Apple iPhone
 

so who's planning on dropping the $600?

Don't forget that with the two year calling plan thrown in there as well, the price jumps up to a little over 2 grand for two years, including the phone.

It looks really very cool, but we'll keep our tracphone.

iPhone makes me drool but I'm sticking with my junk $50+contract Razr.

You know whats crazy, the plans of some of these companies. For instance, the cheapest plan you can get with the iPhone is $59.99 for only 450 minutes! I have T-mobile and I LOVE my plan. I'm paying $49.99 for 1500 anytime minutes, free nights and weekend, and all day Friday is considered part of the weekend, beat that!

The iPhone looks sweet, but it's just not worth it for me yet. I'm out of space on a 60-gig iPod. Call me back when all the kinks are worked out and it has 100 gigs.

Strangely, my mother, who is basically technologically illiterate, is encouraging me to get an iPhone. She saw the nutjobs on the news waiting on line for one, and thought it looked cute.

It's not going to happen, because I have a year remaining on my current phone contract.

How did the market end up having contract be standard anyway? I mean, you didn't have to sign a contract to get a land line. Why for wireless?

I'm with you glatt. I'll keep the tracphone. No contract. Of course, the phone is simple as well, but I don't care much for phones anyway, so it suffices. It's just for family contact, calling in to work to play hookey, etc.

I suspect it has to do with the actual cost to the vendor of the phone that you're being given, either for free or for a significant discount. Landline phone service also evolved under different sets of regulations. Cellphones are fancy radios.

I don't remember there being a contact on my first couple phones (I had one of those massive bag phones to start), this was more of an innovation after people other than drug dealers and lawyers started buying cell phones.

That'd be it. People are much more willing to sign a two year contract and pay $50 for a phone rather than no contract and dish out $400+ for the same set. Cellphones are considered disposable, anyway, and people expect to get a new one every two years or so.

When landline phones were invented, they assumed that you would be with the same phone company for the next five decades.... because there WAS only one phone company.

That's why the phones you got were not only not dispensable, but they were positively unbreakable. Every appliance in your household has an expected life span, but it would be rare to find ANY original Western Electric desk model that doesn't still work as well as the day when it was manufactured.

http://cellar.org/2007/500black.jpg

Of course, you paid out the nose for that phone too.

Actually, my parents' desk model died before the wall model did, which was odd, as the wall model was used much more often and suffered much more abuse.

i just read Steve Jobs gave all of his employees a free iPhone.

Average life expectancy of a cell phone is about 18 months. Not because cell phones fail often. Cell phones at hundreds of dollars are too often fashion accessories. Just like $100 sneakers, hundreds for cell phone is simply a necessary expense for many people. At $500, iPhone is extremely cheap among those it will be marketed to.

Number of access minutes? Irrelevant since iPhone are expected to be heavy WiFi users and since the AT&T system on which it will operate is physically believed to be weak anyway. Just another reason why Apple suggests WiFi use by iPhone will be greater.