Jul

3

The iPhone evolution

July 3, 2007 | 2 Comments | Joshua Gans

We are now a few days into iPhone hype; virtually, from where I sit. And, in many respects, it has lived up to its expectations with 500,000 units sold in the first few days making it one of the biggest movie releases of the summer. And the user reviews are pretty positive; great for a 1.0 product but some obvious stuff still to go.

That is actually the part that interests me. Like Apple TV, hackers have come in to see what the iPhone can do or what it is made of. Unlike Apple TV, their energies are focused on freeing it up from AT&T. This is mainly because the iPhone is an excellent iPod combined with an portable internet browser.

Now the Apple line is that you need to activate the iPhone through iTunes (solidifying that piece of software’s role in people’s lives) and purchase an AT&T phone account. And that just to use the non-phone features. Well, it seems that with a little trickery that can be bypassed. According to this post, you can buy a pre-paid AT&T account (locking you in to a month’s worth of fees), cancel it, put in an inactive SIM card and still use all the i and none of the Phone. It is not clear if that fix will stand the test of time (say, through software updates) but who knows? It would be surprising if the other features of the iPhone would forever require an active AT&T account.

And there is ample evidence that more capabilities are coming. One criticism of the iPhone is its use of the edge network which is slow. It seems that, in fact, this might not be an issue for much longer as the SIM cards inside are 3G ones.

All this makes me wonder what the whole story will turn out to be. Apple have taken its best new product and bundled it in with a phone. In so doing, they have tied themselves to AT&T and other choices. It would be really surprising of the phone tie-in really lasted much more than a few months. It just seems to be crimping a set of great products.


Comments

2 Responses to “The iPhone evolution”

  1. Jeremy on July 3rd, 2007 3:42 pm

    Any idea why they teamed up with AT&T at all? I can’t see the advantage…

  2. Jacques Chester on July 3rd, 2007 4:41 pm

    As I understand it, none of the other providers were prepared to make the network changers Apple wanted them to make. Apple’s agreement with AT&T will expire and I’ll bet my teeth that they get more cooperation – from everyone – in the next round of negotiations.