Consumers love companies that participate and co-opt with them in the design of products and services. Keeping consumers out and then locking them in, using technology is not a great idea. It spawns a breed of users who then try and break the ‘lock’. If they are successful, other users cheer them on, the larger consumer set grins, knowing that another ‘arrogant firm’ just bit the dust.Sample the ‘cracking’ of the iPhone code. Armed with a soldering iron and a large supply of energy drinks, a slight, curly haired teenager has developed a way to make the iPhone, arguably the gadget of the year, available to a much wider audience.
George Hotz of Glen Rock, New Jersey, spent his last (northern hemisphere) summer before college figuring out how to "unlock" the iPhone, freeing it from being restricted to a single carrier, AT&T.
The procedure, which the 17-year-old posted on his blog on Thursday, raises the possibility of a cottage industry springing up to buy iPhones, unlocking them and then selling them to people who don't want AT&T service or can't get it, particularly overseas. The phone, which combines an innovative touch-screen interface with the media-playing abilities of the iPod, is currently sold only in the US.
(Apple has said it expects to launch the phone in Europe by the end of this year and in Australia and Asia sometime next year.)
Pic/Story : Sydney Morning Herald
Comments
Most of the people definitely have gone crazy for the crack as it would provide a release from this coercion.Leaving Apple's constraints aside, I guess Apple would have gained alot by providing a worldwide release and an unloacked i-phone.
Coercion + High monthly bills = Unhappy Customer (a customer dreaming to be King!)
I can write some personal dislikes about the iphone (though deviating abit):
1. No Flash or Java Support
2. A tiny effort of adding an edit function for attachments like microsoft word and excel....would have been gr8.
3. The camera is 2 megapixel, but all you can do is click a snap. The dumbest camera in mobile phones today possess edit functions.
4. NO GAMES....I still love to play some sort of game on my mobile phone...though there are websites on which you can go and play many games like sudoku, I really don't enjoy it. Some basic games are a must; not everyone carries a sony PSP or other gaming devices all the time.
As far as pros of the iphone goes,
It is an amazing phone with features like (My personal favs):
1. No distortion of the webpage
2. i-pod in a phone
3. you-tube
4. checking emails is easy.
5. Safari is not that bad.
6. virtual keypad is cool, once you get the hang of it.
7. Maps (especially of the NY subway is awesome!) .Though it isn't a GPS (next release would surely have one), it does show you directions on a map.
Regs
even the apple logo appears at the back of this clone, yet Meizu's CEO proclaim not having copied the iphone much!
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/cellphones/meizu-ceo-says-they-didnt-copy-the-iphone-that-much-236772.php