Why iPhone owners were mad about the price cut

I just read an interesting post on PCWorld.com called "Lessons Learned From the iPhone Price Cuts".

And I think they reach the wrong conclusions.

PCWorld said that introducing a product at a high price, then quickly lowering the price, is standard practice in the cellphone industry.
Their point was that Apple just lowered the price too soon, and too much.
I think Apple's mistake was in thinking it should be lowered at all.

The iPhone isn't an ordinary cellphone.
The Razr is a cellphone. Some might call it a smartphone. But in the minds of people everywhere, it's just another nice cellphone.
The iPhone, however, is an Apple.
It's not an ordinary cellphone, in the same way that the iMac isn't an ordinary desktop PC.
It has style, technology, and sex appeal no competing product has.
It's an Apple, after all.
And Apple doesn't build OR PRICE anything the way the rest of the industry does.

Everybody else comes out with a named product, and lowers the price until its discontinued.
That's why everybody else has model numbers in addition to product lines - it's the only way they can distinguish new from old.
Endless black boxes (or phones) with company names, company logos, product lines, model numbers, and CPU stickers hiding the black plainness.

Not Apple.

Apple's products are white. Clean. A logo and a product name, and nothing else to hide the white beauty.
And when Apple comes out with a named product at a premium price, they NEVER CHANGE THE PRICE.
They justify the price over time by increasing the specs on the product.
But they don't change the price.
At some point they determine that the product's "newness" has worn off.
Then they roll out a new product - a new look, new specs, and sometimes a new name.
But still at the same price.

The article mentioned Apple having lowered the iPod's original price.
However I don't think that's what happened.
If you read closely, they remember that a higher-spec'ed iPod at the same price as the original.
In other words, Apple increased the specs of the original iPod at the same price, and introduced a new lower-priced and lower-spec'ed model.
Business as usual for Apple.

Apple's pricing strategy feeds the general opinion that Apple sells premium products that justify their high asking price.
And their products really are good enough that even after purchase customers don't complain about the price because they got what they paid for.

Here's why the iPhone early-adopters were ticked-off:

For the first time any of them could remember...they felt cheated.