£220 'for a cut-up sock' — Apples's new iPhone Pocket ridiculed online
Mood
skeptical
Sentiment
mixed
Category
business
Key topics
Apple
luxury goods
marketing strategy
Apple's new iPhone Pocket, a £220 accessory, is being ridiculed online, but some commenters defend its potential market and Apple's pricing strategy.
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11/13/2025, 1:20:12 AM
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https://www.macrumors.com/2025/08/18/beats-pill-vear-returns...
Apple knows this. So of course they did not set the price P to maximize Q. They set the price P to maximize PQ.
The question should be why P maximizes PQ. I submit that it is because of dopey articles that create a luxury effect around the product. I believe that if necessary, Apple would (and may even already) write and publish these articles themselves.
My technical brain say "who would want that" but my business brain says "maybe I should buy more AAPL"
(1) makes companies market (lie) more aggressively, because it ends up working out.
(2) makes prices irrational, because if a bunch of stupid people will buy your shit product, why would you care about the 1% who actually do their research?
(2) People who "do their research" aren't entitled to anything. Maybe they just won't buy it? Then it's not for them. I don't understand what "makes prices irrational" would even mean in this context. The right price is whatever maximizes P * Q.
(2) Suppose you need insulin to live, but it's suddenly become a meme to start snorting insulin and all the stupids make the price shoot through the roof. That's what stupid people "making prices irrational" looks like, and it happens with fads, or inferior products, or even allowing actual scams to be posted in online marketplaces. Happy smiles on paid actors should not be enough to make your product more appealing than your competitors', and yet the stupids will drive out of business people who don't engage in such pathological behavior.
This hypothesis of course may be false - maybe Apple is better suited to take those irrational dollars and deploy them more rationally.
Because this place loves outrage just as much as any other community. And it’s no fun to make fun of others in a thread that gets flagged and hidden.
Flag it if you hate it.
/r/technology is sadly not available from that day but the Internet was full of the same few jokes:
iPad?! More like maxipad amirite?
iPad? So they glued 4 iPod Touches together?
Lol, Apple making the same thing others already made but worse?!
The thing of greatest value to most "netizens" (haha) is ridicule. They love dunking on stuff. In fact, even today if you go to reddit's front page you will almost certainly see a post from /r/clevercomebacks or /r/murderedbywords or so on and so forth.
I don't blame them. When I was young, I too found this enjoyable for reasons that seem so alien to me today I cannot even comprehend why I did it. I, a Linux using child, called the IE and Windows users "Microserfs" in moments of great wit. Perhaps pg was right in that dunking is adaptive for those primarily seeking engagement[2]
That's not to say that anyone is wrong or right about whether some product is good. I thought the iPhone sock was some kind of joke release, but I've definitely passed the point where I know what appeals to the kids (six-seven skibidi). It's just that a gauge that always reads 1.0 on a scale from 0.0 to 1.0 is not a gauge that you can use diagnostically.
0: https://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/auwq1/im_already_tire...
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/51r158/no_apple...
The ipad jokes were about its name, not the product itself. See also the Nintendo Wii.
Online ridicule is meaningless. People ridicule everything that goes on to be successful. They also ridicule everything that goes on to fail.
Of course it is: https://web.archive.org/web/20100505194005/https://reddit.co...
There is even an iPad ad. But no submissions about the iPad though.
The announcement post had a bunch of unhinged comments about how it was a garbage product.
Ah ha, this was hard to find, but here's a post from that day: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/auw6b/the_ipad_...
Haha, this is great. And you can tell that with 2400 points that was going to be at the tippy-top of things considering most days the top few posts have under 1k points back then on reddit.com https://web.archive.org/web/20100202213044/http://www.reddit...
I knew I remembered it right! The comments are artwork. Explaining how it would be so much better if it had a lid and a keyboard. Oh my sides. I looooooove it.
https://www.ssense.com/en-th/women/product/issey-miyake/whit...
It isn't a handbag. It isn't a shoulder bag. It doesn't look good. I won't be fashionable. It isn't a open question. It's a sock.
Sure, Apple will remain a trillion-dollar company for a long time, partly because its competition keeps shooting itself in the foot. Windows and Android are hostile towards power users and bloat the system with pre-installed apps, and they are both stepping on the gas.
But the real question is: how long can brand loyalty alone sustain the hype of new Apple products? And when will Apple stop being considered a "growth" company?
This is just some high fashion accessory they release, like a clothing company selling wallets on the side. It's not a big deal.
In my opinion they are losing on all front but the chips, and those have become of secondary importance in smartphone and about to get heated competition in laptops.
In the short term, Apple can work on their pricing, considering their large margins they have a lot of runway, but they need to find something to keep being the top dog.
You must mean the competition was driven away. Apple and Google play a a dance that protects their profits, but Chinese companies didn't play by the same rules and were becoming too disruptive.
There is a great joke about this:
A woman rushes into Yves St. Laurent's studio.
"Oh Yves!" she cries, "you've got to help me, I'm in a panic, I have this gala coming up and I have no hat to wear"
Calmly, Yves walks to the nearest table, picks up some rolls of ribbon and starts draping them around the woman's head, and in 10 minutes flat he has made this fantastic creation.
She looks in the mirrow "Oh, Yves, you've saved me, how much do I owe you?"
He says "make it 2500 euros"
She starts yelling "2500 euros??? are you mad? for a bunch of ribbon?"
Calmly, Yves starts to unwind the ribbons spooling them up as he goes and when he's done he hands the woman the ribbons. "The ribbons, you can have for free."
To people with bad taste who buy stupid garbage for thousands, such as any of the hideous big shoes of the last decade adorned with a fancy label, this is already on order.
Can't wait to hear the ATP hosts spend 45 min "not" glazing this thing like they do with every iPhone case
Ultimately, it's a fashion thing, it'll sell, I can't blame them for putting it out there, but I'd definitely wonder about any friends buying it
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