| ▲ | paxys 2 hours ago |
| > iPhone 17 pro max would be $1199 to buy (~1273 with tax) or $34.99 for 24 months totaling $839.76. So would cost 433.33 at the end of the lease to keep it A lot of people aren’t going to have that $433 at the end of the lease to purchase the device outright, and so will have to roll it into another 2-year monthly payment, and another one after that. So the goal of the program is the same as every other similar one - they want to turn a one-time device purchase into a perpetual monthly revenue stream, while keeping ownership of the asset at the end. |
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| ▲ | Aurornis an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| > A lot of people aren’t going to have that $433 at the end of the lease to purchase the device outright I think you're looking at this too much from the perspective of someone who wants to own the phone, not as someone who wants to consider a lease. Leases are not a new invention. A lot of people, including very financially savvy and well off people, choose to lease rather than buy depending on the circumstances. It preserves optionality. If you get to the end of the lease period and there’s a new iPhone you want or the battery isn’t holding up, you can choose not to buy it. You don’t have to deal with selling it or trading in. If someone doesn’t have $400 to buy out the residual then I doubt they would have had the cash to pay for the whole thing up front. I don’t understand what your argument is. > So the goal of the program is the same as every other similar one - they want to turn a one-time device purchase into a perpetual monthly revenue stream, while keeping ownership of the asset at the end. It’s an option. They’re not turning anything into anything. Anyone who wants to buy the device can buy it. You now also have the option to lease it for 12 or 24 months and then after that you can still buy it if you want. Or you can not buy it. It’s options. You don’t have to use it. |
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| ▲ | paxys an hour ago | parent [-] | | > If someone doesn’t have $400 to buy out the residual then I doubt they would have had the cash to pay for the whole thing up front. That’s the entire point. They would have bought a cheaper phone, or held on to their old one, but are now paying perpetual monthly payments. There’s a reason car dealerships never ask “how much can you afford”, but “how much do you want to pay every month”. There’s a reason Klarna is running the program for them. | | |
| ▲ | Aurornis an hour ago | parent [-] | | You know those financially irresponsible people don’t need this program, right? They would have used a credit card to buy it with much worse terms You seem tilted at Apple for offering a financing option, but your real gripe is apparently with some people who have poor financial decision making skills. Those people could (and probably would) do a lot worse with traditional options like a credit card. | | |
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| ▲ | tw600040 29 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Someone who won't have that $433 has no business even thinking about a 1200$ phone in the first place |
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| ▲ | dzonga 17 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | you overestimate the financial health of most Americans. most people live on credit cards as bridge finance between paychecks. when I mean most people - I mean 50% of the population. | | |
| ▲ | gruez 7 minutes ago | parent [-] | | >when I mean most people - I mean 50% of the population. That's not really applicable because: 1. the study is for an "unexpected" expense. This you can see from 2 years away 2. The wording in the study was something along the lines of "would have to dip into savings", not that they literally don't have any money for it. The fed's survey of consumer finances shows the median household has between 7-13k (depending whether you're counting median income or median wealth) in their checking accounts https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scf/dataviz/scf/chart... |
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| ▲ | paxys 26 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Have you met…America? | |
| ▲ | PunchyHamster 26 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | wait till you see what people do with car payments |
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| ▲ | bijowo1676 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| its not that they wont have $433, it is that people will be unwilling to shell out $433 for two year old device, if they have an option to renew it for a shiny new model and roll forward into another BNPL loan |
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| ▲ | gruez 5 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I checked the price for a used iPhone 15 pro (ie. 2 year old iPhone) on ebay and it's around $400-$500. Therefore the implied depreciation of the lease is pretty fair, unlike the lowball offers you typically get for trading in a phone. |
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| ▲ | lesuorac an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > while keeping ownership of the asset at the end. But they're not actually interest in owning 2 year old phones though right? They're just interest in you / 2ndary market not owning any? |
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| ▲ | paxys an hour ago | parent [-] | | A refurbished iPhone 15 Pro is selling for $929 on their website right now. Trade in price for that exact model is $410. So yes they are very interested in that old phone. | | |
| ▲ | Aurornis an hour ago | parent [-] | | I take it you’ve never purchased an Apple refurbished product? They’re in excellent condition. They do not look like 2-year used and abused trade ins. If trade-ins are going back to the refurb inventory (which I don’t know if they do) then it’s only after extensive actual refurbishment and new parts. They’re not putting it back into a box, listing it for sale, and pocketing the difference. | | |
| ▲ | fckgw 34 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | They have the ability to tear the whole thing down to guts and screws. They absolutely do replace the case, glass and battery and sell as refurbished. They already do complete case swaps on their Macs. | |
| ▲ | ToucanLoucan an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's still obviously making them money. How much, who's to say, likely highly variable depending on the condition of the phone. But if it didn't make them money they wouldn't do it, they're not a charity. I'd imagine even a phone they can't fix to sell still has some value, even as scrap to them especially as the costs of every damn material that goes into any electronic device continue to soar. And that all being said: two things can be simultaneously true at once. Leasing is a perfectly valid form of... well you can't really say ownership, acquiring goods I guess? And it also does mean Apple can now turn what may have been one-shot purchases into people who are just fine paying a monthly payment ad infinitum. And that, in turn, opens the door for keeping people on a perpetual new-phone treadmill of monthly payments that involve them never actually owning anything. You can very easily tie this into the Samuel Vimes Boots Theory of Economics: The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. | | |
| ▲ | Aurornis 34 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > It's still obviously making them money. They’re obviously making money on the whole purchase and program because they’re a business, not a charity. The assumption that they’re making significantly more money on this than direct sales may or may not hold. It could be that they’re targeting a similar level of end-to-end profit as direct sales but using this to expand their market by providing more purchasing options. Some people get angry at the prospect of a company making money, but they’re not charities. Everyone should do the math and decide which purchase options work for them. What works for you may not be appropriate to force on to the rest of the population. | |
| ▲ | smallmancontrov 30 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Since the days of Samuel Vimes, durable goods have undergone spectacular deflation and health care, housing, and education have undergone spectacular inflation. One month of median US rent buys three 55" TVs. The math has changed. | |
| ▲ | paxys 19 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | The internals in that phone are probably worth more today used than brand new 2 years ago. |
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| ▲ | giancarlostoro 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Let's suppose that Apple somehow doesn't release any new iPhones during this leasing window, what happens then? Does Apple ship you back a new phone that's essentially the same model? I know this is unlikely, but I am curious. The other thing to consider, that while Apple might sell you the phone for $400 or whatever, they might re-sell it as refurbished for $700. |
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| ▲ | quickthrowman an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > A lot of people aren’t going to have that $433 at the end of the lease to purchase the device outright If someone can’t plan ahead 2 years for a $433 expense, they definitely should not have a top of the line iPhone. When my income was low I had an iPhone SE that cost $329. |
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| ▲ | thisislife2 42 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | If everyone was as rational as you, Americans wouldn't be living in debt that most cannot afford. Most Indians have a healthy fear of debt, and that is why the iPhone doesn't have a larger share of the mobile phone market here as it really is unaffordable to most Indians (as it is for many in America). Americans however have accepted debt as a normal part of their lifestyle. When a rich man says poor people shouldn't be ordering food through Door Dash, it sounds very cynical but there is a basis of truth in it that some poor people really do not know how to manage their finances. | |
| ▲ | paxys an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Well there’s a reason Americans have $1.25 trillion in credit card debt. |
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