I've had similar thoughts as well. It sure would be nice if Apple released changelogs for their baseband updates, but I can't imagine that happening anytime soon.
First, though, I'd like to point out that the people who are actually USING the unlock, and not just keeping the old baseband around for future potential unlock use and resale value, would be completely screwed and have their fancy iPhone reduced to an iPod for a time if they took your advice to update now and hope for an unlock later.
I'm not one of those. I'm an AT&T subscriber in the U.S., and I rarely travel outside the country, so I really don't need the unlock. It is, of course, nice to know that it is around should I ever be in a fix, though.
But that's not the reason that I don't update my baseband. I would be hesitant to do so even if I knew that there was an unlock coming or one already out for the newer versions. And here's why: Apple has removed my CHOICE to downgrade should I ever find that I need to. So it is easier to stick with the devil I know. If there were gobs of third-party experiential evidence that showed the newest baseband operated noticeably better than the older one(s), or if the older baseband had a showstopping bug that was fixed in a later version, then I would have no problem jumping aboard the baseband update train, unlock or not. But neither has happened, so I am content to stick with the old baseband. My 3GS with iOS 4 still has the original 04.26.08 baseband on it, even.
I've ranted before on these forums about why I jailbreak my iPhone and the stupidity of code signing and forcing everybody to use the App Store as their only means to load on 3rd-party code, but nothing has angered me more than Apple's downgrade prevention tactics. I understand WHY they do it: to prevent people from going back to old code after people have discovered how to either root/jailbreak or unlock it. But that doesn't justify it; not by a longshot.
The fact is, Apple can make mistakes, too. Just because it is an upgrade doesn't mean that it is better. Has everybody REALLY already forgotten the horrible "coma bug" in iOS 3.1(.1) and how people who were affected by it had to wait an entire month before Apple came out with a fix for it in 3.1.2? They could have done the right thing and allowed affected people to downgrade back to 3.0.1, but NOOOO. They forced their customers to live with it.
Or what if Apple decides to remove functionality that you were dependent on in future versions? 1st-gen iPod touch users got a taste of this when Apple opened up the use of dock-connector microphones in iOS 3.0, only to have it yanked/crippled in 3.1.x. Maybe the fact that they worked at all in 3.0 was an unintended fluke or accident on Apple's part, which just makes the feature removal all the worse: Apple did it out of spite.
Another great example is how much of a dog iOS 4.0 was on iPhone 3G and iPod touch 2nd-gen. Fortunately for users of those devices, Apple had not built downgrade prevention into the hardware of those models, so people could go back to 3.1.3 if they wanted to, while they waited for 4.1 to be released. But imagine if iOS 4.0 had also turned out to be a dog for 3GS. Sorry, but until 4.1 came out, you'd have been screwed.
Granted, these aren't examples of bugs or feature cripple in the baseband itself, but the same principles are at work: if I knew I could return to older code at any time, even without an unlock, I would GLADLY upgrade. But because I can't -- because that choice has been taken from me -- sorry, but I'm out.
I mean, seriously: we wouldn't stand for this if it were happening on our PCs. When Leopard came out, the perception was that initially it had some performance issues that needed to be worked through, and some apps that people used still needed to be updated for compatibility with the new OS. So some people tried out Leopard for a time, and then downgraded back to Tiger while they waited for the issues to be worked out. In the meantime, their computer worked just as well as it did before, their productivity wasn't being hampered, and the users weren't being "punished" for being early adopters. Same thing in the Windows world: if Microsoft releases a Hotfix or a service pack for Windows that breaks stuff, you take a moment to go "WTF, Microsoft?!" but then you roll back the patch and go on your merry way! Or, an even more striking example: when Vista came out, those who tried it and hated it
could still go back to XP if they chose to! Microsoft didn't say, "haha, suckers! If you had stayed with XP, you could still be using it today, but because you already upgraded to Vista, it's too late!"
...but that is exactly,
exactly what Apple does with software on their iDevices. And it Pisses. Me. Off.
So, no, until there is a way to safely "roll it back," I will not be updating my basebands as long as I am given the option to keep the older ones.
-- Nathan
