PriceSCAN Blog

Readers of this blog could have learned much of the feature set of the “touch” back on Jouly 27th ("iGroans and Vist-ful Thinking"). Noting difficulties with slow web access via AT&T's Edge network versus rivals using 3G technology, I wrote: "Rolling out an iPod with iPhone screen and Wi-Fi technology would allow users to sidestep a contractual obligation to a lesser technology, one Apple may now be finding a barrier to sales." That's pretty much what Cupertino has done, with an accompanying price cut on the iPhone and a rebate to that product's early adopters (there's also a new iPod nano, and like the iPod touch this release was foreshadowed by vendors dropping older models ahead of the news – see "Retailers Drop iPods Ahead of Apple's "Surprise" Announcement").
While a cheaper iPhone without the "phone" is one answer to an undesirable carrier, the other logical alternative is an iPhone with a 3G carrier. While Apple is for the time being contractually unable to offer this option, some programmers and/or hackers seem to be taking it upon themselves to do so. Depending on one's interpretation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) it may or may not be legal to sell solutions allowing the unlocking of an iPhone so that it may be used on other networks, but an exception to the act is said to allow individuals to do on their own. Several firms are currently vowing to provide unlocking products to the public.
With Cupertino allied with AT&T in an effort to squelch these renegade efforts, one can't help but marvel that Apples co-founders and its current leader reportedly got their start in business together as members of the legendary "Phone Phreaks". This early '70s band of paleohackers notoriously hijacked Ma Bell's long distance network for fun (Steve Wozniak is said to have phoned the Vatican pretending to be Henry Kissinger; he was told the Pope was sleeping at the time) and, occasionally, profit .(Jobs and Wozniak reportedly had a short-lived business manufacturing "blue boxes" that permitted users to avoid toll charges on calls).
That AT&T, in defending its exclusive rights, should find itself depending on a firm created and lead by those who were once the scourge of its existence might seem ironic enough. Yet perhaps there is one more twist to this scenario. Suppose the Edge network is in fact proving a drag on iPhone sales. If users and/or unlocking solution providers cannot legally or practically be stopped from liberating the iPhone from AT&T, then it's not beyond imagination that this new form of "phreaking" might actually be a boon to iPhone acceptance. And, albeit through no action of his own, Steve Jobs might find himself in common cause with those who, it might be argued, are the spiritual heirs of his youth.