A few possible reasons: Apple wanted to limit demand in the face of production shortages; Apple knew it would cause a fuss and aimed for the publicity; Apple is just playing it by ear.

If Apple wanted to control demand, then this was an excellent business decision meant less to screw over customers than it was to maintain a good business appearance.

If Apple wanted to get the controversy and produce buzz, then they are manipulative and unkind. But they also are not as smart as they have been given credit for–I don’t think that Apple’s image has done well here.

If they are playing it by ear, then they are less smart and more human.

As for the whining, I don’t have too much sympathy. As Jobs pointed out, that’s the landscape. I bought a Mac Performa 6300 in the 90’s, and 6 months after it was released, the 6400 came out at double the CPU speed and RAM, for a little bit cheaper.

Yes, 2 months and a 33% price cut is extreme–but the same principle still applies. I would be upset, but more disappointed than angry–like “Oh crap, look what I missed out on… oh well.”

Even knowing this, I will be buying an iPhone within the first week or two of them being released in Japan. Why? Because maybe they’ll cut the price, and maybe they won’t.

But here’s the point: you buy what you believe is worth buying. If people thought they were getting a deal at $600, then they should be satisfied with that. These people knew it was overpriced, and they paid–most of them happily.

In this case, what it comes down to is that people were pissed off because they didn’t like that other people were getting a better deal than they were. They can be disappointed that they weren’t in the luckier crowd, but if they agreed to pay what they paid, then they should either be satisfied or they were uninformed as to how big a profit margin Apple was getting on this.

In any case, anyone who buys a cell phone that costs over $300 is probably paying a similarly padded price. Shouldn’t everyone paying that much be upset?

Anything else is not about how much you pay, but rather when you got sucked into paying it.

It’s my guess that, if even one status-conscious person with more money than sense hadn’t whined, Steve would have just released a slightly differently-worded letter (blathering about rewarding early adoption and customer loyalty/support) with the same store credit as a “refund”. Companies don’t make decisions like these (price cuts, “refunds) quick enough for this to have been anything but a plan from the start.