Funny, folks here say they bought the 64gb for $450 new during sales earlier this year. Timing and that.
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iPad Pro $799 Ouch $150 Premium why ?
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Funny, folks here say they bought the 64gb for $450 new during sales earlier this year. Timing and that.
For the record, the new iPad has larger bezels than the 10.5 iPad. Sometimes I think people forget what bezels actually means
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Sales for the 10.5 were available much sooner than that. And I see nothing wrong with people waiting for sales. Seems like the smartest financial decision most people could do. People usually aren’t patient enough to save money
The side bezels were slightly increased, but the top/bottom bezels were markedly reduced for an overall reduction of bezel size when averaging them, allowing them to put in a larger (11") screen into the same size package as the 2017 10.5" model BECAUSE of the averaged bezel reduction. Although my discussion was centered on the functionality of reducing bezel sizes in general.
Original iPhone dropped to a starting price of $399: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2007/09/05Apple-Sets-iPhone-Price-at-399-for-this-Holiday-Season/
And, for years, we had in the US had subsidized phones where you were locked into 2 year contract but that made the upfront starting prices lower (e.g. $199 for iPhone 3G at https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2008/06/09Apple-Introduces-the-New-iPhone-3G/ and for many phones that followed). I used to be on AT&T and they never reduced my monthly bill once I finished my 2 year contract.
In the past, I tended to buy a middle amount of flash storage on the highest end non-Plus sized phones (Plus and non-Plus started w/the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus), so I might pay $299 + tax out of pocket every 2 years, get the phone unlocked at end of contract and sell it for maybe $120-$180. Going back further, I still have my invoice for an iPhone 4 for $199 + tax.
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But again, 2 year contracts. You are in the minority who saw no plan price decrease as 100% the subsidy was built in. There are no free lunches; the customer always paid.
It is impossible to compare 2008-2012ish to now; very different landscape for smartphone usage, data usage, plan cost, etc.. There are also far more people using data and volume of data on the network by many times over compared to 2008-2012ish.
Sure, you could get 450 min, unlimited text and data for $90 in 2010 before unlimited came to an end on most carriers; but the average user was using under 500mb of data then by the stats (450mb was the average in 2012) and the carriers knew that.
That would be a foolishly poor deal today to pay $90 for 450 min, texts and use 500mb of data. Considering the average data use in 2018 is 4-5gb per month across the 4 major carriers. So the plans then are simply not equivocal today.
Carriers were also trying to get people to buy smartphones causing them to buy data plans. The market is now saturated so offering subsidized phones makes no sense to carriers.
But the facts all show that you were paying for your subsidized phone at the end of the day in your plan no matter how you cut it.
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Sure, the customer paid the subsidy as part of the bill but I was in the minority??? I started w/iPhones w/the iPhone 3G when it was still exclusively on AT&T. (Became available mid-cycle of iPhone 4 on Verizon.) I had one of the early "unlimited data" plans with no included text messages and had that until I left AT&T in end of November 2017.
I wasn't paying $90/mo for 500 megs of data. I had their "unlimited" data plan and had a FAN code due to my employer. I don't have my bills handy but still have some emails showing my total was under $70 back in 2009. I even found one that was barely above $60. AT&T raised the old "unlimited" plan price a bunch of times and my final bills in 2017 were $70 to $72/month.
As I said, AT&T as far as I remember never lowered my bill for fulfilling my 2 year contract on any of my subsidized phones. Due to this fact, I'd always order a new iPhone every 2 years so that it arrives shortly after my 2 year contract was fulfilled.
I found these claiming that AT&T monthly data usage is only the low side, 1.9 gigs and 2.4 gigs, respectively. And, I was on AT&T.
https://www.phonearena.com/news/Cel...T-T-T-Mobile-and-Sprint-January-2018_id102540
https://www.androidauthority.com/t-mobile-most-data-830694/
Doesn't surprise me that T-Mobile's data numbers are high (for example) due to "zero rating" (e.g. https://www.t-mobile.com/offers/binge-on-streaming-video and https://www.t-mobile.com/offers/free-music-streaming).
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