SAN JOSE, Calif. — Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs apologized and offered $100 credits yesterday to people who shelled out up to $599 for an iPhone this summer and were burned when the company this week chopped $200 from the expensive model's price.

In a letter on the company's Web site, Jobs acknowledged that Apple disappointed some of its earlier customers by cutting the price of the iPhone's 8-gigabyte model and said he has received hundreds of e-mails complaining about the price cut.

Jobs added that "the technology road is bumpy," and there will always be people who pay top dollar for the latest electronics but get angry later when the price drops.

"This is life in the technology lane," Jobs said in the letter yesterday.

And for many of the iPhone's early adopters, money is not and never was an issue. They were after the gratification of knowing they were among the first owners of something that was cool, even revolutionary.

"If they told me at the outset the iPhone would be $200 cheaper the next day, I would have thought about it for a second — and still bought it," said Andrew Brin, a 47-year-old addiction therapist in Los Angeles. "It was $600 and that was the price I was willing to pay for it."

Jobs said Apple will hand out $100 credits usable at Apple's retail and online stores to any iPhone owners who aren't eligible for a rebate under the company's refund policy covering those who bought their phones within 14 days of the price cut.

An Apple spokeswoman said the company did not have an estimate of how much the credits would cost Apple.

PRESTIGE HAS ITS PRICE

Enjoying that period of being among the first — before the price drops and the product reaches the masses — is part of the pleasure, Brin and others say. And in much of the tech world, the usual expectation is that six months will pass before there's a major price cut and a year before a next generation of the product — usually an improved version — appears.

The looks of envy and attraction are an elixir.

"It's better than a dog, if you want to meet people," Brin said of his iPhone.

Jack Shamama of San Francisco, who was among the thousands nationwide who lined up for iPhones on the day they first went on sale, said he got some smug text messages and phone calls from friends on Wednesday after Apple announced the price cut.

But Shamama is taking it in stride, saying such cuts are the wages of being an early adopter.

Gadgets — and food — are the 33-year-old online marketing consultant's splurges.

"It's the equivalent of having that season's handbag," said Shamama, who goes through cell phones as quickly as some people do shoes, comfortably shelling out hundreds of dollars per handset every six to eight months.

He's got a collector's item in one of the first Palm Pilots. And, even though he didn't even want one at first, he felt compelled to buy a Nintendo Wii game system last November — paying a friend of a friend $400 to get the $250 machine — after he heard how scarce they were.

Shamama bought the BlackBerry Pearl — another trendy smart phone — only months before the iPhone was unveiled.

"My biggest fear with any product is that it's going to become obsolete, and that isn't what happened this time," Shamama said.

Jobs was talking the same way immediately after the iPhone price cut was announced Wednesday. In an interview with USA Today, Jobs tartly rebuffed criticism that Apple's most die-hard fans would be miffed.

Any iPhone owners who bought their device that morning "should go back to where they bought it and talk to them," he said. "If they bought it a month ago, well, that's what happens in technology."

ON SECOND THOUGHT ...

Jobs apparently had a change of heart. Lowering the iPhone price is the right decision, he said in his letter yesterday, but added that "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."

Analysts said yesterday that Jobs erred by initially dismissing the gripes of people who bought iPhones early, many of whom are Apple loyalists who felt insulted at being overlooked in the company's zeal to sell to a broader audience.

"In the course of a day, he probably got an earful and a better sense of the extent of the discontent on the part of these very, very loyal customers," said Charles Golvin, an analyst with Forrester Research. "On second and third thought, he realized these were probably the customers you most want to make sure are satisfied and retain a very positive impression about Apple overall, not just the iPhone."