A master control switch. People forget. People don't realize the implications of setting the "automatically check email" options, or forget to turn the setting off when they go travelling. People with kids (or people who are kids) who are used to a certain level of service in the US and don't realize the implications when outside the country.
Yes, maybe they could and probably should know better, and it's their own fault and they deserve what they got. But a master control switch in a pref pane somewhere would hardly cost anything. It would take me no more than a few hours to add a global feature on/off switch to the software I develop. And it would make every one of these "$x thousand dollar iPhone bill!" threads, every complaint like those shown, every negative news story, Digg article, all the bad press and PR, and all of the "bad" reputation (what's the opposite of goodwill?) and bad feelings about all this, all go away, because now we can plainly and easily say "Well, did you turn off the Master Switch?" "Uh..."
It doesn't cost much, and it would help a lot. Why WOULDN'T you do it?
My color laser printer has a master switch for color/black and white printing. I try to print web pages, for example, in black and white so I don't waste expensive color toners printing superfluous graphics and banner ads. It doesn't need to have this global switch, as I could go into the Print Settings dialog and change it on a document-by-document basis. There are three places on the printer and software print driver where I change the color/bw settings. I know exactly how each works. But I still forget sometimes, or sometimes my family members print without checking, so I'm glad the global setting exists.
