A love letter to early adopters

Dear early adopters: I love you dumb bastards.

You know who you are.

• If you paid $600 for an iPhone, and gladly, back in 2007;
• if you have a five-year-old Blu-Ray player
• (if you also have an HDDVD player come to that);
• if you jizzed in your pants over the iPad despite having multiple computers and a Kindle already (Yes, Adam, I'm sort of picking on you here)
• if you ever stood in line for the release of a console, game, or new piece of tech;
• if you bought Avatar on Blu-Ray or DVD yesterday (although probably Blu-Ray).

If you did any of those things, you absolutely fit the definition of "early-adopter." You're the kind of person who can't be without New Stuff. Now, don't get me wrong, this is a very good position in society. But god dammit do you guys haemorrhage money.

I don't know where I'd be without all the early adopters in the world. Early adopters are the ones who tell their friends (or in the case of tech journalists, their readers) whether this hunk of plastic and silicon is worth the, um, plastic and silicon used to make it. They are the ones who tell us all the cool stuff that New Stuff can do. You lot are the ones who drive the tech sector of the economy of the First World, not just by buying these things but also by making others want these things more.

But my favourite purpose of the early adopters is this: you buy up the first several batches. You drive the makers to make better ones. And absolutely most importantly, you drive the fucking price down.

I remember when I got my first iPod (it was called an iPod Video if that helps). Two weeks later, Steve Jobs announced the iPhone. My reaction was along the lines of "God DAMMIT." Then I learnt it was to be $600 with a 2-year contract with AT&T. My reaction was along the lines of "Holy FUCK that's a bad deal." But, as always, the early adopters bought the iPhones up. About a year later, halfway through that contract, Apple dropped the price to about $200 - still not a great price, but infinitely better than it was - and refunded the early adopters $100. More than one tech writer likened it to an angry john throwing a $100 note at a whore after he finished.

Now, the iPhone is down to $100 for the cheapest 3G model, or $50 for a refurbished one. The top-of-the-line model (3GS) is still $200. Meanwhile, the iPad came out and the cheapest version ... is $600. And the early adopters have jumped all over that shit.

Keep buying, early adopters! Your money spent makes that product more affordable for me.