most commuters wouldn't know how to hack the iplayer.
No, you're missing the point. We already know that a turning point for many people who, previously, had decided they
were not getting an iPhone, was when they actually got to handle one. In my experience, actually using an iPhone plants a seed that, very often, results in that person buying one a few months later. And it's worth noting that PRICE is the main factor holding them back - it apparently takes a few months for the desire to percolate enough to overcome the price resistance and, of course, a price reduction will be a big tipping point.
What I'm saying is that people merely
seeing that it is possible to watch regular TV, the regular shows that they follow and look forward to, that plants a seed too. The idea lodges in their brains. At that early point, they aren't thinking in the kind of detail you suggest, they aren't actually going onto to forums and finding out how difficult that might be to achieve - they're just sitting there, thinking
"Oh, I didn't know you could watch Eastenders on an iPhone, that's pretty cool, that seems more interesting than sitting here reading a freebie newspaper". And, so, that ideal, that mental imagine of themselves enjoying quality TV while commuting, that lingers in their subconscious and floats to the surface every time they see one of those heavy-rotation ads for the iPhone. This is precisely why Apple ads appear in every adbreak now.
So for most commuters its not really possible to watch it to and from work as you need wi-fi.
No, the hack is pretty much point-and-click, saving it from the relevant iPlayer page straight to your iTunes playlist and onto your iPhone's memory.
More importantly, as the number of iPhone users increases, all those shows will find their way onto Usenet and the torrent networks, making them easily accessible even to people who don't have the time/inclination to set up the hack for themselves.
As you say, Wi-Fi access to the BBC is pretty much a non-starter.
Me and many others over here queued for hours to pay £269 and have 200 mins and 200 texts. Its been a quick 5 months.
Too true. I knew, when I bought mine, that I was paying a huge premium but realized how important it was going to be once it hit the mainstream and it was worth paying the extra just to get an insight into how the iPhone will change everyone's habit, once it becomes cheap enough and useful enough. Hopefully, that advance knowledge will be an advantage to me in my design work.
