iPhone - I add to Apple's million iPhone sold

I had pretty much made the decision to buy the discontinued 4GB iPhone, but when I heard that Apple had sold its millionth iPhone it was time to go the Apple store before they ran out of them. Talk about mix messages, lower the price by $200 on Tuesday, 69 days after it is released, and meet your sales target on Sunday, 74 days after it is released (16 days ahead of schedule).

Today, I have to agree with Chris, who commented "I think the business strategy with regards to the iPhone and iPod is widely misunderstood." on my post last Friday. From reading quite a few articles and posts on the subjects this morning, the opinions go from stupid to brilliant. It is clear nobody really understands, which probably makes it brilliant.

Anyway back to my purchase, the goal of owning an iPhone is to unlock it and understand the device's innovation. However without Exchange ActiveSync, my Windows Mobile T-Mobile Wing is not going anywhere soon. The unlock process requires a two phased approach. The first phase is to unlock the PDA and iPod functions. The second phase is unlock the iPhone cell phone so I can use it on T-Mobile.

I performed the first phase last night and it was incredibly easy. The process requires iTunes version 7.3.0.54 and an unlock tool unlock-iphone.exe (based on the work DVD Jon did to unlock his iPhone). Both can be found free on the dvdtoiPhone.com web site here. They are using this to promote their DVD to iPhone video conversion program. I will try it and report back later. I used my old ThinkPad X40 with Windows XP Pro.

1. I un-installed the iTunes version I had on the machine and installed version 7.3.0.54.
2. Plugged in the iPhone, the system found it, installed the appropriate drivers and brought up iTunes. At this point iTunes detects the iPhone and displays an activation page.
3. I executed unlock-iphone.exe application (found in the zip file) and clicked on the Unlock iPhone button.
4. The first time I tried, unlock-iphone told me to shutdown iTunes, I did, however I received a failure message.
5. I un-plugged the iPhone, rebooted my machine, plugged the iPhone back in, and once iTunes came up I shut it down.
6. I executed unlock-iphone.exe application one more time and clicked on the Unlock iPhone button.
7. This time I got a success message, however the iPhone screen still showed that it needed to be activated.
8. Per the instructions I unplugged it and plugged it back it, but no success.
9. I unplugged the iPhone and rebooted it. This is done by holding the power button down to perform a full shutdown, and pressing the power button once again to perform a power up.
10. Success; this time I had no activation message, I did get an invalid SIM message and iTunes still displays an activation page. Unlocking (finger slide) the iPhone makes the SIM message disappear and canceling out of the iTunes activation page puts you in the iPhone sync page.
11. iTunes now told me that my firmware was out of date, so I updated to version 1.0.2. (worked perfectly).
12. I then set my sync options and performed my initial sync. My outlook contacts and calendar did not sync but I think that was because Outlook was not running. I will have to try again today.

My new iPhone is now 80% (no cell phone yet) functional with PDA/iPod/WiFi/Bluetooth. I setup WiFi and I am able to use all of the applications that use the Internet. I did have to hunt for the MAC id (I use MAC filtering), however it detected WPA-PSK automatically. The MAC id is under settings/general/about slide down to Wi-Fi Address. I setup email and was surprised to find an Exchange tab in the addition to IMAP and POP3. Unfortunately, the Exchange tab in the mail setup only provides IMAP, however it seems to be an acknowledgment that they consider Exchange to be very important. I was able to configure mail to access my 4smartphone.com Exchange 2007 account via IMAP. There are two caveats to configuring the mailbox; one is that you need to use the Active Directory domain in front of your mailbox user id (domain\userid) and that you use password as the authentication method (default). You can then map folders like the iPhone's sent items folders to your Exchange sent items folders. If you have used Exchange ActiveSync, this whole scheme is barely usable but it does provide basic email capability.

After my first day with the iPhone here are my thoughts:

• The touch user interface is pretty cool
• The size of the screen and device are great (Apple's design team is tough to beat)
• The Safari browser is nice but still needs some work (more on that later)
• All of the applications are pretty basic, except for the iPod and Safari browser.

At this point with the simple unlocking of the iPhone (no cell), I am not sure why you would buy a dumbed down iPod Touch with no way to update information (contacts, calendar, mail) , no speakers, and no camera. The only thing the iPod Touch has going for it is 16GB of memory.

One last note; I was surprised to find no manual in the box...

Comments

[Dantv]

I have a wing and and an iphone and I can tell you that if Apple is capable to get the iphone to sync to exchange I then have no use for the wing at all. I can hardly use the wing and stylus after working on the iphone. I was skeptical of web apps at one time but I think I see the future here. Here is a nice list of some iphone web apps. http://www.rev2.org/2007/07/02/top-25-web-apps-for-the-iphone/

Thanks for the post. I'm interested in seeing where you go with the unlocking process and if Apple turns around and re-locks the phone somehow. Why Apple shackled themselves to AT&T is beyond me. They have a chance to completely dominate the smart phone market here. That is the reason for the price drop imo.

[Chris Carlin]

Dantv, I believe Apple had little choice but to find an existing cellphone company to partner with. We've seen how the independent cell companies have worked out in the US... it's not pretty.

Part of it is that Apple needed cooperation of the company to make their system work. The integration they're looking for (the visible voicemail and such) can't be done independently.

Cingular/AT&T was the smart choice, and each made strong demands of the other. It's an interesting relationship.

[Dantv]

Chris, iPhones are being unlocked left and right today. What will Apple and AT&T do now?

[Chris Carlin]

Dantv, why do you think unlocking is a problem for either?

The iPhone unlocking is simply not a big deal. For one thing, note that Apple didn't exactly lock the device down. It certainly could have worked to add layer upon layer of security, but instead it chose to put up minor hurdles and let the thing roll.

And why not? If hackers find new ways to use the device then Apple well sell more of them. Remember, Apple is primarily a hardware company, and it IS selling these things at a profit.

AT&T might be the one to lose if people have unlocked phones, but even this is not a big deal. In the interest of keeping the comment reasonably short, I'll just point out that considering the GSM options in the US, the marketing value of the iPhone alone is tremendous.

So to tersely answer your question, what will Apple and AT&T do? Profit! :)

[Dantv]

Chris, Obviously the unlock is not a problem for Apple. But it is for AT&T and they have a 5 year exclusivity deal with Apple. I'm sure AT&T will demand that Apple lock the phone back up with the next firmware upgrade. I'm watching and waiting to see what happens next.

[Chris Carlin]

Firstly, I think it's interesting that you say it's "obviously not a problem for Apple" since so many people are painting it as one. Is it obvious? Then why do so many seem to believe the opposite? It's an interesting question.

Anyway, let's talk about AT&T. What happens when someone unlocks a iPhone? They basically get the option of T-Mobile in addition to AT&T, but without T-Mobile's main features (MyFaves) and without AT&T's integrated voicemail. Suddenly it's not so great an incentive to jump ship as the alternatives just aren't that much better.

But even without that AT&T gains a lot from the iPhone deal. It is THE service for the iPhone, the one "real" people, "legitimate" people, and (especially) non-cash strapped customers who could afford the device go to. It gains cred from the deal whether or not people use iPhone with them.

In fact, think about the number of people who might buy an iPhone now, unlock it to use it with T-Mobile until their contract is up, and then "upgrade" to AT&T to unlock the phone's full potential. And no, of course I don't have statistics on that :)

As a side note I'd also point out the activation process for the iPhone. If the two companies were that worried about people using the phone only with AT&T perhaps they would have contractually bound people to activate before they left stores. I suspect that the decision to let people walk away with service-less phones hints that neither company cares too much.

[iphone unlock]

Thanks for the information. I’m starting a iphone blog for work and hope to generate some communication through it.