IPhone fees to be ordinary, but the setup process won't
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Apple Inc.'s iPhones will carry a luxury price tag of $499 or $599 when they go on sale Friday. But the monthly cost for using the new wireless phone will be squarely in the middle of the road.
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What's the best way to beat the  commitment involved in iPhone ownership? Bad credit.
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Apple&#39;s iPhone has many consumer-pleasing features, but battery replacement is not going to be one of them. A consumer advocacy group has complained about Apple&#39;s $86, three-day program for putting in a new iBattery.
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Blog: With patience wearing thin because of iPhone's bugs, I consider restoring the iPhone's settings.
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Â·  Dozens camp out to be first in line for iPhoneÂ·  Stakes could not be higher for computer giant
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Steve Jobs insists that songs on iTunes cost 99 cents and television episodes cost $1.99 because consumers crave simple pricing. Except, of course, when it comes to Appleâs own products.
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Blog: AT&T has released pricing information for the new iPhone, with plans starting at $60 per month.
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(InfoWorld) - A company that unlocks cell phones in Europe said it is close to having an application that will allow customers to unlock their Apple iPhones so they can use SIM cards from carriers other than AT&T to activate the phones. In an interview this week in New York, John McLaughlin, founder of Belfast, U.K.-based Uniquephones, said he has engineers working around the clock in several countries who are close to cracking the complex security system Apple has set up to ensure customers can only use iPhones with AT&T Wireless service. The race by hackers to unlock iPhones has been on since the phone was released last Friday. Currently, AT&T Wireless has an exclusive deal with Apple to provide service for iPhones, and customers must agree to a two-year service plan with the company. However, customers have complained that the carrier's wireless service is slow, and according to McLaughlin, there has been tremendous interest in the ability to unlock the phone. By Sunday night, he said, more than 150,000 inquires had come in through the Web site he set up to request IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) numbers from customer iPhones. While not everyone would volunteer their IMEI numbers, they still expressed interest in learning how to unlock their iPhones, McLaughlin said. When the site was set up, he thought it would be an easy case of supplying unlock codes from AT&T to unlock iPhones. But sometime over the weekend after iPhones went on sale, unlock codes from AT&T for about 6,000 iPhones disappeared from the carrier's database, and McLaughlin's team also realized it would be a more complex matter than simply providing an unlock code to release iPhones from AT&T's grip. There is at least a two-step process to unlocking an iPhone, McLaughlin said. His team has been able to unlock the activation process to the AT&T SIM card specific to an iPhone so another AT&T SIM card can work with the phone and be activated through iTunes. However, any attempt to change the firmware of an iPhone so it can support another carrier's SIM card breaks the phone, he said. The key to unlocking the phone is breaking the encryption process that protects the token sent through the iTunes activation process to an iPhone's firmware, McLaughlin believes. Norwegian hacker Jon Lech Johansen, also known as "DVD John" because he cracked the DVD encryption scheme, claims he's been able to unlock the iPhone beyond the activation process that requires an AT&T account but said the device can't be used as a phone when that happens. Even after an iPhone were unlocked, it still could only work on carrier networks that support the GSM network, which is what AT&T's service is based on. In the U.S., T-Mobile is the only major carrier on a GSM network. And there is no guarantee Apple will not lock down the phones again in a future firmware update through the iPhone synchronization process or create a new way to unlock the next wave of iPhones they put on the market. That is, in fact, exactly what one analyst said will happen. "I assume that someone will succeed in unlocking the iPhone," said Avi Greengart, principal analyst, mobile devices at Current Analysis. "I also assume Apple will close whatever loophole is open the next time they synchronize [the software]." It's also likely there will be complications with special features of the phone that are designed to work only on AT&T's network, such as the visual voicemail feature, he said. Greengart said that he sympathizes with those that might want to use an iPhone with another carrier but "that's not the way the product was designed." "Exclusive agreements are not that unusual in this industry at all," he said. Aaron Santell, an iPhone user in New York, said that he would have preferred to use the service provider he has for his Blackberry device, Verizon Wireless, when he purchased an iPhone. But using AT&T's service is "a small price to pay" to use a device that provides such a rich user experience as the iPhone does, he said. As one might imagine, unlocking phones is a thorny issue with carriers, which certainly don't condone it. Carriers will give users unlock codes upon request for a fee, but they don't encourage the practice. In the U.K. and Europe, third parties have been unlocking handsets for several years, although there is no law that specifically protects them, McLaughlin said. However, in the U.S., it is legal to unlock mobile handsets under an amendment to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that was passed in November 2006. McLaughlin said that even though it's legal in the U.S. to unlock phones, he anticipates that if his team is successful, Apple may take legal action against them based on their tinkering with the firmware. "They'll probably come after us for copyright infringement," he said. Apple did not reply to requests for comment Thursday. McLaughlin plans to charge customers about $49.99 for software to unlock iPhones. Even if Uniquephones is not the first to offer unlocking capability, it won't be hard for them to replicate what others have done once the encryption is cracked, he added.
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Blog: Getting that new iPhone up and running will require an account with the iTunes Store, perhaps to reinforce the notion that Apple's the primary source of legal digital content.
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UniquePhones is writing an app that will let customers use a carrier other than AT&amp;T with the iPhone.
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(InfoWorld) - Apple'sÂ iPhone launchÂ has been marred by delays in AT&T's phone activation system, leaving some people unable to use their new toy throughout the weekend. People who buy the iPhone, which went on sale in the U.S. Friday evening, are required to activate it through Apple's iTunes software on their home computer. They choose a rate plan, authorize their credit card number, and the phone should be activated soon after. Apple has said the process should take only a few minutes for people being assigned a new phone number, and "up to six hours" for people transferring a number from another operator. But for some the wait has been much longer, according to postings on Apple's iPhone message board and elsewhere. "It has now been 48 hours and my iPhone is still the prettiest paperweight I own," wrote one frustrated user. "Nightmare indeed," said another. "I've been waiting 11+ hours now. I got the phone after a somewhat reasonable one-hour wait at the Albany, NY store, then spent 4+ hours talking to AT&T and Apple trying to get the thing activated." Others said their phone was activated in a matter of minutes. AT&T was not available to comment in Europe on Monday morning, and Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An AT&T spokesman told the Wall Street Journal newspaper that most activations were occurring in a few minutes, and that the operator was working to fix the remaining issues. An unnamed source told the paper that about 2 percent of users were being affected. The delays cast a shadow over what appears -- so far -- to have been an otherwise successful launch of the iPhone. The device sells for $500 or $600 depending on the amount of memory on board, plus an activation fee and the cost of the service plan from AT&T, which for now has exclusive distribution rights for the iPhone in the U.S. When people buy a new cell phone the device is usually activated in the shop where they buy it. Apple and AT&T had billed the self-activation process as "another example of how AT&T and Apple have partnered to bring innovative new features to our customers." Opinions were divided as to where to lay blame. An iPhone buyer who claimed to work for AT&T said in a message posting that delays were inevitable and not the fault of either company. Thousands were trying to activate their new phone simultaneously over the weekend, the person noted, and the activation requests were lining up at AT&T's network switches "like 30,000 or so people throwing basketballs at one hoop and hoping to make it in." Others said AT&T should have lined up additional capacity for the activations. Some said they expected the problems to be ironed out by next week and the incident to be forgotten. "Activation is going to happen eventually. Why did you invest so much of your time and energy in this?" one person wrote on Apple's board. "Life is too short to worry about this type of thing." There were some other gripes about the iPhone, although it was hard to tell how widespread issues are. Several users complained that the phone's iPod function stopped playing music when they used it as the same time as the Safari Web browser or Google Maps. Others complained of a bug that caused the e-mails they sent via GMail to appear in their inbox. Other users, including a person who responded to a posting on the iPhoneFAQ.org Web, said they were unable to transfer an AT&T business account to their iPhone, and were told they would have to start a new, individual account.
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By Ganey, Jayme S  Apple iPhone, $499  Up your tech cred with this cutting-edge, multitasking device. The iPhone, featuring a sleek touch screen, does triple duty as a mobile phone, wide-screen iPod and Web browser.
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Although iPhoneSIMFree announced last week that it had devised a software unlock that would allow iPhones to work on networks other than AT&T, it only plans to sell the solution to resellers -- not individual iPhone owners.
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Despite the positive hoopla about the launch of the Apple Inc. iPhone, the  EDGE network it uses may not thrill users for speed -- and the upgrade to a faster version could be costly.
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Blog: AT&T has released pricing information for the new iPhone with plans starting at $60 per month.
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British firm UniquePhones is writing an app to let iPhone customers use a carrier other than AT&T.
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Apple Inc. said on Tuesday its hotly anticipated iPhone could cost as much as $3,000 with a required two-year service contract, but a handful of eager fans still lined up early to spend their money.