The iPhone is made for AT&T, so Apple really is "junking" people out of anything except to abide by the service that they signed a deal with. There are many phones on the market that are only available for specfiic providers, so Apple is really no different.
Yeah, we have pre-paid phones here in Oz that are a fraction of full price when you pre-pay for all your calls with a certain provider....but as HG said, all of those phones are available for connection to a provider of your choice at the full retail price.
Seems to me, Apple's iPhone is fairly much full price at US$500 + ....and ANY currently available phone at that price here in OZ would be UNLOCKED to access a wide CHOICE of providers.
I know that if I had paid $500+ for a phone, I'd want to be able to connect to a provider of MY choice....one that I could kiss goodbye in an instant if I didn't like the service, coverage or pricing policy, etc.
At least with our pre-paid phones here in Oz, we have the opt out for another provider for a fee. Apple does NOT afford its customers that opportunity, therefore, the locked in to ONE provider iPhone is exorbitantly priced at $500+
Nope, the way I see it, the iPhone being tied to AT&T is another one of Jobs' idiotic exclusivity things...like iTunes and OS-X running ONLY on HIS hardware. It's like he's catering to a niche or fanboi market, rather than the real world/market, meaning he dropped the ball on sales and handed MS the lions-share of the market on a silver platter.
No, but I have an iPhone, and I don't think you would regret the purchase.
Sorry, ID, but I have to argue this notion of "purchase" here. Now you either purchased it or you didn't...and if you did then IT IS YOURS, NOT Apple's. I can understand purchasing a
license for MS or Apple
software, but this is a phone, for heaven's sake, and I've never heard of any other mobile phone manufacturer forcing consumers into using only one provider for 2 years, with no opt out opportunity.
Land of the free? I could see this happening in a dictatorship or communist regime, where the State manufactured items and forced consumers into running them only on State run service providers, but this is the US of A we're talking about here. Where in the hell was Jobs' head when he came up with that brainstorm!
Mate, I use player for alog of reasons. I'm sportive guy, I need something to follow me while doing something. I cant listen to the same music, plus Sometimes I like other songs, but I dont have enought space.
Ok, so you wanna carry around 8 gigs of toons, say, well you can still buy a player for the fraction of a touch iPod price and enjoy different tunes all day just as well. But then again, I can listen to tunes all day and not hear the same one twice on my 1 gig player....and overnight it takes less than 15 minutes to refresh the playlist for the next day, easy.
