200 Subscriber Milestone and Apple iPhone Day 2014

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In quickly thanking my first 200 subscribers, which I reached yesterday, I just want to quickly also acknowledge I also achieved 2600 views overall.

This time a year ago I was queued up for the iPhone 5S at 8:00 am. This year, with two units pre-ordered and due to arrive here at work today I am not queuing up – I am not that greedy/eager to have to sell 3/4 iPhones in the near future… Even if it means making back $1000 overall.

The Age and other various media reported on the incidence of scalping and technically I guess I would be considered one. However, there is no legislation that makes this practice unlawful and we are simply taking advantage of economics and market forces. Whilst the recommendation across the board is to wait, there will be people who simply cannot and will be willing to pay a premium just to get the latest phone in a timely fashion.

You see this market in parallel situations – a helicopter taxi service from Melbourne CBD to the airport exists for business people who need a timely and reliable service, which is not subjected to variable traffic conditions.

The fact is even at outrageous prices of near double (iPhone 6 Plus going for $2400+) there is a small market where a handful of individuals are still prepared to pay! It may not be you or myself – but the fact is someone out there has that willingness to pay for the iPhone.

This time around I have preordered 2 iPhone 6 units – gold and 64GB. Over the years I have alternated between queuing up and pre-ordering:

  1. 2008 July 11: iPhone 3G queued up
  2. 2009 June 19: IPhone 3GS queued up
  3. 2010 June 24: iPhone 4 Apple pre-ordered
  4. 2011 October 14: iPhone 4S Optus pre-ordered
  5. 2012 September 21: iPhone 5 Apple pre-ordered
  6. 2013 September 20: iPhone 5S queued up
  7. 2014 September 19: iPhone 6 Apple pre-ordered

Last night iOS 8 was released and I triggered off all household device updates – two each of iPhones, iPads and the Apple TVs. Similar to the previous iOS update experience, the two iPads completed first, each taking about an hour to transition through the entire end-to-end experience. I chose to update my iPhone 5S via iTunes on my MacBook since the Wi-Fi method appeared to be slower. The iTunes download of the iOS update was much faster as expected, given the computer was connected directly to the Internet instead of via wireless; the 1.1 GB download taking 15 min to complete. The iTunes experience also provided more detailed status updates of what the iPhone was doing whilst the Apple logo and non-descriptive status bar animated the device screen. I manually triggered off the software update process for both Apple TVs and then left them to install unattended.

iOS 8.0 has a lot of subtle updates when compared to iOS 7.1.2, which is required before one can update to iOS 8.0.