[ericmay]

No they don't, it's not 2008. Anybody off the street can get an iPhone or a free iPhone with a mobile plan. They're commodity products. Even homeless people have them.

To the extent LLMs are commodity products you're right (so far), but that is limited to the main model providers, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, &c. with interoperability on cloud platform providers and other technology providers like an Apple offering you a choice of LLM with Siri or something.

If you want to suggest that some other model is in the same bucket as those primary 3, it goes back to the crappy, cheap phone analogy which is accurate. Yea you can make calls with it, but you make calls better with an iPhone.

[ForHackernews]

Ironically you are participating in the social signalling ("crappy, cheap phone") phenomenon you claim doesn't exist.

https://mashable.com/article/apple-messages-green-doj

https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/apple-green-bubble-messa...

[ericmay]

Ok just remove "crappy" then and replace with low-quality. We can differentiate on low-quality, high-quality, and more when talking about consumer products.

I'm going off of rough memory here, but don't like half of all Americans have an iPhone? Do half of all Americans own a Porsche?

[ForHackernews]

Fine, if you don't like the iPhone analogy then look at Coca-Cola vs store brand Super Cola. They are both brown sugar water, but Coke is Coke. People buy Coke because of the brand, the image and (maybe a little bit) because of the taste.

There is no equivalent in LLM land. AI models are not like Coke vs Other Cola. AI is like electricity or water, a generic commodity with minimal cost or friction to switching. I can flip the VSCode plugin between a dozen different models a day.

[ericmay]

> They are both brown sugar water,

> AI is like electricity or water, a generic commodity with minimal cost or friction to switching. I can flip the VSCode plugin between a dozen different models a day.

I don't think that's the case, and as companies continue to build out AI products we will move more into opinionated workflows and different vendor design patterns precisely because the model you suggest will result in a race to the bottom which is the opposite of the intended business model.

[ForHackernews]

> precisely because the model you suggest will result in a race to the bottom which is the opposite of the intended business model.

Yes, exactly. That's how capitalism works. No business plan survives contact with the market.

[throwaway27448]

> free iPhone with a mobile plan

I get your point but in what sense is that "free"? What mobile plan giving you an iphone doesn't come with explicit debt?

[ericmay]

Here's an example from 2025 with a major US carrier - Verizon: https://tech.yahoo.com/phones/deals/articles/want-free-iphon...

They run various schemes like this all the time, you can also trade in your existing phone a lot of times for pretty favorable terms. I've traded in phones that were a few years old and gotten $1000+ for them, especially when switching providers.

[vel0city]

Verizon's "free" iPhone deal is you pay for the phone up front and then receive a bill credit. Here's the fine print from one of those deals:

$729.99 purchase on device payment or at retail price required. New line req'd. Unlimited Welcome, Unlimited Plus or Unlimited Ultimate plans required. Less $730 promo credit applied to account over 36 mos; promo credit ends if eligibility requirements are no longer met; 0% APR.Taxes & fees may apply. Credits will appear on your Verizon Wireless bill.

https://www.verizon.com/shop/online/free-5g-phones/

[ericmay]

I don’t know or care much about the specific details but the article was written in 2025. Carriers run deals and give away iPhones or close enough to free or cheap that quibbling about the details is irrelevant.

If you think the iPhone is a status symbol you’re just wrong.

[vel0city]

I'm not the one arguing iPhones are only status symbols. If anything, if I only had the money to spend on a single computing device there's a good chance I'd go for an iPhone due to excellent durability, typically long support timelines, lots of extremely cheap accessories available, high chance of low cost serviceability compared to other devices. There's also a pretty good used marketplace for such devices so picking up one used on the cheap and still getting a few years of use out of it is likely. I'd likely try and stretch to get that device instead of settling for a cheap $100 phone that will be a total piece of junk and end up being my only actual computing device.

I'm just pointing out the statement:

> What mobile plan giving you an iphone doesn't come with explicit debt?

isn't invalidated by some Yahoo article pushing a marketing promo that when you actually do the math and read the fine print its not really a "free" phone, its always some form of debt or bill credit or something along those lines that makes the phone "free". You're still paying for the phone in the end if you read the fine print. In the end one commits to spending several hundred dollars over 36 months or whatever or you pay up front and they give you bill credits if you keep the plan.

[ericmay]

I am arguing they’re not status symbols and using how cheaply available they are as evidence that they’re not. Anyone can get one, some companies run free promotions, some do delayed interest programs, some amortize the price over a 2-year time period. Who cares? The details here weren’t important. Apparently Verizon ran some promo in the past and may again in the future giving away iPhones. Why be so argumentative over something so stupid? Not only are you actually wrong here, you’re arguing over the irrelevant details.

[throwaway27448]

That's not free except at point of sale.

[ericmay]

It’s free enough that my point stands and I’m close-minded to any further discussion about it.