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I use an IPod and I don't feel treated as a King, more like a pigeon: It is my gadget, with my music in it, and I am being forced to use a software I dislike (iTunes) which don't even work on my OS of choice.

You have a weird view on how Kings are treated, or on Apple itself.

You chose to buy an iPod. If you don't like the way it works, buy a different device.

That kind of market calculus made sense before the recession. Now the value proposition has changed, and while people may still buy newer hardware (such as tablets) they expect better value from their tech purchasing because increasing wealth is no longer a given.

I'm not so sure about that. You can (probably- I'll be honest, I haven't checked for sure) get a more powerful Android handset than a Nexus One for free if you sign a new two-year agreement right now. There's very little to lose there- except having to take on a two year plan. Except...

Also, people are more suspicious of corporations in general, especially ones that are sitting on a large cash pile. Public sentiment is fickle and can quickly bite a company in the ass - look at how far the stars of Groupon and Netflix have fallen in just two quarters.

I'm extremely skeptical of the former claim- people's anger is directed towards banks, not large corporations with hordes of cash (by and large). If they were, people would hate Apple.

Groupon and Netflix are both things that you can quite conceivably do without. A cellphone these days is seen as an essential, so signing up for a new two year term isn't such a friction point. You're going to need cellphone service from somewhere, after all.

A 2-year contract costs $20/month more than a comparable month-to-month plan. (T-mobile's Even More /Plus plans make this explicit.) That's where the phone subsidy comes from.

That may be the case for T-Mobile but it certainly is not universal. AT&T offers nothing like that, AFAIK.

That would explain why the US version of the Nexus One has T-mobiles 3G band and not AT&Ts.

There's very little to lose there- except having to take on a two year plan.

Creditworthiness is a major barrier for many people. Many more resent being tied to a single vendor. Hence the increasing market share of non-contract vendors, although they've been taking a beating too because cell service demand at the bottom end is highly elastic compared to food and housing.

If you're an existing customer of a cell phone provider without a contract, I kind of doubt they'll refuse to sign you up to a new two-year contract because of credit quality, as long as you've been paying your bils. It doesn't make sense to drive you to jump to another carrier.

I bought an Apple 3G new in August 2009, after the 3GS came out and it felt like obsolete junk with the next major iOS upgrade, long before the contract expired. I certainly did not feel like I was treated like a king.

I was certainly not the only one: http://appletoolbox.com/2010/06/iphone-3g-slow-after-ios-4-0...

None of the suggestions worked.

I have a Motorola Atrix now.

Nobody is denying the way 3G users got screwed. I should know, I'm still paying out a contract for my 3G which was boxed up long ago and replaced with a 4. However this situation didn't repeat itself with the 3GS & iOS 5. They learned from that and corrected it, especially now that they are still selling it. iOS 5 runs beautifully on the 3GS.

Point being, all of the Android phones released around the original iPhone and iPhone 3G have most definitely been cut off. However, the Nexus One is newer than the 3GS, not to mention the benchmark model for that generation of Android device, and it has already been cut off.

This is separate from the 3G issue which was bad, but is in the past at this point. It's also arguable that even slow 3G users are better off than users of the same era stuck with Android 1.5/1.6. Hell, just throw ultrasn0w on your 3G and it becomes perfectly usable again.

This story Sounds like total BS to me coming from a Google employee.

No, it's correct that iOS 4.0 was a huge performance hit on the 3G: it significantly increased iOS memory requirements, on a phone which was already memory constrained It was unusably slow.

iOS 4.2 improved some things and made it usable again, but the phone was still nowhere near as responsive as under iOS 3.1

On the other hand, rsheridan6 had bought a year-old design.

>On the other hand, rsheridan6 had bought a year-old design.

Well, yes, my previous 3G had been stolen, I needed a replacement right away, and I couldn't afford the premium for the 3GS right then. But if the 3G was intended to be obsolete less than a year after I bought it, it was a dick move to sell it with a 2 year contract. I don't think it's too much to ask that a phone not be obsolete before the contract runs out.

But I have learned my lesson. I'm only buying top-of-the-line from now on. I need to switch to Verizon because I moved to an area where they have the only decent network, and I'm holding out for the Rezound or Nexus Prime (Nov 10th).

But this also favors Android over the iPhone. New iPhones only come out every so often. Suppose your iPhone broke/got lost/got stolen at a time when the current iPhone is 8 months into its lifecycle. Your choices are to sign a 2 year contract for a phone that will be likely be obsolete before the contract runs out, pay an exorbitant cash price, go without a phone until the next release, or buy a cheap phone with no contract and wait for the next release. Or you could buy Android. There's always a latest and greatest Android phone that's not more than a month or so old.

That's right, only Google shills are anything other than 100% satisfied with the iPhone. That's why Android is selling more than the iPhone now.

In Canada, phone contracts are 3 year.

Getting a new phone every two years is unsustainable, not to mention the problem with securing the necessary rare earth metals to continue building them.

I appreciate you acknowledging the products ending up in a landfill.

We really need to change the way we do things not just because of the recession but because it is entirely unsustainable.

I had hope google would recognize this problem but it seems they are more interested in the bottom line.

Those downvotes need an explanation. If you think it's Apple fanboyism, I'd like to point out that I own 3 Android devices, beta-tested the CR-48, and have never owned anything from Cupertino.