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Comment by xiphias2 | Hacker News Reader

,,Are there actually people who want to have a charger included? I have about half a dozen of them already, what would I even do with another?''

You should check your priviledges before asking such a question.

For a huge amount of the people in the world with an iPhone, their iPhone worth more than all other assets they own together (Brazil is such a country).

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Lets get this straight: If you are money sensitive you want to pay extra for apple to include a charger, instead of getting the cheapest one that reasonably works and saving a few dollars.

Thanks for the great advice.

experience has taught me to always be wary of anyone who starts with "check your privilege"

Being wary doesn’t mean the person is wrong.

One would think that Apple could afford to include a charger that costs them $10 in their $1000+ phone box on which they have a 50+% margin, but hey. Guess you can keep buying their official chargers at $99 because standard USB-C chargers might or might not work on their devices depending on how they feel today.

Oh please. If you are that poor, the last thing you are buying is an iPhone in Brazil. Brazil is the most expensive place to buy a phone in the world.

https://9to5mac.com/2021/09/15/yet-again-brazil-has-the-most...

An iPhone is only being bought by the most affluent in those countries.

Sure, it may be true, when I travel to Brazil, girls always want me to buy them an iPhone (and probably other affluent tourist guys as well). Of course they are not the one buying it, they always get it as a gift.

How does that dispute anything I said? It’s still affluent people buying the phone and wouldn’t struggle buying a $10 USB wall charger.

We have alot iphones in favelas. People buy in up to 24 installments. An official Apple charger costs R$ 220 (reais) in the official store, that's 20% of the monthly minimum wage.

Then don’t buy an official Apple charger? You can buy a cheap third party charger almost anywhere.

It doesn't matter if it is official or not, selling a product that needs another one to work is configured as "tie-in sales", plainly prohibited in Brazil's Consumer Protection Code.

In that case, it would be illegal to sell a game console that requires games to work or selling a cell phone that requires cell service to work. Does that also mean that Apple can’t sell an AppleTV without an HDMI cable? Or for that matter sell an AppleTV without selling a router or without selling internet service.

What if the richer person didn’t realize this and gives the poor person the iPhone without a charger? The rich person has left. They cannot buy the wall charger any more.

Not everyone has extra money. In the US, it’s easy to get an iPhone for “free” that locks you in 2-3 years of credits. A person can be in debt and paycheck to paycheck and get an iPhone.

Apple isn’t doing anything for the environment. They are doing what makes them the most money. We should be on the side of the common person who is like us, regardless of how poor they are or if they got an iPhone they can not afford. There’s no reason to be on Apple’s side.

So rich people are buying poor people an iPhone - where the poor person still has to pay their own cell phone bill. But the poor person can’t buy a cheap third party usb c wall charger?

And if Apple is forced to include a wall charger, what’s stopping them from just charging extra for the phone?

You really don’t think this argument is a little incredulous?

Seeing that 90% of the world even in third world countries have some type of phone, you’re telling me that the person who got the free iPhone in the most expensive country in the world to buy a phone won’t find a way to buy a charger when if they hadn’t gotten the phone for free they would have bought an Android phone - that costs more than the charger?

Why make life harder for the poor person? To appease Apple’s profit line? I don’t understand the defense of huge corporation vs someone closer to you.

They could raise the price. They probably wouldn’t do. Those would be the wierdest price points. Apple isn’t gonna charge $10 more per iPhone and have weird first time prices. Like $810 instead of $799

My example isn’t even a stretch. It’s a legit issue that happens. I have multiple examples of it. I don’t want to assume but maybe you’re in some sort of bubble?

I am Brazillian, and I must say you are underestimating Apple's marketing and Elop dumbness (before Elop, Nokia had absolute market domination here, Sybian was both good enough and cheap enough to have something like 70% market share, Brazillians even made a bootleg port of Counter-Strike for Sybian...)

For example some years ago shortly after the launch of a new iPhone, it hit the news that a waiter had sold one of his kidneys to buy the iPhone.

I was going to post the link here but... search engines keep prioritizing the Nigerian and Chinese guys that did the same and I can't find the Brazillian one anymore.

Nigerian: https://www.thesouthafrican.com/culture/entertainment/nigeri...

Chinese: https://www.vice.com/en/article/bjqzv5/teen-who-sold-a-kidne...

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