Applesauce Meter Rises; will iPhone boost it more?

After some discussion with a friend of mine about Apple's pricing structure, I concede that it isn't completely overpriced. In fact, the higher end MacBook Pros are underpriced relative to something similar in the PC notebook universe. But the low end MacBooks still carry a price premium of a couple of hundred dollars.

So the Applesauce Meter moves from 5% applesauce to 20%. Still at 80% water, meaning 80% hype.

Now, many of you know that tomorrow is the 1st day of the Apple iPhone. Much hype has been thrown at it, a phenomenon well documented by my favorite journalism critic, editor Jack Shafer at Slate. It got a pretty upbeat but balanced review in the NYT from David Pogue and the WSJ's Walter Mossberg liked it too with some reservations.

You know that I am no iPod fan, and the iPhone looks like an iPod killer. That stupid scroll wheel concept is gone and the thing seems to look and act like the PADDs from Star Trek. So Apple is making some imperfect strides again. At least they are trying. But given the dearth of common cell phone features like txt msging and not being able to replace the battery without killing the device, Apple is still up to its old tricks: they wow you on the GUI and the body, but drive you nuts with odd limitations (only AT&T?) and lack of features (putting iTunes music on a non-iPod?).

It's becoming common knowledge that you don't buy 1.0 or even 2.0 of any Apple product. Only fanboys who will buy all the models need bother. This is unfortunate because Apple could expand its market share and polish its reputation even more if they didn't roll stuff out of their skunkworks prematurely to take another bite at your wallet.



The original iPhone, circa 2151?