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APPLE products have always cost more than the equivalent
products elsewhere. It's one of the reasons that Apple has historically had
very high brand loyalty and very low market share - a classic luxury good
combination.
But now that Apple has become a mass-market brand, it's
reaching millions of sensible people, who like to save money. And that, in
turn, causes an interesting tension.
Back when Apple sold widgets, things were easy: you paid
through the nose for your widget, and then you were happy. But now Apple makes
mobile devices like iPhones and iPads, and that means it has no choice but to
get into bed with the much-hated wireless companies.
It tries to control the experience as best it can - but
people still end up being faced with ludicrous charges like $30 a month for
text messaging. And then, on the perfectly reasonable grounds that $360 plus
tax per year is a ridiculous sum of money to spend on a minuscule amount of
data, they decide that they're going to try to get around those charges.
It is indeed possible to get around extortionate wireless
charges. Rather than buy a 3G iPad, for instance, you can use one with only
wifi, and then connect it when you're on the go to a tethered smartphone or
some kind of MiFi device.
And rather than spend lots of money on text messages, you
can sign up for Google Voice, and do all your texting with that number.
These money-saving techniques are perfectly rational. And
they don't cost Apple any money - just the wireless carriers. But they're still
bad for Apple, because they defeat the elegant perfection which Apple puts so
much effort into getting exactly right.
And what's more, these techniques are most attractive to
people who are tempted by Apple products but can only just afford them, or
can't quite afford them.
As it seeks to increase its market share, Apple has to sell
its products to more and more of these people, who will often be buying an
Apple product for the first time. And the last thing that Apple wants is for
its carefully-crafted user experience to be sullied by something as banal as an
attempt to avoid text messaging charges.
Take the iPad, for instance: I can attest from personal
experience that the 3G iPad is just miles better than trying to use a wifi-only
iPad with a MiFi.
It downloads emails automatically, even when you don't ask
it to; you can pull it out of your bag and look up anything you like instantly;
there's no waiting around for the wireless modem to get online and generate its
wifi signal; you don't need to worry about how charged up your MiFi is, or
where you left it; you get all the advantages of real GPS; etc etc. An iPad +
MiFi is adequate; it's good enough; it's "all I need".
But the 3G iPad is why people love Apple. And it costs $300
a year over and above the cost of the iPad, which is itself $130 more than the
wifi-only version. There are definitely cheaper ways of getting your iPad
online.
But you lose a significant amount of elegance and ease of
use in the process.
As for Google Voice, you can either just install it on your
phone with a new number, or you can go through the rather convoluted process of
transferring your current number to Google Voice.
Either way, you're going to be using the Google Voice app a
lot - an app which is slower and buggier than the phone and messaging apps
built in to iOS. And - to answer Ryan O'Donnell’s question - I can't really
recommend it.
Yes, you get to check your text messages on the web, which
can be useful - although it's not that useful. But you also break a lot of
things which otherwise work seamlessly in iOS. There's no MMS, for instance.
There's no iMessage.
There's also - this is big - no texting to anybody with an
international number. You can't text from Siri. FaceTime integration goes away.
You can no longer just click on a phone number to call it, if you want to call people from your Google Voice number. And the whole thing becomes generally much less reliable, because you can't get any text messages at all unless and until you have a data connection.
And as anybody with an iPhone knows, there are many, many
occasions when you have cell service but data service just doesn't work at all.
On top of that, you might well be violating your wireless
carrier's terms of service.
Now for some people - specifically people who are very
comfortable with iOS, who know their way around an iPhone, and who value the
ability to save money - a switch to Google Voice still makes sense.
Text messaging plans are ludicrously expensive, and I
support anybody who comes up with a way of avoiding having to pay those bills.
(Including, it must be said, Apple, whose iMessage platform, if it catches on,
neatly circumvents existing text messaging systems.)
But it does seem to me that so long as Apple has to deal
with the hated wireless providers, people will always be voluntarily accepting
a subpar user experience because they want to save on monthly charges.
Apple has always hated it when its customers have a subpar
user experience, but this problem isn't going to go away: in fact, it's only
going to get worse.
And in the meantime, if you buy a wireless Apple product, it's a good idea to be aware that the premium you're paying for the hardware is not the end of the story. You're going to be feeling the monthly bills for as long as you use that thing. And they're going to add up.
- Reuters
* Salmon is a Reuters columnist.
