I have the iPhone 3G—by the way, I paid an extra $US500 deposit on top of the price tag because I didn’t have US credit history back then—and I don’t qualify for a subsidised upgrade. I have to finish my contract first.

But I am not whining. Not because I am a fanboy, but because there are no arguments to support the whining.

Sure, it sucks to be me and pay almost-full price for the iPhone 3GS, but that’s how life is. You don’t get a reduced price on your new notebook just because you bought the old model a year ago. You don’t get reduced price on cars, or anything else.

The fact is that the $US199/$US299 price tag for the iPhone is the result of AT&T’s (or any other carrier, since the situation is the same all around the world) subsidy. Without subsidy—and tying you to a new two year contract—the iPhone is not different from something like the Nokia N97, which is $US700 unlocked. Or the contract-free, unsubsidised iPhone 3G itself: The original iPhone costs $US770 and $US877 for 8 and 16GB versions.

I hate to defend AT&T or any other carrier. I hate their guts. All of them. Their monthly fees are highway robbery, yes. You may think you are entitled to a discount because of those fees, but that doesn’t make much sense either. I’m afraid that, this time, they are right. And on top of that, your carrier is actually giving you a discount already. Tiny, but compared to the full price of the unsubsidised iPhone.

You better get used to this too. These things are computers. And as applications get more and more complex—specially games—you will want to have the latest and fastest, whether is iPhone, Android, Palm, Windows Mobile, or Blackberry. And with all of these, the situation will be exactly the same. Without a subsidy, you will keep paying full price for these tiny and wonderful computers. All of them. And that price will stay at around $US600 for a long time to come. It’s not going to change.

Drive through, people. Nothing to see here.

A guy called Ryszard Gold–who probably is an alien villain from the Outer Rim planets and got a 49-point score in our Geek Social Aptitude Test–made the calculation of the most basic Death Star’s price with current materials and space transport costs here on Earth. Here’s a quick summary:

• First, assume that 1/10 of the 17.16 quadrillion cubic meters of the Death Star is something other than empty space and 6/10 of the total volume is pressurised space.
• That will require 1.71 quadrillion cubic meters of steel, about 134 quadrillion tonnes. That’s $US12.95 quintillion in current 2008 prices, and that’s without counting strange alloys and elements.
• Shipping that to space will cost $US95 million per tonne: So add $US12.79 septillion in transport.
• Now you need to add air, which will require 8.23 quintillion cubic meters of Nitrogen, and 1.65 quintillion cubic meters of oxygen, for a total delivery cost of $US2.81 septillions and $212.46 quintillion.

The total: $US15,602,022,489,829,821,422,840,226.94.

Yes, that’s a whooping 1.4 trillion times the current US Debt. Or a sightly more meaningful number: 124 trillion years of war in Iraq.

That will only get you the very basic model of Death Star, no options, no GPS, no radio, no leather heated seats, no mega-laser to obliterate planets, no turbolaser towers, no computer systems, no miscellaneous life support systems, no crew quarters, no turbo-elevators, no energy generators, no showers, no air conditioning, no Darth Vader’s jacuzzi, no Emperor’s home theatre system, and no bloody canteen. And don’t get me started on the cost of all the lunch trays and the constant supply of penne all’arrabbiata and peas needed for all the Death Star personnel*. That will probably double the final bill, coupled with the construction costs, for a total of more than $US31 septillions.

As for the answer to the first question, there’s no doubt about it. But then again, I always liked the Emperor’s robe. He goes naked everywhere and nobody notices. [Rick Gold -- Thanks Ron]

*

Of course, I’m being slightly petty in my sarcasm there, considering the price drop also takes the 360’s universal remote down to $30 (from $50), and the wireless steering wheel from $200 to $150. Other savings include the Xbox 360 headset ($50 to $30) and the 120GB hard drive ($230 to $200).

Any price reduction is a god, thing, so good to see Microsoft pass these on. I still just wish that wireless was built-in to the 360 – no matter what you say, $130 is an expensive pricetag for such a small little dongle, especially when both the PS3 and the Wii have the same tech inside for free.

AU: Not sure if this will carry across to AU, but might be worth holding off just in case, right?

[HD Guru]

The average Mac desktop sells for about US$1,000 more than the average PC desktop, which sells for a mere US$550.

“But wait,” you say, “that’s because people interested in higher-end machines buy Apple, while cheap idiots buy PCs.” Eh, maybe. But that doesn’t explain away the discrepancies.

Specifications often vary sharply for these systems, with Apple often focusing on faster processors than some rivals in notebooks but at the expense of memory and hard drive space. Its insistence on using mobile processors and custom designs for desktops, however, has created feature discrepancies where a Dell Inspiron 518 tower nearing the US$700 mark features two more processor cores, three times as much memory, and twice the hard drive space of an US$1,199 entry-level iMac despite both coming with near-equivalent LCDs.

While the average price for Windows-based systems is described in the NPD data as having largely flattened and unlikely to drop further in the near future, the disparity between these and Macs has only widened in the last few months, according to eWeek. Apple’s general policy of refusing to alter prices until its next hardware revision has reduced the value of its systems relative to Windows competitors.

So while Apple’s marketshare has gone up quite a bit in the last few years, analysts don’t think they’ll be able to keep up the growth with prices so much higher than their PC counterparts. There are only so many video editors, bloggers and rich fanboys in the world, after all. Sooner or later, they’ll need to appeal to those cheap idiots as well. [Electronista]

This is basically a way to run away from competition. You’re putting a lot of pressure on your less competitive peers. I think they’re doing a Crazy Ivan.

And we think you are watching too many submarine movies lately, David, but you may be right. In any case, cheaper phones are good for everyone. [Reuters]

UPDATE: Turns out that the Australian Hybrid machines are higher specced than their US cousins – So rather than hating us, Dell actually love us by giving us better hardware. For a full list of differences, you can check out the Dell websites, but we get 2GB RAM and a 320GB hard drive instead of 1GB and 250GB. The same spec upgrades go for the Latitude PCs as well…

We saw the Dell Hybrid announcement come from the US overnight, and its US$499 price tag was actually pretty exciting for a desktop computer. Of course, the computer was pretty exciting itself – 80% smaller, using 70% less power and packed in 95% recycleable packaging.

But now that the pricing for Australia has been announced, some of that excitement has quickly worn off.

If you’re interested in greening up your desktop PC with one of these bamboo-cased wonders, you may need to start saving, as Dell in Australia have the starting price set at $999 – almost double the US price. The US$499 equates to $525 on today’s exchange rate.

Obviously the exchange rate isn’t everything when it comes to pricing – there’s also the whole ‘economies of scale’ thing – Dell are going to sell a lot more of these in the US than they will in Australia (just based on populations), so they can afford to reduce the profit margin over there. But double the price? That’s a bit rich, isn’t it?
Dell’s other announcements from overnight are even worse: The Inspiron 13 laptop, priced at US$800 (AUD$842)will cost $1,299 in Australia; while the Inspiron 518 Desktop starts at US$349 (AUD$367) in the States, yet will cost $999 down under.

I’m waiting to hear back from Dell as to why there’s such a large price difference between the products here and overseas, and will update as soon as I hear back from them.

[Dell]