不顾一切最早买苹果新产品的成本有多高

    本文是和《Money》杂志的合作内容，原文最初发表在Money.com网站。

    智能手表新时代终于到来，Apple Watch宣告正式发售。尽管这并不是说你现在随便走进一家苹果商店就能买到，很可能得等到5月才行。但现在正是我们来探讨一个重要问题的好时机：各位读者，你们应不应该成为Apple Watch的早期用户呢？

    答案或许归根结底要看你对这款产品感觉怎样。评论人士告诉我们，Apple Watch很酷，虽然稍有瑕疵，但绝对是可穿戴科技领域的首款主流产品。如果对你来说，把一款苹果移动产品绑在身上不是非常有吸引力，那就不难下决定：暂时不买。不过对像我这样的科技狂热者来说，买不买第一代Apple Watch根本不用问，非买不可。

    但对众多普通人来说，买不买是基于成本和收益做出的理性购物决定（我有时也想这么理性！），Apple Watch确实让人纠结：是早下手跟上潮流？还是等你不用再纠结了再说？

    苹果公司降价简史

    左右你决定的应该主要基于两大变量：一是Apple Watch将来会便宜多少，性能会提高多少？二是你愿意为那个“将来”等多久？

    我们回顾一下2000年以来苹果公司的主要新产品，能对把握这两个问题有所心得。

    初代iPod。2001年10月上市，售价399美元，容量5GB。一年半以后进行了首次重大硬件更新，包括添加底座连接器；屏幕改善极大，而且没那么容易碎了；存储容量也增加一倍。售价降至299美元。

    iPhone。如果说哪种苹果产品会让打算尽早入手的人三思的话，iPhone就是一个。容量8GB的iPhone于2007年6月底发售，零售价599美元。不到三个月价格就降至399美元。初代iPhone上市才一年多时间，苹果就推出了199美元的3G版iPhone，降价幅度达到66%。

    Apple TV机顶盒。并不是所有苹果新产品的价格都会如此迅速下降。Apple TV机顶盒就三年半没有降价。但当它开始降价时，一下从2007年3月的299美元降到了2010年9月的99美元。

    iPad。也许有人会说，iPad的价格没有太大的变化。问世四年多以来，iPad基本款售价仍是原来的499美元。不过，许多等待了两年半的消费者以329美元买下iPad mini后，都觉得这个选择很明智。销售预期已经显示，iPad mini才是大多数人实际上想要的。

    那么结论是什么呢？分析了这些数据后，我发现从2000年开始，苹果主要消费类新产品首次大降价的平均幅度为48%，平均时间是在产品发售两年零三个月以后。

    我用这些数据做出了以下两张图。

    This post is in partnership with Money. The article below was originally published at Money.com.

    Our long, smartwatch-less, national nightmare is finally over.

    The Apple Watch was officially released today. That doesn’t mean you can walk up to the counter and buy one yet—watches may not be coming to retail outlets until May—but now is as good a time as any to ask the all-important question: Should you, gentle reader, become an Apple Watch early adopter?

    The answer may simply come down to your feelings about the product, which the reviewers tell us is a cool, somewhat flawed, but legitimately mainstream first foray into wearable technology. If the idea of literally strapping an Apple mobile device to your body doesn’t sound very appealing, then the decision isn’t complicated: Skip it for now. At the other end of the spectrum are tech junkies like me for whom a first-generation Apple Watch isn’t a question at all, but an inevitability.

    But for many normal people who make rational purchasing decisions based on costs and benefits—let me know what that’s like sometime!—the Apple Watch presents a real dilemma: Do you take the plunge and get in early on the smartwatch trend, or do you wait until the kinks have been worked out?

    A short history of Apple price cutting

    Your decision should largely depend on two variables: How much cheaper and better will the Apple Watch be in the future, and how long will one have to wait until that future arrives?

    A look at Apple’s major new product categories going back to the beginning of the millennium gives us some insight into both of these unknowns.

    The original iPod. Released in October of 2001, it cost $399 and shipped with five gigabytes of storage. A year and a half later, the first major hardware revision—which introduced the dock connector and a greatly improved and less break-prone interface—doubled the base model’s storage and dropped the price down to $299.

    The iPhone. A cautionary tale for early adopters if there ever was one. Launched in late June 2007 with the 8 gigabyte model retailing for $599, the iPhone’s price was cut to $399 less than three months later. And just over a year after the original release, Apple shipped the iPhone 3G at $199, a 66% price reduction.

    Apple TV. Not all of Apple’s new product categories have seen their price fall quite so fast. The Apple TV didn’t get cheaper for three and a half years; but between March 2007 and September 2010 it went from basically a $299 media center PC to a $99 streaming box.

    The iPad. Some might argue that the price of the iPad hasn’t changed much at all. More than four years after its release, the base model still sells for the original sticker price of $499. That said, the many consumers who waited two and a half years for the $329 iPad Mini feel they made a very wise decision—and it’s hard to argue considering that sales estimates suggests it’s the iPad most people actually wanted.

    So what’s the bottom line? Well, I crunched the numbers together (you can see my admittedly unscientific methodology in the footnote below) and found that since 2000, the average major new consumer-product category from Apple fell 48% in price between the original launch and the first major price cut, which on average took 2 years and 3 months.

    Here’s two graphics I put together with the data: