 price cut. What is it about the Apple iPhone that causes such bizarre emotional attachment? It is, after all, a telephone with a web browser and an MP3 player attached.
Ah, but what a telephone, say its fans. It has a touch screen (technically a 30-year-old technology, but let's not quibble). It allows you to empty your pockets of multiple devices and carry just one thing (tough luck if it breaks down and strands you). And it's so exclusive you can't even get it yet in Canada.
Maybe we should move to the U.S., where AT&T holds the iPhone monopoly.
The logical Canadian iPhone pusher would be Rogers Communications Inc. (TSX:RCI.B), since it has the GSM technological infrastructure to handle it. In a media webcast around the time of the iPhone launch, Nadir Mohammed, president and COO of that company's communications group, was quoted as saying: "We'd love to have the product."
Yet Rogers' corporate communications manager Odette Coleman says they have not announced any plans to bring the iPhone to Canada. She reminds us that her company offers the widest selection of BlackBerries of any Canadian vendor.
Sure, but those are BlackBerries! They give them to civil servants and help-desk slaves. BlackBerries are so ... functional.
The iPhone is actually a tremendous demonstration of a concept that author and public speaker Dan Pink has been pushing - and hard.
Pink's speaking engagement calendar on his website lists engagements this month in London, San Diego, Washington, D.C., Saratoga Springs, St. Louis and Atlanta.
And that's not all - a footnote explains that these are just the ones that are open to the public.
Pink is Al Gore's former chief speechwriter. His Big Idea is that successful products, ideas, companies and people must appeal to the right brain (emotive, inventive, joyful) as well as the left brain (sequential, textual, analytic). Cars have therefore become "mobile sculptures.”
Airline employees care so much about you (at least according to WestJet commercials) that a flight attendant will not only deliver your left-behind presentation, but also correct the errors in it. You're promised love and commitment for the price of a discount plane ticket.
What's this got to do with iPhone-mania? In his talk, Pink shows a photo of an $11 flyswatter from chi-chi French designer Philippe Starck. Now, Rona sells a decent one for $1.77 and Wal-Mart and the dollar stores are probably even cheaper. Why pay more?
Pink explains that for most of its useful life, a flyswatter is not actually killing bugs. It's sitting there on your wall or table, a veritable piece of décor. Hence the premium for a bug-assassination device that simultaneously connotes class and refinement.
Pink pushed the importance of design and significance even further in an interview with Ubiquity, the online magazine of the Association for Computing Machinery, which is the planet's largest professional geek club.
"Design is, in many ways, the quintessential whole-minded ability," Pink told Ubiquity. "It's not simply engineering. It's not about getting stuff to work, although that's necessary.”
A good design, he believes, is "getting stuff to work that also appeals to some kind of transcendent, non-material desire."
So, of course your old Motorola V60 works. Of course your BlackBerry sends and receives e-mails. Those gadgets just don't have the deep meaning of the iPhone. Hence the outcry at what was probably an ill-timed price cut.
Why do companies cut prices? Generally because the product isn't doing too well in the great capitalist marketplace. Yet the iPhone sold one million units in 74 days, a feat that took almost two years for the iPod.
Dropping the price a scant two months after launching it seeded some self-doubt in the true believers, who you might as well know are sometimes referred to as "Mactards" by those who don't share their passion for all things white and shiny and Apple-y.
Of course, in the real cold world of business, there are factors such as Apple's recent launch of a new line of touch-screen iPods, which have built-in WiFi access and look a lot like the iPhone. Logically this should affect (lower) the value of the older (by a few months) iPhones.
A lot of people are betting that there'll be an iPhone 2.0 coming down the pike next January, probably with features like built-in GPS so you can re-orient yourself after watching too many YouTube videos.
Then there's the small matter of competitive smartphones. While they're not iPhones, they are getting pretty darn nice. And cheaper. And available in Canada now.
None of this hard-nosed reality seemed sufficient to sooth the hurt feelings of iPhone's early adopters. So Apple honcho Jobs wrote them a lovely open letter. "We need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone customers," he grovelled. "Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these."
The price for their hoped-for continued loyalty turns out to be a US$100 credit at any Apple retail store. Not a kick in the teeth, but hardly enough to make the guy who stayed up all night, and paid $599, stop snarling at his neighbour - who just scooped up an iPhone for $399.
When it comes to technology, it looks like we need a new command: Caveat mane emptor - early buyer beware!
(Tom Keenan is a professor at the University of Calgary and an expert on technology and its social implications. He can be reached at keenan@businessedge.ca)
