Beep beep busy line ... and how

One of the most extraordinary stories to come from the mad world of social media doesn't involve a huge bill – or any bill - for users, you and me. It's a brilliant process and is a double surprise considering what each of us is charged to be connected to Tim Berner-Lee's once free internet.

Seems unlikely? Cynicism is no surprise.

Someone invents a web-related gadget or plan or goodie that people like and soon feel they've always needed, and the purchase price goes through the roof.

Of course, humans established selling prices long, long ago – what the buyer could afford plus a little more to make taking it to market worth the trouble.

Reinventing the phone

Take one extreme, an apple – rather appropriately. Eve sold the first, as we learned as children. What did she charge? Seemingly a measure of pleasure.

Now to an opposite extreme. In early 2007, famous now-departed Steve Jobs announced the very first iPhone.

Designed to 'reinvent the phone,' Apple's iPhone has revolutionised smartphones and shaped the industry into what it is today, reports The Verge dot com.

Believe it or not, but 1.2 billion of these gadgets were sold. The price was for a bit more than Eve's charge and rather than most might expect to pay - $499 and $599 each and rather more outside the US.

How much to produce one of these very pricy rivals? CNBC dot com says the iPhone 7 Plus's bill of materials was $277.66, and $288.08 for the iPhone 8.

And the buying price for the 7? Different models ranged between $649 and $969, reports Wikipedia. Various models of the 8 apparently sold/sell for $699 to $949.

Forbes dot com reported at Christmas that iPhone 8 and X sales remain strong at a combined one million plus per day. A million of these gadgets costing at least $700 (in the US) are bought each day.

What if they apologised ...

Did anyone's father ever point to the family Bakelite phone and say, 'One day, this gadget will be worth billions, trillions.'

Wouldn't it be wonderful if Apple announced, 'Sorry, folks, conscience is troubling us. We'll let the next billion iPhones go at cost price plus 10% - our way of apologising for greed gone out of control.'

Continues on the blogs for my ocean adventure book, Sailing to Purgatory, at SailingToPurgatory.com