The argument that anyone should single out Jobs and Apple as exclusively responsible for the terms and cost of iPhone early adoption is a red herring favoring AT&T. And any of the early adopters I know were far more irritated by dog-slow data network and its performance characteristics (like the fact that you can't even get notification of a missed call while your are using the inferiour EVDO implementation) than they ever thought of being with the iPhone, itself.

And btw, paying full MSRP for anything over $100 has long been unnecessary in the United States. If you have reached the age of 10 and you have expendable income you know that. People who pay full retail either do it because they "have to have it," they are under time constraints, they are lazy or they are vain. All you have to do is wait 6 months and perhaps enter a discount chain. Every citizen knows this... whether they acknowledge it with action is another matter.

And the "iPissed" thing? Ha! What a crock. So the early adopters got stung for $100 premium, so what? Jobs gave them all a $100 credit at the ol' Apple Store, didn't he? LOL Take a trip, buy another accessory!

If Slate wants to lambast corporate practices, they should pick something that highlights their erudite analysis or the underpinnings of our consumer culture or the manipulation that keeps us from becoming educated consumers and exercising our free market role as watch dog demanding of better treatment and technology. Why don't they expose the cell carriers' use of subsidized phones, long-term contracts, lack of meaningful network performance metrics, or their stifling stranglehold on technology, like Wifi enabled PDA's and phones.

The iPhone is the only Wife enabled cell phone I've seen offered directly from Cingular, Verizon, Sprint or T-Mobile, and you are required by AT&T to have an unnecessary data plan to in order to make use of the faster Wifi network interface! Can you say, "manipulation?"

And what of Slate hanging speculative builders and highly leveraged condo out to dry for "fire sale" tactics? That's another interesting choice. The market downturn that might force someone with a high-interest building loan into bankruptcy was the result of business decisions made at the highest levels of the banking and securities industries. The lack of scrutiny given the value of mortgages behind Real Estate Backed Securities had a far greater and longer term effect on the economy that any single builder's decisions ever will.

Perhaps Slate needs to hire an economics consultant. That or stop worrying about who they'll iPiss-off when they uncover the long-term effects of market manipulation or imprudent retail sales practices.