You know what companies go bust? The ones who call their customers "moaners". Sure, you don't work for Apple; but I hope they don't adopt a similar attitude.
As for that whole "does it do everything it said it would", that's a total BS argument. It's like you've never bought anything in your life or something - there's value and depreciation.
- YES, the iPad 3 said it was LTE compatible. Apple made the excuse that the frequency bands hadn't been finalised in the UK, and that it didn't matter because the technology wouldn't be in the market for years anyway. You think it's OK to say that one month and sell millions of people an incompatible product, and then a few months later turn around and relaunch the product? Now will those things people expected the first time but you assured them wouldn't be possible for years? Was the iPad 3 really the best iPad Apple could create? It doesn't seem so. That's dishonest to your customers.
- Similarly, the iPad is an absurdly high-volume device. There are tens of millions of people who just bought a new device that accepts the 30-pin dock, and those people have expectations for how long those devices last. Things like networking standards and cables do not change on the short-term. Hypothetical: there's a cool lightning-only accessory that I want; my 6-month-old iPad isn't compatible. The usefulness of the product has decreased, and fails to live up to the expectations when I bought it.
There is such a thing as consumer rights, and treating your customers with respect. Really, it would massively undercut the money Apple's millions of customers have spent on their iPad 3s in the UK. There's no denying that.
I used to be a really loyal Apple customer because of the respect they showed their customers. I'd like to see Apple's customers demand more of them, because right now it feels like it's being taken for granted that everything will be a hit.
I'm not going to suck up to Apple and say this would be fine. It wouldn't be.
It's hard to think of an analogy because this doesn't happen often: let's say you bought a brand-new petrol-powered Ford. They sell it to you because gas it cheap and electric motors are decades away, at best. They assure you that this is the best their engineers can do. Tomorrow (or some very short time later; insignificant next to the expected lifetime of the product) they discontinue that model you just bought (and they just sold you as the best that they could do) and replace it with the electric model you wanted in the first place, as well as all kinds of smaller improvements.
Does the car still drive? Yes. Does it live up to the promise of when you bought it? Factually, yes, but in all other senses no. Will you buy another Ford? I'm guessing not. You'd feel screwed over.
Like I said, I'm going off Apple. They're no longer producing their best work to create the absolute best products around (like the company of yore); now it's all about cynically culling features to create a shallow upgrade slope - drag the process out for longer with smaller improvements out of greed.
