I bit my tongue blogging about this mess because I knew Apple would have to respond at some point. With all the bad publicity that their $200 price reduction in 2 months (33%) and canceling of the 4GB model of the iPhone has created, they couldn’t just sweep it under the carpet.

Well today they did respond with a peace offering of $100 credit at Apple stores. Of course there will be fine print, but basically if you are > 14 days since your purchase date and haven’t been given a rebate from Apple or AT&T yet, you should be entitled to this credit. Stay tuned to Apple.com next week for details to be posted.

What are my thoughts and feelings on this situation? After the jump…

Am I mad/happy/sad? Well I am one of those who purchased the 8GB iPhone on June 29th. But I’m not one who stood in line for hours, I showed up 10 mins before closing walked right up to the counter to pay and was outta there in 5 minutes maybe. I didn’t even know for sure that I was going to get the iPhone up until the night before. Was it worth the premium $600 to me?

The way I justified it was that I was _this_ close to buying a blackberry pearl just a month or so before. And since I was still in the middle of my AT&T contract I couldn’t get a discount, so I was looking at spending a lot of money just on the phone itself (I think $450 from ebay). Then I would have had to submit to the huge cost of blackberry service through AT&T, much much more than the iPhone data plan costs me now. So going with the iPhone cost me a little more upfront but in a few months I would have made up the difference in the cost of the data plan. Now with this $100 rebate it pretty much collapses that gap to a few months.

Now on to what transpired the last couple of days. Apple announces a $200 price drop from $599 to $399 on the 8GB iPhone I just bought 2 months ago. First reaction to hearing the news? “Oh well, that’s life”. I believe that’s exactly what I said to a colleague who also bought his 8GB iPhone on launch day (he stood in line for it and had been waiting for months for the release).

What can you say? You feel angry about the 33% drop, but legally you have nothing to complain about. Apple was well within their rights to change the price anytime they wanted for any reason. And I was in the lump of people out of the 14 day window which made it suck. Sure I felt upset, angry even that Apple would slap us across the face like that. But I couldn’t do anything about it so why fret about it? I posted some messages to their support forums expressing my dissatisfaction in the decision (which were deleted along with 2200+ other posts), but that’s as far as I took it. I knew I didn’t have a case to bring to the Apple Store, but I did want to express my feelings as a customer. I left it at that, and didn’t set my expectations high for a resolution.

I figured Apple would either snub us, or try to appease the mass of angry people. The first statement that Steve made while being interviewed I thought was the nail in the coffin…

Q: What do you say to customers who just bought a new iPhone for $599? Sorry?
A: That’s technology.

To my surprise Apple came back with the peace offering of $100 rebate. I’m happy about the decision to ‘come halfway’. They could have just done nothing and I would still be using my iPhone. It doesn’t make up the entire $200 gap, but it was better than nothing.

But don’t get me started on the ringtone fiasco. Why on earth would I pay twice for a song just so I could use a 30-second clip for my ringtone. Thank you but no thanks that is completely insane and useless, I’ll just use my sftp to put any damned song I want on my iPhone for a ringtone.