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Sorry folks, I couldn't resist. For a more thorough thrashing of Dell's plans to introduce a new MP3 player later this year, see this entry at MacDailyNews.
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The last Plugged In column by my colleague Mike Himowitz appears in today’s print editions of the Baltimore Sun, marking the end of a 34-year tenure at the paper and a quarter-century of technology columns.
He became a tech guru almost by accident, as he tells the story in today’s column. But by the mid-1980s he was writing a weekly column about computers for the Evening Sun.
When I arrived at Calvert Street in 1990, Mike had become universally known in the newsroom as “Whizzz.”
Sitting on opposite sides of the Mac/PC divide, we often engaged in good-natured verbal sparring matches over the years.
After witnessing a few of these, Business Editor Bernie Kohn tried to persuade us to do a series of real-life “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” segments either for this Web site or the Your Money & Business TV show that appears Thursdays on Maryland Public Television. Luckily for viewers, it never happened.
Although I never succeeded in convincing Mike of the superiority of the Mac OS, he did at least like the iPod and more recently, the iPhone. Maybe if I’d had a few more years to work on him….
Anyway, Mike’s departure – like those of dozens of other Sun staffers departing this week as a result of voluntary buyouts mandated by our corporate parent, the Tribune Company – will leave a void in the newsroom.
Good luck to you, my friend.
As if Apple didn’t have enough trouble on its hands with the ongoing MobileMe e-mail nightmare, the company faces an even thornier problem with its revamped, renamed online service.
Though better than .Mac, it’s not massively better.
I’ve been using MobileMe/.Mac since it was a free service known as iTools (according to my account status, that would be Jan. 17, 2000). I have continued to pay the $99 annual membership fee because I liked the mac.com e-mail address, the online iDisk storage and its integration with Mac OS X and Apple apps such as iCal, iPhoto, iWeb and Address Book.
I love how easy it is to push a button in iPhoto and have the images appear in my gallery minutes later. And how easy it is to create a Web site or blog with iWeb and with a push of a button post it to the Internet – no HTML or FTP required.
And iDisk is great for sending large files back and forth to work (I don’t need to remember to put a flash drive in my pocket) or to friends and family.
Given what I do with the service, however, many of MobileMe improvements don’t do much for me.
True, the browser-based online versions of iCal, Mail and the Address Book look great, feel as responsive as any desktop app and work almost exactly like their Mac counterparts.
But I have little need for Web-based versions of those programs. It’s not that often I want to access my contacts and calendar from a computer I don’t own. Generally I’d rather use the versions on the hard drives of my Mac Pro and MacBook.
For some reason I expected more from Apple here. Maybe I’m the exception, but the few browser-based apps MobileMe offers aren’t ones that I would use with any regularity.
So the flashiest aspect of MobileMe gives me marginally more functionality than .Mac did, since .Mac kept all my iCal, Address Book data and Safari bookmarks synchronized on all my Macs (and my iPod Classic, for that matter).
How about the “push” technology that is supposed to keep all the data on my Macs synced automatically?
Well, it turns out that MobileMe is better than .Mac was at propagating changes, but Apple’s early promises of data instantly updated on all Web-connected devices wasn’t quite accurate.
Tech-savvy users quickly figured out that while data saved directly to the MobileMe servers would push out to any Web-connected Macs, PCs or iPhones, changes made to an app on your Mac’s hard drive would not transmit to other devices until the Mac synced with MobileMe at its next scheduled interval – which could be up to 15 minutes.
That’s not much different than how .Mac synced data.
All this is not to say that MobileMe is a total disappointment. Apple improved several aspects of the service significantly.
One of the more intriguing features of MobileMe is the improved accessibility for those using Windows PCs. Not only will MobileMe sync with a PC running Internet Explorer, Outlook and Windows Contacts, but it also allows PC users to run those Web-based Mac-like apps – yet another carrot to lure the unenlightened away from the Dark Side.
Since I use the iDisk more than any other feature, I’m pleased with the doubling of storage space to 20 gigabytes. I’m very pleased with its much faster speed (under .Mac just opening the iDisk to see your files could result in enough face time with the spinning beach ball to hypnotize you).
Yet MobileMe’s Web-based version of the iDisk still lacks key features when compared to mounting the iDisk on your Desktop the old-fashioned way via the Finder menu command.
When you open your iDisk in the Finder, you can see previews of photos, text files and movies; when you use the Web-based interface, you can’t. And you can’t drag-and-drop files from the browser window to your Desktop as you can from an iDisk Finder window.
Apple could easily make MobileMe much more compelling, however.
The secret lies in its browser-based apps – MobileMe needs more of them. And Apple has several excellent candidates among the existing iLife and iWork programs.
Imagine enhancing the photos in your Gallery with a browser-based iPhoto, or managing your own music collection in the “cloud” via a browser-based iTunes, or using a browser-based iWeb to maintain your MobileMe-based blog. Imagine a browser-based version of the Pages word processor.
Think about it: most people don’t buy iLife, as it is included with every Mac. Including lite versions of a select few of these apps in MobileMe would give more Mac users a reason to buy it while ratcheting up the temptation for Windows users to switch. Meanwhile, Pages lite would serve as an online demo to promote sales of the full iWork suite.
Because despite the new features and enhancements, at $99 per year MobileMe remains more expensive than it’s worth to many users. Adding a few more apps, a la Google Apps (which is free, for Pete’s sake), would go a long way toward fulfilling the promise of a fee-based Apple-run online service.
And installing servers that don’t drop users e-mail service for a week while wiping 10 percent of their messages wouldn’t hurt, either.
On multiple occasions during Apple’s earnings conference call yesterday, CFO Peter Oppenheimer cited a “future product transition” as one of the reasons the company expected somewhat lower gross margins for the September quarter.
That any Apple executive would hint at an imminent new product in a public forum is extraordinary. It means whatever is coming will make a big splash, though probably not of the magnitude of the iPhone.
But what is it? It’s likely that the mystery product or products – or as Oppenheimer put it, “state-of-the-art new products that our competitors just aren’t going to be able to match” – will involve a touch screen.
I believe it could be the long-rumored Mac tablet PC. In any case, Oppenheimer’s remarks about it affecting the September quarter tells us it will arrive soon. He also hinted at other products in the pipeline that might shave gross margins in 2009.
As for Apple’s earnings, they were routinely spectacular. Apple made a profit of $1.07 billion in the June quarter on revenue of $7.46 billion. The earnings per share of $1.19 beat Wall Street estimates by 11 cents.
Strong Mac sales led the way. Apple sold nearly 2.5 million Macs, its highest quarterly Mac total ever. According to Oppenheimer, the 41 percent year-over-year growth is three times the overall PC market growth rate.
That would seem to jibe with last week’s market share reports from research firms IDC and Gartner, both of which showed Apple gaining more ground in the U.S. IDC had Apple’s 2Q share rising year over year from 6.2 percent to 7.8 percent; Gartner’s data had Apple increasing from 6.4 percent to 8.5 percent.
The biggest surprise was the iPod, which despite a woozy economy and two years of predictions that the product had peaked, pulled out a 12 percent increase in sales year over year, although iPod revenue was up only 7 percent because of a February reduction in the price of the Shuffle models to $49 and $69.
The iPhone numbers were predictably low – a mere 717,000 -- since Apple cut off the supply of the original iPhone mid-way through the quarter to prepare for the launch of the iPhone 3G on July 11.
Some other clues, news and tidbits from the conference call:
Steve Jobs’ health Ben Reitzes of Lehman Brothers apologized for asking the question, but a story in the New York Post yesterday almost guaranteed the subject would come up. Oppenheimer’s response was less than reassuring: “Ben, Steve loves Apple. He serves as CEO at the pleasure of Apple’s board and has no plans to leave Apple. Steve’s health is a private matter.”
Geez Louise, Peter. How about something like “We’re confident Steve will be leading Apple for a long time to come”? Oppenheimer’s stilted, non-committal answer will only serve to fuel more speculation on Wall Street that Steve is very seriously ill, and probably contributed to the 10.8 percent walloping AAPL took in after hours trading last night.
Margins are everything The other reason AAPL shed $18.04 last night almost surely was the lower guidance Oppenheimer gave for the company’s gross margins – from 34.8 percent in Q2 to a still robust 31.5 percent for Q3. You’d think the booming Mac and iPod sales driving record revenues and profits might count for something. Oh, and Apple did sell 1 million new iPhones in three days. And the company always beats its guidance numbers anyway. But noooo. SELL AAPL!!!
The international factor Apple saw significant growth overseas in the June quarter, which could become insurance against a slowdown in its rate of growth in the U.S.
For example, international sales of the iPod grew 15 percent (compared to 10 percent in the U.S.) While the iPod’s U.S. MP3 player market share has stabilized at about 70 percent, Oppenheimer said it has been increasing elsewhere and now stands at over 60 percent in Canada and over 50 percent in the U.K., Japan and Switzerland.
Apple is adding more retail stores overseas as well. One just opened in Beijing with more expected to open in Switzerland and Germany later this year.
Piggy bank full Oppenheimer blew off a question about what Apple plans to do with its ever-swelling cash hoard – now up to $20.8 billion. Sooner or later shareholders are going to demand Apple use it for something, be it stock buybacks, acquisitions of other companies or dividend payments. Even Microsoft is sitting on a mere $24 billion in cash these days.
The iPhone rollout The iPhone 3G is now shipping in 22 countries, with 20 more coming on Aug. 22. Oppenheimer reiterated that Apple expects to have the iPhone 3G available in 70 countries by year’s end. Also, COO Timothy Cook re-confirmed Apple’s confidence that it will sell 10 million iPhones in calendar year 2008.
I personally haven’t noticed any problems with my MobileMe e-mail account, which switched over from .Mac July 11, but many others have. Apple’s MobileMe Mail discussion forum is loaded with threads started by angry customers who can’t use their me.com e-mail accounts.
This morning a reader posted a transcript of a tech support chat to my blog entry last week on Apple’s inexcusably poor preparation for the combined iPhone 3G/MobileMe launch. Although unusual for this blog I thought the conversation revealing enough that it deserved its own entry.
While others who commented on that entry thought I was too harsh in my criticism, the lingering problems with MobileMe services suggest otherwise.
Apple even sent out an e-mail last Wednesday apologizing for a launch that was “a lot rockier than we had hoped.” To smooth all the ruffled feathers Apple has given all MobileMe customers a free 30-day extension.
Apple gets points for acknowledging the issues and trying to make it right, but that will do little to placate people who just want the service to work as promised.
Here is that reader’s comment post, unedited:
NO EMAIL ACCESS THROUGH MOBILE ME SINCE FRIDAY JULY 18th AT 10:00am. Here is the "chat" I had this morning at 9:00 with mobileme support. NO END IN SIGHT! Here is my chat at 9:00am
Hi, my name is Craig. Welcome to Apple!
Craig: Good Morning, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Forrester: I have had no email access for 4 days
Craig: I'm very sorry to hear that, Elizabeth. Give me just a moment to look up your account.
Elizabeth Forrester: no mail though mail app, iphone, or me.com. when I log in i see a blank gray page
Craig: Unfortunately, after reviewing your account, it looks like your account is part of a small group of customers experiencing a temporary outage in mail service with MobileMe. I know it's been a few days and it is frustrating. I'm in the same boat as you, my mail hasn't been up for four days either.
Craig: Apple is working hard and has made this issue their number one priority. We expect the issue to be resolved soon.
Elizabeth Forrester: when is this going to corrected?? 4 DAYS is RIDICULOUS! This is my only email acct. I depend on this for work. I just got a gmail acct this morning and after checking the discussion pages it's unlikely a "small amount" of customers
Elizabeth Forrester: what is the issue?
Craig: We are experiencing a temporary issue with one of our mail servers. I'm sorry that is affecting you as well. I know how frustrating it is to be without mail.
Elizabeth Forrester: what's frustrating is the lack of response. Since Friday I've been told that it will be resolved soon. I'm very disappointed and beyond frustrated at the lack of communication and acceptable time frame for it to be resolved. so we just need to it and wait- possibly for days?
Elizabeth Forrester: thanks craig. i'll make sure everyone of the other "small amount" of customers knows that there is no end in sight.
Craig: Unfortunately, I don't have any thing else to tell you besides asking you to wait. I don't know any more about the issue and a resolution time than I've told you. I'm very sorry for the inconvenience this has caused.
Elizabeth Forrester: Me too. One loyal apple customer is now gone.
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In the days and weeks following the sudden arrival of Mac clone maker Psystar three months ago, Apple watchers waited for the inevitable lawsuit. And waited. And waited.
Yesterday the wait finally ended when ZDNet discovered the lawsuit, filed July 3 in the U.S. District Court for Northern California. A case management conference is scheduled for Oct. 22.
The suit details numerous transgressions, including copyright violations, trademark violations and violations of the terms of the Mac OS X licensing agreement.
Florida-based Psystar began selling its low-cost imitation Macs under the name OpenMac in mid-April. It quickly changed the product’s name to Open Computer, as if that might quell Apple’s ire.
In June Psystar added the OpenServ 1100 and OpenServ 2400, clones of Apple’s Xserve, a server model Apple sells mostly to businesses.
Psystar’s famously inexpensive clones (the cheapest model was $399) did not include the OS X Leopard operating system. That was $155 extra, but the company would gladly pre-install it. Still, Psystar’s offerings significantly undercut Apple on price.
As the lawsuit makes plain, Apple had plenty of legal objections to Psystar’s operations.
So what took so long?
Maybe Apple’s lawyers wanted to take some extra time to ensure they had covered every possible argument. Maybe they wanted to allow Psystar to function long enough so the violations would pile up and appear more egregious to the court.
Apple absolutely can’t afford to lose this one; more clone makers would spring up overnight and create all sorts of headaches.
Not only would Apple lose customers to such entities (as they are to Psystar now), but having more Mac clones in the marketplace also would destroy Apple’s vertically integrated business model of “making the whole widget.”
One other possible holdup could have been Apple’s reluctance to test the End User License Agreement (EULA) in court. Many have contended for years that the highly restrictive EULAs, common to most commercial software since the early days of computing (though no one ever reads them), often contain provisions that would be struck down if legally challenged.
Many tech-savvy users have violated EULAs because they’re virtually impossible to enforce against individuals. How would anyone know?
But Psystar clearly has violated Apple’s EULA, and back in April almost dared Apple to sue: A Psystar employee who identified himself as Robert told Information Week then the company would welcome a legal challenge from Apple.
Perhaps that bluster was justified when Psystar’s plan was simply to sell computers capable of running Mac OS X. But the lawsuit alleges that Psystar tampered with the Leopard code to get it to run on its clones. Modifying someone else’s code and re-selling it unquestionably breaks the law.
Apple’s suit also alleges harm to its trademarks. “By misappropriating Apple’s proprietary software and intellectual property for its own use, Psystar’s actions harm consumers by selling to them a poor product that is advertised and promoted in a manner that falsely and unfairly implies an affiliation with Apple.”
As for damages, the lawsuit not only asks the court for a permanent injunction to stop Psystar from selling Mac clones, but also seeks a recall of all the machines it has sold. (Good luck with that.)
Given the weight of Apple’s charges and the company’s deep pockets, Psystar doesn’t look to be long for this world. Even now (mid-day Wednesday), the Psystar Web site is offline.
Several lawyers quoted in Ina Fried’s Beyond Binary blog indicated that Psystar has virtually no chance of survival.
While some cheered Psystar’s unauthorized Mac clones as rightful competition for Apple, others (me included) considered it dubious.
I remain convinced that Mac users ultimately benefit from Apple’s control of all aspects of the Mac experience. Anyone who doesn’t like the Apple Way can buy a PC running Microsoft Windows or use the open source Linux operating system.
I won’t be sorry to see Psystar go.
“What were you thinking?” a legendary editor at the Baltimore Sun, Tony Barbieri, would ask his underperforming underlings. Before they could respond (they knew better), he would answer the question for them: “You weren’t thinking.”
After Apple made a perfect mess of the twin MobileMe/ iPhone 3G launch Friday, I couldn’t help but picture Tony in his office dressing down a contrite Steve Jobs. (Hey, I have a wild imagination, OK?)
As always, Apple had set the table for massive media coverage of the iPhone 3G launch. But the plan backfired when Apple’s servers, strained to the breaking point by excessive traffic, all but stopped functioning. Instead of the usual accolades and interviews with enthralled customers, the stories focused on the anger and frustration of disgruntled customers.
People buying the new iPhone in Apple Stores and AT&T stores could not get their new toy activated in the store, as required by Apple’s new purchasing rules. Many were sent home and told to activate it via iTunes from their home computer.
In most cases that didn’t work, either.
Meanwhile, Mac users trying to access the new MobileMe services experienced similar vexations. The service was up and down – mostly down – for the better part of the day.
But it was the iPhone debacle that drew the bulk of the bad publicity. A sampling of headlines: “For Apple, a taste of humble pie,” (Boston Globe); “Apple bungles its iPhone 3G launch” (Time); “iFiasco: Apple's iPhone launch flawed, faithful told to go home” (Chicago Sun-Times); “iPhone Users Plagued by Software Problems” (New York Times). There are many more. Many, many more.
Despite being an Apple advocate, I have to give the company a collective slap upside the head for this one.
The date was set months ago; Apple knew from its experience with the launch of the original iPhone last year that its stores (and AT&T’s) would be packed with early adopters. The change in policy to have customers activate their phones in the store instead of when they got home meant a lot of high, steady traffic on its servers.
And Apple knew that owners of the original iPhone, trying to upgrade to the iPhone 2.0 software to enjoy many of the goodies available on the iPhone 3G, would also be hitting those same servers.
And Apple scheduled the switchover of its .Mac service to the beefier MobileMe the night before, creating more chaos. I realize Apple did this because the MobileMe service syncs with iPhones as well as Macs, but doing it so close to the iPhone 3G launch meant Apple had to take a giant gamble – a gamble it lost big time.
The more prudent but less dramatic strategy would have been to set up the MobileMe service several days in advance of the iPhone launch. That would have taken some of the pressure off Apple’s servers from thousands of .Mac users like myself eager to test out MobileMe’s new features as soon as they were available.
And while it would have slightly spoiled the drama of the iPhone 3G’s introduction, Apple could have allowed the current iPhone owners to download the whopping 225 megabyte iPhone 2.0 software update a few days earlier.
Less orchestrated, less dramatic yes, but minus the meltdown.
This would be a humiliation for any large company, but it’s worse for Apple, which has built its public image on a foundation of superior design and customer service. Long-time Apple critics are feasting on this blunder as proof Apple isn’t the premium company it claims to be.
Apple’s best hope for minimizing the damage from this fiasco is that customers are so wowed by the iPhone 3G (and the iPhone 2.0 software, and the new MobileMe features) they’ll begrudgingly forgive it – as they have with previous transgressions.
But it never should have happened.
Of those planning to buy a smart phone in the next three months, people eyeing an Apple iPhone outnumber those pondering a RIM BlackBerry by a two-to-one margin.
So says a smart phone survey of consumers conducted June 17-23 by Rockville-based ChangeWave Research. The company conducts periodic surveys on technology and business trends from amongst the members of its “ChangeWave Alliance.”
A remarkable 56 percent of the respondents said they planned to buy an iPhone in the next 90 days; 23 percent said they planned on purchasing a BlackBerry, a 6-point drop from a similar survey taken in March. All other manufacturers had 3 percent or less.
The iPhone number is 21 percent higher than it was in the March survey, and double what it was in the January survey. Though the hype building up to the iPhone 3G’s launch tomorrow hasn’t matched that of last year when the iPhone debuted, this data suggests a high level of consumer anticipation.
Even though many consumers have waited for the arrival of the iPhone 3G, the product’s market share has grown. Among the current smart phone owners surveyed 11 percent have an iPhone, a 2 percent increase from March and a 5 percent increase since January.
While market leader BlackBerry has held steady at 42 percent, Palm has dropped 4 percent since January to 14 percent of the market. Given the sales surge expected for the new iPhone and Palm’s ever-sinking numbers, Apple should overtake Palm in the next survey.
Despite rapidly rising numbers in the planned purchase category, Apple has yet to make a dent in RIM’s market share, which has actually increased a couple of points since the iPhone’s debut last year.
Maybe the iPhone 3G will change that, but RIM is expected to unleash several new smart phone models in the coming months – the “Bold,” the “Thunder” and the “Kickstart” – to thwart Apple’s momentum in the consumer market as well as prevent any encroachment on its utter dominance of the enterprise market.
In the mobile operating system category, Apple’s use of Mac OS X on the iPhone appears to be paying dividends. When asked which mobile OS they’d prefer on their next smart phone 43 percent said OS X, swamping the RIM OS (17 percent) and Windows Mobile (12 percent). Google’s Android made the wish list of only 2 percent of the respondents.
That’s a stark contrast to where things stand now: the RIM OS is on 40 percent of the respondents’ current phones; Windows Mobile on 29 percent; Palm OS on 11 percent; and OS X on 10 percent.
A few more intriguing tidbits from the survey:
Steve Jobs: In this survey, ChangeWave threw in a rather unorthodox question about Steve Jobs, asking what effect his stepping down as Apple CEO would have on the likelihood they’d buy Apple products in the future. Most (68 percent) said it would have no effect, but 18 percent said they’d be less likely to buy from an Apple without Jobs at the helm (14 percent said they didn’t know).
Some pundits have worried an Apple Inc. without Jobs would lack the vision to generate the exceptionally consumer-friendly products that have become routine since Jobs’ return in 1997. The response to this question tells us that, products aside, Jobs’ celebrity-like persona alone boosts sales. Astounding.
Why they buy: ChangeWave asked those planning to buy an iPhone which features most influenced their decision, allowing up to three choices each. Lower price was cited by 67 percent; 3G capability by 63 percent; GPS mapping by 47 percent; Microsoft Exchange support by 35 percent; and third party applications by a surprisingly low 20 percent. I expect third-party apps eventually to become a major driver of iPhone sales.
Customer satisfaction: The iPhone retained its large lead over the BlackBerry: 78 percent said they were “very satisfied” with the iPhone compared to 54 percent for the BlackBerry, almost identical to the March numbers.
Smart move: The wisdom of AT&T making a deal with Apple to be its exclusive U.S. iPhone partner becomes increasingly apparent with every survey. Almost half (48 percent) of the iPhone owners switched from another provider, a number that has risen steadily from 34 percent in the July 2007 survey.
The influx of new customers has helped AT&T edge ahead of Verizon in overall market share (30 percent vs. 29 percent) and the iPhone 3G should help AT&T pad its lead.
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Few hunting for information on the Web are as obsessed as those searching for news about the iPhone.
According to a study conducted by comScore, Inc., a Web traffic measuring service based in Reston, Va., 1.3 million people conducted 6.9 million searches for iPhone-related terms in the month of April – a full month before Steve Jobs announced the iPhone 3G at the Worldwide Developers Conference.
Other topics may generate more searches overall, but the folks digging for iPhone nuggets search more frequently.
To see the obsession, you have to do the math. The iPhone numbers cited above work out to about 5.3 searches per person.
By comparison, 2 million people conducted 3.8 million searches for troubled pop star Britney Spears in April – less than two per person, according to a post on the Los Angeles Times Technology blog. Searches for Barack Obama in April equaled about 2.5 per person.
I can vouch for the extraordinary degree of interest in all things iPhone. The Google Analytics data I use to track traffic to my blog shows that posts on the iPhone draw far higher levels of traffic than any other topic.
And items on the iPhone also draw much more international traffic, sometimes as high as 50 percent.
Four of the top six most viewed posts on my blog since September (when I started tracking the data) have been on iPhone topics. And of those four posts, two were on unlocking the iPhone.
Information regarding unlocking iPhones remains of perpetual interest. A post I wrote in November speculating on whether Apple would eventually relent and sell iPhones unlocked has generated continuous traffic.
A post I wrote nearly a month ago after Jobs’ WWDC keynote is still getting hundreds of hits a day, with the numbers increasing daily as we approach the iPhone 3G’s July 11 launch. It’s crazy.
But it’s not quite clear what these iPhone-obsessed people are looking for. While they come in large numbers, they often leave quickly. My best guess is that a majority of this group is seeking instructions on how to unlock the iPhone, which they don’t find on my blog.
Although it’s difficult to draw any definitive conclusions about what this abnormal craving for iPhone information might mean to sales, I think it’s safe to interpret it as a positive indicator. Apple would be wise to keep those iPhone factories humming.
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The iPhone unlocking game has changed again.
Though neither Apple nor AT&T had hinted at an unsubsidized option for the iPhone 3G, today AT&T issued a press release that states it will sell iPhones without a contract.
The relevant sentence: “In the future, AT&T will offer a no-contract-required option for $599 (8GB) or $699 (16GB).”
The subsidized prices are $199 and $299, which puts the premium for a contract-free phone at $400. The only catch appears to be the timing. You won’t be able to buy an unsubsidized iPhone on July 11 when the new version goes on sale, but at some unspecified point in the future.
Still, the arrival of a contract-free iPhone 3G will make life much easier for the folks who wish to unlock their iPhone for use with a carrier other than AT&T.
When Apple announced the iPhone 3G at the Worldwide Developers Conference June 9, the picture for unlocked iPhones looked bleak.
Customers would be required to sign a two-year contract with AT&T and activate the phone at the time of purchase. No online sales, no way to fudge it. You buy an iPhone, you buy a contract.
Breaking the contract would not be impossible, but inconvenient enough that doing it just to have an unlocked iPhone would have proven impractical for many.
Although the unsubsidized 3G iPhone also will be locked to AT&T’s network, unlocking it will be a trivial matter -- as we saw last year with the first version. I expect unlocked 3G iPhones to surface within days -- if not hours -- after it goes on sale July 11.
I applaud this decision. Everybody benefits. Apple and AT&T still make money while customers who desire more flexibility in the use of their iPhone get what they want. The $400 premium is a bit steep but probably worth avoiding the hassle of AT&T’s draconian rules for canceling a contract.
It would be even better if the unsubsidized iPhone came unlocked, but I suppose Apple and AT&T need to at least make it appear they disapprove of the inevitable rampant unlocking that will ensue.
AT&T also expects to offer a prepaid plan to accompany the sale of the unsubsidized iPhones, but offered no details on that today. Such a plan might appeal to customers wary of the cost of any of AT&T’s pricey contract plans, which start at $70 a month.
AT&T’s “Get iReady” customer information page can be found here.
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David Zeiler follows all developments related to Apple, Inc. Having spent his early computing years on the Apple II platform, he moved to the Mac in 1993. 