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Apple Issues Warning on iPhone Unlocking

DrAtheist said:
I can't believe the amount of people who seem to think that only AT&T are bothered by unlocked phones. They seem to have forgotten that Apple get about $4 per contract per month. Someone a few pages back said that there are 230,000 unlocked iPhones out there. Assuming those figures to be correct (they don't seem unreasonable and I don't have more accurate figures to hand) we can assume that Apple is losing (through lost revenue rather than actually losing) around $1million PER MONTH.
Yeah, they're not bothered by that at all are they?
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Instead of thinking about the glass as half empty, think the other way.

  • The unlock brought in many new customers who would have NEVER purchased an iPhone otherwise.
  • Some people unlocking the phone will remain with AT&T in the US and use a prepaid SIM when they travel.
  • The revenue sharing deal Apple has with AT&T extends only to new AT&T subscribers.
 
People are not renting the iPhone or leasing it. They bought the equipment. Regardless of the contract, people have certain rights. In the same vein I can give you a contract that reads I'm allowed to kill you and you sign it I still can't kill you because it's against the law.

If Apple bricks one cell phone, it's going to be in some deep **** There's no question about it. With the wide spread negative black issues on the iTouch and they failing iPhone screens, Apple better watch it's footing real close, as the proverbial **** will seriously hit the fan.
 
DrAtheist said:
I can't believe the amount of people who seem to think that only AT&T are bothered by unlocked phones. They seem to have forgotten that Apple get about $4 per contract per month. Someone a few pages back said that there are 230,000 unlocked iPhones out there. Assuming those figures to be correct (they don't seem unreasonable and I don't have more accurate figures to hand) we can assume that Apple is losing (through lost revenue rather than actually losing) around $1million PER MONTH.
Yeah, they're not bothered by that at all are they?
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I don't know but there is one thing that bothers me: why does Apple Inc. wants to control everything? It gives that imfamous '1984' commercial a whole new twist, don't you think? :confused:
 
It's all business...

I've been with At&T since it was cingular and you couldn't get a signal anywhere. I almost left and I didn't. Thank goodness, cuz now I got the iphone and it's completely legit. For those who think it's their inaliable right to by a product under the pretenses of using it with a particular service provider just to "hack" it and use it however they want... I say get off your high horse and start playing by the rules. It's your up-and-comings if you update your phone and turn it into a paperweight. You are being the underhanded, you are the ones who are "cheating." Jobs and At&T aren't doing anything good businesses wouldn't do. And if anyone really thinks that all those who bought phones to hack them will really affect the market if they "backlash", you've got another thing coming, because people will learn to play nice, they will learn to follow the rules, especially if it means being prevy to some new fantastic piece of technology unlike anything we've ever seen.
But the truth is, NO ONE on these threads has been able to say whether or not the contract itself binds a phone user legally. It may or it may not. I would love for someone to quote the contract and argue the opposite of what I'm saying. So, to those who will be updating, it's exciting, and to those who might be, be careful.
 
Warped1 said:
If you buy a Ford are you forced to only fill it up at Exxon?
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Wrong analogy...Ford could develop and sell a premium vehicle that uses a special kind of fuel only available at Exxon, which you would know at the time of your purchase and agree to. Likely they'd put a specially shaped port on the gas tank such that only the special fuel pump would fit into it.

If you then chose to pry open the port with pliers, fill up with standard fuel from Shell, and subsequently bricked your engine, would Ford be obliged to repair your car or continue to provide you service?
 
DrAtheist said:
I can't believe the amount of people who seem to think that only AT&T are bothered by unlocked phones. They seem to have forgotten that Apple get about $4 per contract per month. Someone a few pages back said that there are 230,000 unlocked iPhones out there. Assuming those figures to be correct (they don't seem unreasonable and I don't have more accurate figures to hand) we can assume that Apple is losing (through lost revenue rather than actually losing) around $1million PER MONTH.
Click to expand...

How on earth did you come up with this calculation? Who is to say that people who buy an iPhone to unlock it would have bought one if they couldn't unlock it?. The fact is, since the unlock was released sales of the iPhone has hit the roof. The only loser in this equation is AT&T. Apple makes money, and AT&T doesn't. If anything, the unlock helped Apple sell more iPhones and still keep their agreement with AT&T at the same time.
 
blybug said:
Wrong analogy...Ford could develop and sell a premium vehicle that uses a special kind of fuel only available at Exxon, which you would know at the time of your purchase and agree to. Likely they'd put a specially shaped port on the gas tank such that only the special fuel pump would fit into it.

If you then chose to pry open the port with pliers, fill up with standard fuel from Shell, and subsequently bricked your engine, would Ford be obliged to repair your car or continue to provide you service?
Click to expand...

I see the point you're making, but it too "could" be wrong. If apple accidentally break an iphone when they upgrade the firmware, I'm 100% behind you. But if its deliberate then I'm not. A correct analogy would be

"Ford develop and sell a premium vehicle that uses a special kind of fuel only available at Exxon, which you would know at the time of your purchase. Likely they'd put a specially shaped port on the gas tank such that only the special fuel pump would fit into it.

You chose to replace this port with one that allows you to put fill up from a different vendor . The performance of the car is slightly reduced, but you have happy with the compromise. You then take your car in for routine maintenance check. Ford see what you have done and deliberately disable your engine because of the modifications you have made"

To me, this is why the intentions of apple regarding any future firmware upgrade are critical.
 
jasewilk said:
I say get off your high horse and start playing by the rules.
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What a statement. If Steve Jobs decided he wanted to play by the rules where do you think technology would be now? How about Rosa Parks? Or Gandhi? Or Martin Luther King? Or George Washington? The vast majority of the world would agree those people not playing by the rules has led to many good things. If you're happy with the status quo, then power to you.

Companies should learn that the hackers always win.
 
glennyboiwpg said:
EXACTLY!

ok... so we WON"T Sell you our product.... and don't hack it either...

STEVE JOBS HATES CANADIANS!


Where is our "Mum's the word" specail event?
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Actually it's my belief that Apple probably hasn't released it here because Rogers won't agree to their terms (ie. lower data rates so that users may get the full experience. Rogers has some of the highest data rates in the world. $10 for 10mb aint gonna cut it for the iphone experience.)

I won't be updating my phone until all this other business has been sorted out. And when the phone actually comes here, I will get the plan that rogers offers with it, given that it's not the continued rape that it is now.
 
blybug said:
Wrong analogy...Ford could develop and sell a premium vehicle that uses a special kind of fuel only available at Exxon, which you would know at the time of your purchase and agree to. Likely they'd put a specially shaped port on the gas tank such that only the special fuel pump would fit into it.

If you then chose to pry open the port with pliers, fill up with standard fuel from Shell, and subsequently bricked your engine, would Ford be obliged to repair your car or continue to provide you service?
Click to expand...

pjh said:
I see the point you're making, but it too "could" be wrong. If apple accidentally break an iphone when they upgrade the firmware, I'm 100% behind you. But if its deliberate then I'm not. A correct analogy would be

"Ford develop and sell a premium vehicle that uses a special kind of fuel only available at Exxon, which you would know at the time of your purchase. Likely they'd put a specially shaped port on the gas tank such that only the special fuel pump would fit into it.

You chose to replace this port with one that allows you to put fill up from a different vendor . The performance of the car is slightly reduced, but you have happy with the compromise. You then take your car in for routine maintenance check. Ford see what you have done and deliberately disable your engine because of the modifications you have made"

To me, this is why the intentions of apple regarding any future firmware upgrade are critical.
Click to expand...

Ah, touche...however we'll likely never know Apple's "intentions", but the manner in which they do address this later this week could give a clue.

If the software update simply pops a dialog telling the user that "Modifications to this iPhone make it incompatible with this update" and allows them to escape with their functional but feature-frozen iPhone, nobody could reasonably object. That's Ford telling you "Sorry we can't service this car under warranty anymore, you can keep driving and fueling however you want but anything that goes wrong from this point on is out of your pocket. And if you want the super-turbo-biodiesel accelerator add-on we have coming next month, it would certainly destroy your engine altogether."

However if the iPhones come out of the software update garage bricked with no wanring, we'll never really know Apple's intentions...could be purposefully malicious, could be a genuine incompatibility between the unlock mods and the new firmware. The fact that Schiller has apparently already mentioned 2 unlock apps by name that Apple knows to be incompatible seems to be fair warning...but not necessarily indicative of Apple's intentions.

I have an iPhone pimped out with 3rd party software via the Installer app, but plan to do a full Restore before the next update...just in case...
 
Apple's warning reminds me of the Sony Walkman days. Sony's instructions warned you to use only sony branded batteries and the use of other alkaline batteries could damage your Walkman.
 
So...

Heres a thought.

Don't update your iphone? At least not until other people try it and let you know that its ok?

Would itunes update it automaticly without your knowledge?
 
Intarweb said:
People are not renting the iPhone or leasing it. They bought the equipment. Regardless of the contract, people have certain rights.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, most of the rights you're probably thinking of have been eroded by the DMCA and similar.

However I agree they'd be in the deep stuff if they did something like that, it'd be a PR nightmare.
 
Virgil-TB2 said:
You are not aware that you just proved my point? :)

Why should I feel sympathize with, or support your "need" for an unlocked iPhone when you are just some rich person that lives in three countries and has lots of gadgets (presumably just because you can), yet are too cheap to pay roaming charges and too in love with your iPhone to consider using a different one?

The whole "need" for an unlocked iPhone is way overblown and not really a need at all.
Click to expand...
I would love to be able to afford AT&T roaming charges :eek:...but I'm not. And I never said I 'need' an iPhone. I just like it. I own a lot of Apple stuff just because I thing its really high quality and I like OSX. But as much as I like it have to say few things: Its great all in one device, and thats why I own one, but "phone capabilities" are far from perfect. I think all my previous Nokia phones beats iPhone in sound quality, ability to stay in range and SMS features. Please lets not get too fan-boy over this toy.Its a toy for God sake!!
 
glennyboiwpg said:
So...

Heres a thought.

Don't update your iphone? At least not until other people try it and let you know that its ok?

Would itunes update it automaticly without your knowledge?
Click to expand...

Sorry, but could you try not to be so reasonable?

People are try to flame each other over there. Don't try to stop them. Just grab some popcorn and enjoy the show.
 
Playing By the Rules

shakastange said:
What a statement. If Steve Jobs decided he wanted to play by the rules where do you think technology would be now? How about Rosa Parks? Or Gandhi? Or Martin Luther King? Or George Washington? The vast majority of the world would agree those people not playing by the rules has led to many good things.
Click to expand...

Ok If you want to compare yourself (or anyone else who is trying to unlock an Iphone) to Rosa Parks, Ghandi or even Steve Jobs then tell me and everyone else reading how thats going to change the world. Yes many many good things have happened from people not playing by the rules, but I highly doubt unlocking this "toy" is going to bring a change THAT BIG to fruition (froo ih shun). So are you implying you're going to give us more rights, become the next president, or win the Nobel Peace Prize by unlocking the phone? just curious.
 
Compile 'em all said:
How on earth did you come up with this calculation? Who is to say that people who buy an iPhone to unlock it would have bought one if they couldn't unlock it?. The fact is, since the unlock was released sales of the iPhone has hit the roof. The only loser in this equation is AT&T. Apple makes money, and AT&T doesn't. If anything, the unlock helped Apple sell more iPhones and still keep their agreement with AT&T at the same time.
Click to expand...

I never said Apple didn't get money from the sale of the iPhone, yes AT&T get nothing while apple get a hardware sale, but each phone has a potential revenue in apple's accountants books. Each phone sold, to them, represents a hardware sale and a revenue stream from the subscription. If they don't get that revenue stream from the subscription, that's lost revenue. I'm not defending it, but that's how accounting works. That's also why I said "lost revenue" as opposed to lost sale, or lost money. They haven't lost, but they haven't gained it's potential.
Also at this stage, Apple are recovering R&D costs still, so an unlocked iPhone may well represent a loss in their books.

The argument about whether or not someone wouldn't have bought one if they couldn't unlock it is pretty much irrelevant to accounts, that's a marketing issue. I suspect they weighed up selling unlocked for any network and selling tied with a contract, considered extras (visual voicemail) and also considered customer intellignece, and thought that a fully tied in product would maximise profit.
Now, if the American mobile phone industry had sorted itself out and settled on a single standard (either GSM OR CDMA) like we did in europe, we may be having a totally different discusion, but I'm sure apple did NOT like the idea of selling two phones that look the same but work on different technologies.
 
glennyboiwpg said:
STEVE JOBS HATES CANADIANS!


Where is our "Mum's the word" special event?
Click to expand...
I heard it will be called the "Howzit goin', eh?" event.

You assume Steve and Apple are the only parties involved in bringing the iPhone to Canada. There are others. Perhaps they're the ones causing the delay. Perhaps.
 
shakastange said:
What a statement. If Steve Jobs decided he wanted to play by the rules where do you think technology would be now? How about Rosa Parks? Or Gandhi? Or Martin Luther King? Or George Washington? The vast majority of the world would agree those people not playing by the rules has led to many good things. If you're happy with the status quo, then power to you.

Companies should learn that the hackers always win.
Click to expand...

Sorry, but not all people that decide not to play by the rules are heroes and come out on top. Vigilantes don't play by the rules, the Mafia plays by its own rules not others, Serial killers don't play by the rules either.

When one decides to not play by the rules, we do so knowing that there maybe implications and repercusions. How important is this to you??????
 
winterspan said:
Actually, when the deal was announced in the United States, it caused quite a stir in some parts of congress here which is A GREAT THING. Too think the US politicians would finally wake up and start regulating the absolute abuse of the market and anti-competitive practices by these **** telecom companies is amazing! Im sure across the pond the EU will eventually (in the countries that don't already do it now) come down HARD on this type of crap.

You guys have no idea how bad it is with broadband in the US. They've allowed this type of anti-competitive bull**** for year now because all the politicians are busy getting sucked off by the big $$$ telecom lobbyists.
In nearly all average areas of the United states, people are stuck with only one cable company and one DSL company, with each being the incumbent
regional carrier for the area. They have acted to completely deny new entry into the market, and the **** government has even gotten worse over time. they used to at least make the local telephone company lease the "last mile" of their phone lines to third party ISPs who wanted to offer DSL service, but NOPE NOT ANYMORE! Thanks CONGRESS -- you stupid PIGS!
Click to expand...

Agreed - thanks for the comment.

At least in Europe big corporations still have to behave half civilized, unlike the on the other side of the pond, in the United Corporations of America.

It will be interesting to see how this unfolds...
 
I don't see how you can compare Rosa Parks not playing by the rules vs that of the Mafia but stranger things have happened.

According to statistics from the iPhone unlock team, their software has been downloaded over 500,000 times since release. If that number is to be believed then Apple can expect serious backlash from bricking phones, legal or not. The lawyers are probably salivating over this already. Even if those numbers are exaggerated, there is a serious % of iPhone owners that want the phones unlocked. And lets keep in mind, that ~1 million phones has been sold to date.
 
shakastange said:
I don't see how you can compare Rosa Parks not playing by the rules vs that of the Mafia but stranger things have happened.
Click to expand...

Simple, neither one played by the rules, one had a great advantage to others, the other is self serving.

The point was .... Not everyone that refuses to play by the rules ends up a herro or on top. You never know the twists and turns of fate.
 
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