“enough money”

I was reading Slashdot this morning and came across this article

I find the reasoning that “Apple already has enough money so they should stop trying to make it” pretty funny, on two different accounts. First, because we all think this way, “Someone has enough money now so they should stop trying to make it” and second, because it’s antithetical to the whole reason one is in business. Would Apple shareholders say, “Yeah, you’re right, we’ve made enough money now, lets not try to make more”.

That being said there are a lot of reasons to be careful about trapping your customers into something they don’t want. The funny thing is that Apple has changed the value equation from integration (Dell) to design. The only way for them to control the design is to own all the pieces. Right now design is what consumers are willing to pay a lot for.

Anyway, my argument is not that Apple shouldn’t use caution, but it’s ridiculous to argue that Apple should stop trying to make money because they have enough already.

On this note, however, I heard someone suggest that Apple should have given a more than $200 rebate to first adopters of the iPhone. Think about the impact of this on people being willing to be first adopters on the next big product and on the advocates you make out of those first adopters. It’s an interesting idea and it definitely would be investing in your customer base (though it might be quite expensive).