Many consumers (but very few producers) are concerned about the recent iPhone X’s seemingly exorbitant cost.
These people, emboldened by their own tweets of “#TheFreerTheMarketTheFreerThePeople,” have protested the newly-unveiled product’s $1000 price tag. The beautiful screen, extra and unexplained camera, and the NSA-aiding FaceID technology have convinced very few people of the necessity of this four-figure cost.
“But it has the new A11 chip!” shout apple enthusiasts everywhere.
For those that don’t understand why that’s so important, consider this: what’s larger, 11 or 10? 11 obviously. If that wasn’t obvious, that’s probably because Math 114 is a prerequisite for this article.* Anyway, so 11 is bigger than 10, so the A11 chip is clearly at least 1 unit of superiority superior to the prior A10 chip.
Allow me to help you rationalize this price. This price is only a fraction (about 1/65th) of Penn’s yearly tuition, and this phone is set to last you a little more than a year! This price is also only a fraction of Amy Gutmann’s yearly salary (about 1/3537th). So if Amy were paid in iPhones instead of your tuition dollars and worship of her, she would have the exact quantity of a lot of iPhones.
Let’s look at a couple counter proposals. Imagine that instead of this phone you could buy 1000-dollar menu items. But who eats 1000 dollar menu items at one time? That’s ridiculous and clearly a waste of money, unlike the well-priced 1000-dollar iPhone X.
Or you could buy 1.65 iPhone X’s for the price of 1 gold backpack. A gold backpack is very heavy and therefore negates the benefit of a backpack that would be used to ease the carry of heavy things. Clearly in comparison to the other options an iPhone X is an easy buy.
The Punch Bowl would summarize this convoluted advocacy** of the iPhone X in a sentence: we, for one (thousand dollars), are very excited to buy the new iPhone X and take advantage of all 3 of its new features!
*Math 114 is a prerequisite for this article
**The Pennsylvania Punchbowl is not sponsored by Apple, but if Apple is interested in sponsoring us, we are very open to that. @Apple hmu at thepunchbowl@gmail.com