Apple Can't Afford iPhone's Carrier Exclusivity 371
WirePosted writes with an ITWire article about the problems that Apple's AT&T exclusivity deal could pose in the coming years. Initially the company needed AT&T's commitment to the project, to ensure features like visual voicemail would work. With the iPhone a hit even at its current high price that no longer seems to be the case. Can Apple afford to stick to an exclusive carrier in the future? If for no other reason than consumer choice? "iPhones are being sold unlocked in the markets of Asia where you can't get them with a carrier plan, but they're also being bought and unlocked in the US and Europe. The message is that many and probably most iPhone buyers would like to be given a choice of carrier when they buy their iPhone. Some would be prepared to pay more as they do with other smartphones and buy their iPhone unattached to any subsidized carrier contract. The point is many consumers feel no loyalty to carriers and resent being forced to choose one."
All phones and all data services (Score:5, Interesting)
Steve's insistence on not having subsidies is dumb (Score:4, Interesting)
What I don't understand is why, when Apple dropped the price, they didn't just make the price drop a subsidy for AT&T customers instead. They could have offered $200 off AT&T service after the first month that wasn't applicible to cancellation fees, and could have extended it to early adopters so they wouldn't have felt burned. Would have allowed Apple to drop the price to AT&T users(well, it would take a few months to see all the savings I suppose), and would have given Apple 50% more revenue from unlockers. But I think Steve was just so set against "subsidies" that he decided to take the "I'll do anything to prevent you from getting an unlocked iPhone" route instead. I think that costed Apple not only customers and revenue, but a LOT of goodwill too.....
iTunes shouldn't be involved. (Score:3, Interesting)
"and then the ability to seamlessly activate via iTunes"
"Seamlessly"? You have to have a computer connected to the Internet just to activate your phone? That is so lame. There's a huge population of people, especially outside the US, who have mobile phones but not computers. I wonder what percentage of those un-activated iPhones were bought by people who didn't realize they had to mess with a PC just to turn the phone on.
And you still can't download music over the air link, can you?
Contradictory conclusions (Score:2, Interesting)
I've read a lot of articles, and at least seen mention of a lot more, that spout off about how Apple screwed up it's iPhone licensing deal by tying themselves to a single carrier. However, a lot of the time within the same article, or another article on the same site will often rave about how it is an example of one of the greatest product launches of all time. If Apple screwed up so bad, how did they do so well? It all strikes me as fanboy baiting. Write an article praising Apple, their products, or their tactics to bring in the apple hater, then write one denigrating Apple, their products, or their tactics (often implying that Apple is the new Microsoft) to bring in the Apple fanboy's (of which I'm arguably one). Each article is carefully crafted to miss obvious points and make glaring mistakes so as to ensure that it's attacked in the message boards driving up the hit counters and making more ad revenue than any other article that day.
Re:There's more here than meets the eye (Score:3, Interesting)
Vodaphone and T-Mobile are two operators that remove features from phones and hack about with the firmware purely because the phones have a feature that would save the end user some money.
It's about time a phone maker stood up to these phone operators, they are overcharging people and they've held back development of easier to use phones and convenient features.
Carriers (Score:4, Interesting)
An Analogy (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't you think that would have hurt the popularity of the Prius - especially in areas of the country with poor coverage of Mobil stations - and created a controversy?
Don't you think that a mini-industry of "unlockers" would spring up with square-to-round adapters?
Wouldn't people view Toyota and Mobil as the devil incarnate, and refused to ever do business with either of them ever again?
iPhone SIM lockdown (Score:4, Interesting)
Another example why lockdown is just plain stupid.
Re:There's more here than meets the eye (Score:3, Interesting)
It may be different elsewhere, but in the US, T-Mobile is a pretty good carrier.
Re:There's more here than meets the eye (Score:5, Interesting)
Again, wrong. (Score:3, Interesting)
Again, you're wrong.
I think you don't quite understand how usability research works. This isn't some kind of voodoo where somebody simply determines that something works better than something else. These are valid studies, and there are rules that can be derived from doing these studies which apply to most people. GP mentioned the buttons in dialog boxes: On Windows, the default dialog box is a YesNo box. There's some text, then there are "Yes" or "No" buttons. On the Mac, the buttons contain verbs. For example, if you clean out the Recycle Bin, Windows asks you: "Are you sure you want to delete [your file]?" with "Yes" and "No" as possible answers. Mac OS X asks you something like "Do you really want to delete the Objects in the Trash? You can't undo this." with "Cancel" and "OK" as possible answers (I'm on Windows right now, so I can't check the exact wording). This is certainly not perfect, but it is better than Windows, because "Cancel" obviously cancels what you're doing, while you can't be sure whether "Yes" or "No" cancels the action on Windows. So, did somebody just set up this rule that you have to use verbs in buttons? No, Apple did a lot of usability studies when they originally came up with the Mac interface (read Tog's book on the subject for some interesting anecdotes about this). They found that people were faster and had less errors when the buttons contained verbs, because most people simply don't read the text in the dialog boxes (and if you have done support, as you claim, you'll know this).
Another example is the menu bar you mention. You complain that the "universal" menu bar on the Mac is dumb. That's an opinion. Usability tests have shown that it is, in fact, faster and less error-prone than the "menu bar inside the window" solution on Windows an Linux. Why? Because you can't overshoot the top-of-window menu bar. According to Fitt's law, entries in the menu bar have infinite size. You just jam the mouse to the top of the screen, and you'll hit the menu. Again, the Mac's solution is not perfect, especially if you have multi-window setups, but it is better than the Windows solution, despite of your dislike for it.
Which leads me to my final point: Unless you do studies, you don't know what solution is best, which is probably why you consider usability research BS. Results gained from studies often don't fit personal experience. The reason for this is not that the research is BS; the reason for this is that you can't evaluate usability objectively when you're observing yourself. A great example for this is keyboard shortcuts. People who use keyboard shortcuts think they're faster than using the mouse. Actually doing usability studies shows the mouse generally wins out, except for some specific, often-used shortcuts like Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V. This is science; hundreds of tests have shown this again and again. Your personal experience does not fit the actual facts. You can't evaluate usability based on your feelings (although a happy user is, of course, important, too :-).