Your hatred of Apple is noted. Why you are here is a mystery however.
I simply speak the
truth about Apple's greed. I don't have to like a company to like some of their products, however. For the record, I don't like Microsoft as a company either or most large corporations as I find greed reprehensible. Still, your fanaticism of Apple is noted. Why you prefer to let Apple think for you is a mystery, however.
Are you Kidding??? They have enormous incentive to have a single device. The reduction in expense of their manufacturing alone would be worth WAY more to Apple than the occasional extra handset sale. Let alone the reduced complexity in supply-chain management. Finally, from a user-perception perspective, having a single iPhone that is not directly associated with either AT&T or Verizon would reduce user perceptions that network issues were the fault of the phone.
No, I'm not kidding. You're making cerrtain assumptions about manufacturing processes, though. The use of a single chip alone shows Apple's interest in reducing manufacturing expenses. However, one can easily produce two incompatible phone models while sharing 98% of the manufacturing chain. Put simply, they only need to not install the sim chip holder on the Verizon iPhone to make it incompatible as a universal iPhone. The idea
I was talking about is to maximize sales, not increase manufacturing costs. Leaving out one step in the assembly line for phones designated for Verizon is simplicity itself. You simply diverge the line towards the end of the process, leave out a key piece of hardware like the sim chip holder, throw on a cover that didn't cut out the piece where it would go (PLC programming simply ignores that cut on the case for covers designated to be Verizon phones) and program the end result for Verizon and you're done. Everything else could be the same. The cost differences are negligible but your sales are maximized since your phone is worthless for the other network.
Apple tries very hard to minimize the number of SKUs they manufacture, except to cover different sales price points. No reason to do the latter for two similar products at the same price point. It just creates a bigger inventory risk problem, and current CEO Tim Cook hates those kinds of supply chain management issues.
I said they had zero interest to "offer" a phone that could be used on both networks. I never said they had zero interest in sharing manufacturing as much as possible. As I indicate above, it's not hard to leave out a key component for the other network as a final step to make the phone incompatible in hardware for the other networks.
There is no reason, given the iPhone's popularity to kowtow to the customer on an issue like this and offer a single phone and let the user switch networks any time they choose. First of all, they could have done this any time they wanted to with T-Mobile and the current GSM phones. They have gone out of their way to make life difficult for hackers who want to do just that. They clearly have gone out of their way
already to make sure that Verizone iPhone customers
cannot switch the phone to AT&T
PERIOD by leaving out the sim chip holder. It already has the chip to switch to GSM, but without a programmable sim chip, it's worthless. I haven't seen the design myself...maybe you could solder it on if they left a space for it, but who is going to do that? A few die-hards? Apple doesn't worry too much about the hacker geek community, but you only have to look at Psystar to see what they would do if a 3rd party started offering to modify your phone for you for a few bucks to switch networks.
In other words, my comments are based on the existing phone that
could have been made to work on both networks, but obviously is being limited on purpose so it cannot. How
anyone could suggest (as the first person I quoted) that is a stupid observation when it's a fact is beyond me. The phone clearly has the hardware to run on either network except for a key missing piece or two and that is done on purpose to force unhappy customers to buy another phone.
Apple does this all the time these days. They purposely leave out software updates and/or features for older iOS hardware regardless of whether the hardware is capable of using it or not (e.g. 1st Gen iPhone could capture video as hacks showed, but Apple never offered the feature in upgrades) to "encourage" the user to buy newer hardware sooner rather than later. Apple could have carried PPC to Snow Leopard without any real effort what-so-ever, but that would not benefit them financially, so they left it out and ironically, that is about the only real "optimization" (saving a little hard drive space) that Snow Leopard has (i.e. my late 2008 MBP is SLOWER in almost every regard with Snow Leopard than it was with leopard and that is easily demonstrated with simple Xbench tests).
In other words, this observation about Apple's greed and methods to get more sales from users (i.e. the notorious Apple "Tax") should come as no surprise to anyone on these forums that's been here for more than a few months. The only difference between some people on these forums and other people on these forums is whether or not they have an emotional attachment to Apple that leads them to conclude they don't mind Apple nudging them into buying more overpriced hardware sooner or not. This odd behavior of emotional attachment to Apple the company itself (as opposed to a given piece of hardware or software or no attachment at all) is known as fanaticism and the people fanatics or more commonly these days as "fanboys". You can't hate what you love and so it's OK and why can't the "haters" understand that what Steve Jobs decides is always right? After all, they are making money (off your back) so they must be right!
But AT&T doesn't use a standard frequency, and the iPhone's antenna needs to function on all GSM frequencies, not just 850Mhz.
It's not that hard to design an antenna these days that works well over a range of frequencies. Regardless, Apple could easily include two antennas in the case and have a micro switch select which one is used in such a scenario (or cut one or the other in the scenario I describe above where they don't want the consumer using such a phone on either network).
The iPhone is usually locked into a two year contract, and new much improved models have been coming out every year. This leads to a purchasing pattern of buying a new phone every two years regardless of whether you switch carrier or not, and almost never switching carrier inside the two year period.
Some people aren't poor. If they don't like the phone they bought, they will gladly pay the fee to get out of their contract, dispose of the phone one way or another and get a different one. Apple would rather make a 2nd sale in this scenario rather than not make a 2nd sale (who wouldn't?) and thus profit by it. If the person could simply pay the early termination fee and then flip a software or dip switch to make it work on another network and thus not have to pay whatever fee to get a phone for that network, Apple doesn't make a sale. What possible incentive would there be for Apple to miss that sale in that situation when they don't have to? A customer that is that unhappy will gladly pay the extra $50-200 to get another iPhone for AT&T, but Apple's share isn't $50-200 (since it is AT&T that is subsidizing the replacement phone and the consumer that is paying for the previous model through the early termination fee that they can no longer use and would have to pay regardless to get out of their contract). Apple's share is a full 2nd sale and thus they get two full sales instead of one from that unhappy customer. The customer has to pay for the breach of contract (1st phone) regardless and only the new subsidized price on the new phone so their difference for the new phone is only the subsidized price, but Apple gets the full price (AT&T share + consumer share). Thus it makes no financial or business sense to miss out on that 2nd sale by letting the customer simply switch the phone over to AT&T. The customer would not get a lower rate from AT&T regardless and so they only save the subsidized price and AT&T gets the savings and Apple loses a sale.
Either way it's bad financial sense for Apple. At best they would make a customer slightly happier by saving that small fee, but that customer wasn't unhappy with Apple in the first place but rather Verizon's limitations so they're unlikely to buy another phone from another company regardless (or they wouldn't have bought the iPhone in the first place) so from Apple perspective, who cares if they're slightly happier or not? Take their money as often as possible! While this may not happen very often, to maximize profit, you take advantage of every scenario and every loop-hole there is. It adds up. The customer shouldn't like that, however. When businesses find loop-holes to avoid paying taxes, for example, who is ultimately going to have to make up for it? You, the taxpayer, of course.
If Apple had included a SIM slot, people would want that phone over the AT&T iPhone. With the inclusion of a SIM slot, it's a better phone. Not only is the network speed faster, but you could switch between AT&T and Verizon without re-buying your phone. Apple doesn't want customers to start buying this new device and see large stockpiles of the old one go unsold and the Verizon iPhone is likely more expensive to produce because of this chip. So, Apple doesn't include a SIM slot and almost no one is the wiser (and even if they are, they can't do anything about it).
That's an excellent observation as well. Either way, Apple's motivation (like all corporations) is profit. There is no profit (given cell phone contracts) in offering a dual-mode model to the public. It makes sense to combine things at the manufacturing level, but purposely leaving out key components to make them incompatible benefits Apple more than it hurts them by far, IMO.
Well, you can always sell your verizon iPhone for a profit...I am sure there will be a huge grey market for it
That's true. That would help one who hates Verizon recoup some of their costs, but it doesn't matter to Apple. They simply are better off selling two phones rather than one in that scenario regardless.
