In what has to be one of the most surprising announcements I’ve ever heard, Steve Jobs posted an open letter on the Apple Web site that throws a bone to early iPhone adopters up in arms about the drastic price drop.
In a nutshell, Apple will be offering early iPhone customers a $100 credit good at Apple’s online store or retail outlets. Details will be announced in about a week for how to obtain the credit.
To quote Jobs from the letter, “…we need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone customers as we aggressively go after new ones with a lower price. Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these.”
In other news, a contact at Apple crushed my hopes for a VOIP (voice over IP)-enabled MP3 player, telling me that the iPod Touch does not have a microphone. I’m still eying that dock connector for some kind of hope though.
Meanwhile, according to this article, the device indeed does run OS X, so expect the Touch to be hacked quickly. Let’s see how fast someone can port the e-mail application from the iPhone to the Touch.