Okay, serious rant time. You may want to skip this one. I foresee being a little less kind than normal.

Background: Yesterday Apple, Inc., released a number of new iPod products, including the iPod touch which is, in essence, an iPhone without the phone or camera. In doing so, they aggressively re-priced the iPhone. The price dropped from $599.00 for an 8 gig model down to $399.00. The 4 gig version was discontinued. The reaction across the web to an unheard of one-third price drop for a popular product has been, well, let's just say that the reaction has run counter to my expectations.

Hell, it's run counter to my sense of decency. So, for those of you who paid the six hundred bucks during the first two months of the iPhone's availability, for those of you who are screaming that Apple is unfair and is engaging in unethical business practices and you won't ever buy from them again unless they refund you your two hundred dollars, let me just say one simple thing:

Go fuck yourselves.

When all the nay-sayers were telling you to wait for the second generation model so all the bugs could be worked out, when all of them were telling you that it wasn't a revolutionary product and that you were a fool to even CONSIDER paying six hundred bucks for a friggin' phone, when everyone and their mother told you that the price would eventually come down, you still stood in line, put off paying your electric bill for a couple of weeks, sent Guido the Killer Pimp to collect that twenty-five bucks you loaned your baby sister last year that she still hadn't paid back and bought the iPhone. When I read the New York Times and the USA Today and Slashdot, I didn't see any reporting that mentioned Herculean buffoons in Apple t-shirts throwing you from moving limos outside the Apple store. I didn't see any reports of hordes of panting Apple fan-boys with Mac 10's forcing you through the doors over which hung a sign reading, "Arbeiten machts du Frei!"

I mean it could have happened, but I didn't hear about it.

What I did hear is that you were pleased with your product. The customer satisfaction rating for the iPhone is greater than ANY APPLE PRODUCT EVER MADE. When someone laughed at you for paying $600.00 bucks for a phone, you said, "If you think this is just a phone, you're an idiot." When you pulled it out in public, everyone came running over, huddled around you in Rock star fashion (in a manner which your pathetic existence will never again experience), and ooh'd and ahh'd. You lapped it up like an exhausted dog at a dish of fresh water. You were happy with your purchase and the price was reasonable enough for you to buy the iPhone.

But now, all-of-a-sudden like, you're bitching. "Apple screwed over its best customers!" "Apple should give me a refund for beta-testing the iPhone for two months!" "Apple poisoned me!" Tough shit, Snow White. If you don't like poisoned Apples, I suggest you don't play with dwarves.

In other words, your protests of the price drop being unfair make George Bush look like a genius in comparison.

Got news for you: Prices drop. Got some more: Prices drop on technological products even faster. Got more news for you: Apple dropping the price two hundred bucks isn't unfair. You have six hundred bucks of disposal income to drop on an untested phone while everywhere in the world there are people that will smile when they've got an extra twenty in their pockets. What's unfair is the fact that while you chowed down on a grease-laden triple Whopper with a bucket-load of French fries while you read your iPhone's user manual, a six hour flight away from those golden arches a bunch of kids died because they didn't have clean water to drink.

You overspent two hundred dollars on the latest and greatest and kept on eating. Others died.

Yeah, life's unfair. Shucks. But that ain't your problem, is it? You got bigger fishes to fry. Apple owes you two hundred bucks. Go get 'em, Tiger.

And while you're at it, shoot yourself in the head.

Joseph Haines, signing off from The Edge of the Abyss.