wow, that's just evil. TELUS (phone company here) has been running ads in really heavy rotation pushing the tagline "there's never been a better time to buy an iphone 4", and stating "offer ends october 4th".
This reminds me of April 2010 when I wrote a couple articles about how Apple is fairly unique among computer manufacturers for charging enormous prices for old hardware and going so long without update or a price drop. In April 2010, depending on the week, you bought a Macbook Pro that was miserably outdated or a Macbook Pro that was very modern for precisely the same price.
(If you're interested: http://simonsarris.com/blog/22-mac-envy-2 )
And the other thing that geeks don't realize: this is also how most of the world thinks, and how they want their products to be.
Also re: "miserably outdated" - this, again, only applies to us geeks. For us it's disappointing to not get the latest, shiniest chipset, or this year's "it" mobile GPU. But here's the rub: the year-over-year performance increase for a laptop in the same model line is, what, 15%? A March 2010 MacBook Pro will surf the internet, access email, and hell, play games just as well as a May 2010 MacBook Pro. They are, for 99% of users, identical unless you put it under benchmark conditions.
We geeks place way too much importance in hardware when thinking about the market in general. We have to remember that nobody else cares.
Unlike a dishwasher though, it still seems like a snubbing to any enthusiasts (I can only assume that dishwasher entusiasts are few, compared to Mac/hardware enthusiasts). But Apple (like most companies) cannot simply cater to such a minority, so c'est la vie.
Take Samsung for example. They had a good branding opportunity with Galaxy S. Galaxy S - the flagship, followed by Galaxy S2, S3, and so on.
Except their marketing department took a dive off the deep-end. Instead of marketing by this simple to understand name, they now have the Galaxy R, Samsung Hercules, Samsung Attain, Epic 4G... all of which are basically the same product!
Ditto goes for HTC. No fucking idea how to tell which is the low or high-end model from the naming scheme, and no way to tell which model came before another.
Or, leaving the mobile space for one second, Apple's offerings are simple: you have the MacBook Pro, which is updated from time to time. If you look at Apple's support site the naming is pretty clear: "MacBook Pro (early 2008)" is simple to understand - and a later MBP is unequivocally a better machine than a prior one.
Compare with, say, Toshiba. In their "Satellite" line (what does that mean anyways? which line would I want to purchase? The naming gives zero hints), they have the L635, L730, E305, L740, and P740.
What the fucking fuck? Do you want your customers to go get a PhD just to figure out your offerings or what?
Sony used to be much worse, but in recent years seem to have pulled their head out of their ass and started naming their products with some semblance of sanity.
In anycase - the iPhone's naming scheme is incredibly simple to understand - perhaps it could be even better, but still miles and miles ahead of the competition.
Everyone is obviously pushing hard to sell their iphone4-stock now, before Joe Sixpack gets told by the news-anchor to delay his purchase for the iphone5.
It may not be the best time to buy an iPhone given that a version greater than 4 will be released, but if you specifically want version 4, then now is a good a time as any time in the past.