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Comment by Total_Meltdown | Hacker News Reader

> It's like assuming that owning a Ferrari means you can afford to eat at a $20 restaurant meal every night.

Fixed that for you. iPhones are a luxury item. Cellphones are arguably necessary, but nobody's forcing you to drop $400 on a smartphone when there are perfectly free (subsidized) feature phones on every single carrier.

So yeah, I agree with the assumption that iPhone users have a little extra cash to burn.

Edit: Ok, maybe Ferrari wasn't quite a fair comparison, but certainly a car that's a little more than just getting from point A to point B.

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...did you just equate an iPhone with a Ferrari, or am I missing some fundamental point of comparison here?

iPhones and other Apple products are not very expensive. They're not the cheapest products on the market, but that isn't really the point; Homo economicus ( http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2095 ) might consider it a luxury item, but that just doesn't describe the purchasing decisions and ethos of the vast majority of today's consumers.

Consequently, it's kind of a ridiculous assumption.

A Ferrari is certainly not a fair comparison, but if you can afford an iPhone, you can afford a $0.99 application if you actually want it.

And if you can't? Do without. Don't pirate it. This is really not a hard concept: give those who create what you enjoy their due, or do without.

People spend money in different ways when you're looking at a once-every-few-years purchase as opposed to an everyday purchase. Someone's perception of whether they can afford an application vs a phone is not evaluated solely on price.

This isn't about morals, it's about economics. I'm not saying you should pirate things you can't afford, I'm saying that buying an iPhone is not a guarantee of being well-off, even absent the 'gift' factor.

But an app isn't an everyday purchase either. An iPhone, with the required data plan, is an everyday purchase. The hardware is more expensive once, and the plan is more expensive every month. Apps are purchased once.

>But an app isn't an everyday purchase either.

Not for you, not for me; can you say that for everyone?

Data plans are irrelevant. I could well point out car insurance in the ancestor analogy.

EDIT: Allow me to clarify. A phone is a decision made once. The data plan, the price of the phone, these are all taken into account at the time the purchasing decision is made. Applications are a long chain of decisions which are each approached individually.

An iPhone, with the required data plan, is an everyday purchase.

You need to rethink and reword this.

I said what I meant. When you buy an iPhone, not only are you paying for the hardware, you're committing to a monthly fee. A $0.99 app is not even a day of cell service, let alone a 2 year phone contract.

An every day purchase is a purchase that someone could (be reasonably expected to) make most days. Noone purchases an iPhone for themselves several times a week. Hence an iPhone is not an every day purchase.

You are getting confused because you believe that paying for a service every day make it an every day purchase. You only purchase an iPhone once (although you will possibly buy another iPhone a year or two later.)

Paying off a home loan over a few decades doesn't make a house an everyday purchase. And paying for an iPhone over a couple of years (or signing any two-year contract) doesn't make that an everyday purchase either.

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