Does Consumerist have some weird fetish with Apple? Or perhaps someone owns stock in the company? Brainwashed by aliens? This is the third post on Apple this morning. Can't you find anything else to discuss? Not every consumer owns an iPhone.

Seriously? More iPhone news? Why not do news about new blackberries too then? or new Android phones? This is not a tech website...

@Gramin: Oh, quit yer whinin'.

Apple had a keynote yesterday and released new stuff -- I dislike fanboys as much as the next person, but 3 articles isn't anything to get your panties in a bunch over.

I think you need to figure out the pricing. There's actually 3 prices for each phone. One for out-of-contract, one for upgrade before eligible, and one for no-contract.

@Gramin:

I should make a small correction. This is more than just the third post on Apple; rather, it's the third post on the iPhone! Is anyone else tired of discussing the same thing all morning? The Consumerist writing and editorial staff is somewhat lacking these days.

@mdmadph: On another note, this constant flood of Iphone stuff makes me want one less and less.

@mdmadph:

Three articles repeating the same information is a bit ridiculous. A quick look at the WSJ online and I can't find anything that is repeated three times on their front page. Moreover, I'm not the only who thinks this is ridiculous, as evidenced by JRules' post.

This is a phone that might be worth the upgrade. After all, Apple is saying the 3GS will FINALLY SUPPORT MMS (a feature my Nokia and Motorola phones had in the late 1990's) and training-less voice dialing (a feature my Blackberry had 3 years ago!)

All this cost and drama for a phone who's first two iterations were substantially sub-par to far cheaper alternatives. People must love touchscreens...

I'm just hoping the rumoured inclusion of cut and paste functionality will now be passed down in the next update for this here iPod touch, because man, leaving that out of the OS was TEH STOOOOPID.

And same crappy AT&T service. No thanks!

I'm glad to see them bring it down to a reasonable level of $99 for the phone that will do more than enough for 90% of consumers.

I don't feel sorry for early adopters, but for the ones who did wait a reasonable ammount of time to have the price halved under them within a few months time.

I used to sell cell phones (I was honest belive it or not) and I remember watching the same exact thing go down with the Motorolla RAZR when it launched at something like a $500 price point and all the urban hipsters rushed to max their credit cards. Then within a year they'd give you 4 free ones for opening an account.

When iPhone launched I said the same thing, within a few years they'll be like most smart phones, $9-$99 / contract.

It's still overpriced for the S model, but again if you're a gotta have the first one type, well don't be mad when they drop price a year later to something more in line with the rest of the industry.

@kaceetheconsumer: Copy and paste is included in the 3.0 upgrade, available for free for iPhone users and at a price for Touch users.

@Do not taunt Happy Fun King Psyz:
I ment $49-$99

Careful guys. Last July I wrote, "CAN WE PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, NOT MAKE THIS iPHONE DAY." And I was banned from commenting. I had to ask for months to get my privileges back.

So the moral of the story is, if you criticize a story, especially about the iPhone, chances are you are going to get banned.

your pricing is off for the 32gb model. over by a $100 on both prices. (not to mention the additional $18 fee for early upgrading)

iPhone 3G S. The "S" is for suckers!

@JRules: This is the AppleSite 3.0. Yesterday they called it the "Appleologist"

I got my iPhone 3G back in August and I don't consider myself ripped off or deprived in any way. I would be a little miffed if I'd bought it last month for $300, but thems the breaks. Technology gets better, it happens. I can't complain that there's a better phone now than the one I bought a year ago. I'm still perfectly happy with my iPhone - although I definitely want the 3GS. My only solace is that my work might buy a new one for me and pay the $400 it will cost since I'm not eligible for the cheaper upgrade pricing until next April.

@Do not taunt Happy Fun King Psyz: VCR's were $800 when they first came out. Now they are $10 and a free toaster.

All technology goes down after "X" time.

@NoNamesLeft: I got tossed too for a while. Consumerist has a short temper with constructive criticism.

@Gramin: I am sure if you owned this website, and realized that the click-through on the last two Apple posts were 10 times greater than any other post, you would logically increase your Apple coverage

@MikeHerbst: Actually the MMS support is going active with the 3.0 software which will work on the older 3G iPhone. The only thing you won't get is video wich is a feature unique (so far) to the newer 3GS.

Sorry, but this article is just a lil' misleading. For us "early" iPhone adopters (the 2G) we were not bound by contract. It didn't put us in a two year contract lockdown, so us "early adopters" can upgrade to the 3GS at greatly reduced costs. It's only those who rushed out to buy the 3G who suffer the penalties.

The only people who got burned were those who jumped from the 2G to 3G and now want to go to the 3GS. Us true early adopters? We can upgrade on the cheap!

@NoNamesLeft: There are ways to send in criticism. There are even nice e-mail links on the left. Leaving a whiny, bitchy comment about it is against the comment rules.

@I Love New Jersey: It was rather funny listening to the audio of the presentation. When the apple rep was announcing some new features that were carrier dependant (MMS, teathering to a laptop) and AT&T was absent from the list of worldwide providers that were supporting these features, the entire crowd went "BOO". It threw off the Apple spokesman and at one point he had to stop for a few seconds and they the crowd quiet down a bit.

@LegoMan322: Me too, and I didn't even realize I was criticizing. :/

@JRules:

Amen, who much icrap news do we need?

@Donathius: Could not agree more. I got my iPhone in January and could not be more pleased with it. Nothing so far on the 3GS is compelling enough to make me want to upgrade. I normally don't use my phone as a camera or video recorder (except to take photos of store tags so I can do more research on the product at a later time). The voice dial is cool, but I have had other phones where that did not work very well, so I don't hold much hope for the iPhone to be miles above the competition in this area. The additional speed is compelling, but until there are super apps that require this additional speed, I am perfectly happy with the slower version. Everything that I really wanted is included in the 3.0 free firmware upgrade.

@Gramin:
I really like the iPhone, but the Consumerist isn't really the place for it. Yeah, I know the arguments that run with the idea that the iPhone is a consumer product, but if we DO follow that idea, they should devote articles to other smartphones and compare them.

@Jacob Morgan:

You're absolutely right! It isn't the only smartphone on the market. I'm beginning to wonder if this is really an Apple fanboy site masquerading as a consumer oriented site.

@NoNamesLeft: Maybe try without the annoying caps next time? just a suggestion...

@PinkBox: yeah....very short temper

@Gramin: But RIM didn't have a huge conference announcing a brand new Blackberry. And hmm...there isn't a brand new Blackberry.

But I could go for some Pre coverage.

@pecan 3.14159265:

True. But where was Consumerist's coverage of the Mobile World Conference? Several new and exciting phones were announced at MWC. However, I can't find any coverage of the event. I understand that iPhone fanboys are similar to Trekies and have an uncontrollable fascination with the iPhone, however, three posts about the iPhone before Noon is still a bit too obsessive.

@LegoMan322:
Not really valid, VCRs came along with there was NOTHING in the market doing what they did.

All Apple did was bring in a slick UI and a touchscreen only interface. They actually left out many standard features available in the most basic of phones and chalked it up to those things not meeting their vision or them having a better solution. Now only to roll back on that tract with the addition os MMS messaging and Video capture.

Hell my 5 year old phone does video and MMS.

ATT should have subsidized the phones at launch, but they wanted as much profit as they could get off the deal. Frankly I am still confused why Apple chose to work with ATT exclusively.

"Obsolete"??

The iPhone 3GS boasts ONE (count it!) entirely new feature (compass) and slight upgrades to memory, camera, and processor speed (though one would be hard pressed to call the iPhone 3G "slow.")

(For the record, as jailbreakers know, the iPhone's camera has always been capable of video so I don't count that as a new feature. Most of the other "new" stuff announced yesterday will be available in the 3.0 software for ALL iPhones and is not exclusive to the 3GS.)

Technically speaking, the jump from iPhone to iPhone 3G was MUCH more significant. But even then I wouldn't go so far as to call the iPhone 2G "obsolete."

@Paul D: I forgot to add that battery life is entirely subjective, so I don't count that as a terribly compelling upgrade either. Besides, I don't know any iPhone users who have ever gotten the kind of battery life Apple claims for their particular model.

@nakedscience:
Irony alert, same goes for the comment cop. Let the site handle it's biz because your comments are just as distracting and off topic and frankly not your place to administer.

The posts complaing have a point, they're just as much a part of this site as you and it can be a bit much to have multiple articles on the same subject in a short ammount of time.

Gizmodo had a simillar problem last week with every other story covering the greatness that is Natal while in their liveblog they said the Sony Motion Control was amazing and trumped Natal.

@Preyfar:
Well you still paid $600 for a phone two years ago...

The AT&T exclusivity is a real dealbreaker for me. I had theri service until Verizon covered my area. If they's move to VZ, I'd probably switch from Blackberry.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to get one unlocked for T-Mobile (at a more sane price once the exclusivity is over).

@Gramin: I think the posts could have been condensed to one...but I don't think they can do that simply, so I shrug and move on.

I bought my phone May 25th (New 8GB Black 3G Phone)... for $199 -- is there any remedy for the drastic price drop?? I haven't even had it for 30 days!! Is there any way to upgrade to the new one that is the same price (for twice the memory) or get the $100 difference credited to me?? Shouldn't they have told me that in 15 days the price would drop $100? I ported my number over from Verizon and got an ETF, so shouldn't they have told me since I could have just waited??

@Do not taunt Happy Fun King Psyz: I was simply stating that all technology goes down rapidly in price.

The new features of the iphone plus the price point are very attractive to people who do not understand AT&T and their shittyness.

I have the 2gen iPhone and will not upgrade till more features come out...similar to what you mentioned.

@lpranal: Who had on annoying caps?

@Rachacha:
OK cool, so the phone they released in 2008 will sort of catch up to 1995 with a software update. Nice.

@Do not taunt Happy Fun King Psyz: $499, but I bought was available at the time. It was expensive, but I felt it worth it. That is the cost of being an early adopter, but AT&T (for as much flak as they get) didn't bind people into a contract. You always pay more to be "first".

I'm upgrading to an iPhone 3GS, and for $199, I don't mind. I've thoroughly enjoyed my iPhone, and it's in dire need of a replacement (part of the battery exploded inside the case). But I have no regrets. :)

@Rachacha: Same here. My 3g (2nd gen) iPhone rocks. I am no fan of AT&T (the iPhone is not hooked up to anyone) but once the phone gets opened or I jailbreak it...I am keeping it till it dies.

The 3G currently is not worth the upgrade for me.

@mdmadph: Since they are his/her panties I think they should decide that. Plus with all the other sites pushing the Apple news it is getting redundant.