Why do so many gadget fans buy devices on launch day?
Imagine if there was a shop where you could buy all the latest gadgets before anyone else. However, that shop’s gadgets are much more expensive, have far more faults in the hardware and firmware, suffer from compatibility problems, and lack widespread support from third party manufacturers and developers. Would you buy from that shop so you could have gadgets first, or would you wait a bit and buy elsewhere? Well, that’s the dilemma facing “early adopters”, the kind of people who are tempted to get something as soon as it’s available to the public. Almost every device from every manufacturer has been somehow improved over the course of its lifetime, and anyone who buys at launch is getting the worst possible deal. The Nokia N95: Anorak-pleaser in 2007, reliable smartphone in 2008 First Is Worst Perhaps the best example of a device improving over time is the Nokia N95. At its launch, the N95 started out with a low amount of free RAM, a very high price, unstable firmware, loose slider me
