Over at CNET Blogs, Don “Lips of a Vixen” Reisinger has installed fresh batteries into his ACME Conspiracy Finder and pointed it firmly at the head honchos over at Apple. His belief: that not only will the company continue to sit on their hands and distract themselves with truffles over the spate of iPhone unlock methods, but that Steve Jobs in fact expected and wanted it to happen all along.
“What’s that?” I hear you scoff, “Jobs wants his lucrative AT&T cash-cow to be put out to metaphorical pasture?” Well yes and no. Reisinger’s claim centres around the idea of the iPhone being a gateway to other Apple products, much in the way that the iPod introduced potential new users to the Mac computing line.
“Steve Jobs is not a dumb man. He knew that by making the iPhone exclusive, he was losing out on a significant market of people both home and abroad and his vision for the future of Apple included those that were left out. But alas, the exclusivity deal wasn’t that hard to swallow. He, like all of us, knew that people would immediately start to hack the iPhone and unlock it for use on T-Mobile and other services abroad. And once that happened, the benefits could far outweigh the costs of such a hack” Don Reisinger
He goes on to suggest that the iPhone is basically a way to demonstrate OS X (albeit in a shaved-down form) to people and hopefully demonstrate – through the handset’s ease of use – an alternative to the ubiquity of Windows systems.
What do you think? Was an unofficial unlock part of Apple’s roadmap all along, or can we still expect to see reprisals somewhere along the line? Personally, I think that their contract with AT&T (and other carriers in different locations who will have signed similar exclusivity deals) will force them to provide little support for hacked iPhone users – perhaps in the shape of stunted feature upgrades – if such a differentiation is at all possible.
i think that its probably steve-o’s end goal to end the carrier bottle-neck in the USA. the iphone is probably a trojan horse. sure AT&T has this “death-grip” on the phone, but eventually with all the unlocking the phone will be made available to any service provider a user wants. apple will probably NOT implement software measures to lock the unlocked users out of their phones systems.
in the end what apple probably wants is for users to choose the best network for them at the time & area that they’re located in. Your in chicago and the sprint data network is better, BAM choose that network, your in LA & the T-mobile data network is better, BAM, choose that network…all over your software.
lets face it the only way REAL web 3.0 is going to take off if we can end this bullshit where the carrier you choose your BOUND to. like some ancient proprietary relationship from the 80′s. (i’m looking at sony here & their beta decks).
As a consumer, I’m very, very tired of being forced into a headlock by these almighty corporations. I don’t mind a gut making a profit if he builds a better mouse trap. But, why force me to buy the cheese I don’t want from only one vendor, whom I don’t like?
I meant to say, “I don’t mind a *guy* making a profit…”
The unofficial unlock is as intentional to Apple the roadmap as a pothole is to “Mainstreet USA”. It’s not planned, you just know it’s going to happen eventually, just as it has happened to other popular cell phones locked to a carrier. Apple still makes it’s money from the initial iPhone sell but misses out on the 2-year subscription money from AT&T. And that would be quite a bit of money that Apple does have on it’s roadmap.
Why is it that some blogs just seem to have it right, many thanks for being so informative.