Monday, 19 May 2008
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
Bought an iPhone... ended up with a brick!
While in Chicago, I ended up in the Apple store and I could not resist playing with the iPhone. It's indeed a cool phone with a neat interface. It's going to be hard for other mobile phone manufacturers to come up with something that will surpass the iPhone! Back in the apartment I did some googling about the iPhone and how people managed to unlock it so that they can use it with other operators (other than AT&T) or in other countries where Apple does not make the iPhone available. General consensus was that it was possible to hack the interface and surpass the AT&T activation and unlock the phone for use on other networks.
When I next passed on Michigan Avenue, I nipped to the Apple store and $399 later, I got one! Afterwards, I spent the whole Sunday reading instructions all over the net on how to unlock the iPhone, trying the different approaches, only to discover in the end that afterall, all iPhones manufactured after week 45 of 2007 are at present unlockable (got a week 50 one ... the week can be seen on the 4th and 5th digits of the serial number xxx50...). Apparently Apple smarted up and included a new bootloader which cannot be hacked via software. You can still unlock it but involves dismantling the phone and some hardware modification, which frankly, I cannot be bothered with. The latest news is that a new software hack has been confirmed to work, but release of this hack is being delayed till end of February (to coincide with Apple's release of the iPhone SDK). Until then, I have a cool "brick"! Question is ... should I wait or just resell the thing on eBay?
The whole iPhone thing got me thinking ... Apple is a great company in terms of design and innovation, but their approach with the iPhone is somehow strange. At present you can only get 'legit' iPhones in the US, UK, France and Germany. In these countries Apple signed exclusivity deals with single mobile phone operators to distribute the iPhone. The logic of the deal seems to be that Apple wants a cut on the revenues of the iPhone users.
Surely this must be creating a backlash against Apple. Users want an iPhone but can't get one in their country. Wouldn't they be more likely to convert to Mac if they could experience a cool product like the iPhone? Apple could sell the iPhone universally at a premium price and make their money that way rather rely on a cut of income from a limited number of markets.
It also got me thinking about the so called exclusivity deals and the phone-locking-to-operators... Within the European Union, doesn't an exclusivity deal like the one that Apple signed with Orange in France (for instance) be an obstacle to free and fair competition in the marketplace? I wish someone would refer the Apple/iPhone deal to the European Union competition watchdog.
And for phones-locked-to-operators: what is the deal here? In the infancy of the mobile phone industry, operators subsidized the phones to stimulate take up of mobile phones. At that time the price of handsets was prohibitively high, and locking a phone made sense because the operator needed to amortize the cost of the handset over the lifespan of the contract. But these days, with the mobile phone market as mature and saturated as it is, does it make sense to subsidize and lock phones? Surely not. Locking phones stops people from upgrading their handsets, and in turn does not motivate the mobile phone manufacturers to innovate with new handsets. A bit of a show stopper. Imagine if car manufacturers would "lock" the sale of a car to a specific brand of petrol or motor oil!
When I next passed on Michigan Avenue, I nipped to the Apple store and $399 later, I got one! Afterwards, I spent the whole Sunday reading instructions all over the net on how to unlock the iPhone, trying the different approaches, only to discover in the end that afterall, all iPhones manufactured after week 45 of 2007 are at present unlockable (got a week 50 one ... the week can be seen on the 4th and 5th digits of the serial number xxx50...). Apparently Apple smarted up and included a new bootloader which cannot be hacked via software. You can still unlock it but involves dismantling the phone and some hardware modification, which frankly, I cannot be bothered with. The latest news is that a new software hack has been confirmed to work, but release of this hack is being delayed till end of February (to coincide with Apple's release of the iPhone SDK). Until then, I have a cool "brick"! Question is ... should I wait or just resell the thing on eBay?
The whole iPhone thing got me thinking ... Apple is a great company in terms of design and innovation, but their approach with the iPhone is somehow strange. At present you can only get 'legit' iPhones in the US, UK, France and Germany. In these countries Apple signed exclusivity deals with single mobile phone operators to distribute the iPhone. The logic of the deal seems to be that Apple wants a cut on the revenues of the iPhone users.
Surely this must be creating a backlash against Apple. Users want an iPhone but can't get one in their country. Wouldn't they be more likely to convert to Mac if they could experience a cool product like the iPhone? Apple could sell the iPhone universally at a premium price and make their money that way rather rely on a cut of income from a limited number of markets.
It also got me thinking about the so called exclusivity deals and the phone-locking-to-operators... Within the European Union, doesn't an exclusivity deal like the one that Apple signed with Orange in France (for instance) be an obstacle to free and fair competition in the marketplace? I wish someone would refer the Apple/iPhone deal to the European Union competition watchdog.
And for phones-locked-to-operators: what is the deal here? In the infancy of the mobile phone industry, operators subsidized the phones to stimulate take up of mobile phones. At that time the price of handsets was prohibitively high, and locking a phone made sense because the operator needed to amortize the cost of the handset over the lifespan of the contract. But these days, with the mobile phone market as mature and saturated as it is, does it make sense to subsidize and lock phones? Surely not. Locking phones stops people from upgrading their handsets, and in turn does not motivate the mobile phone manufacturers to innovate with new handsets. A bit of a show stopper. Imagine if car manufacturers would "lock" the sale of a car to a specific brand of petrol or motor oil!
Thursday, 17 January 2008
Back in the US
I flew to New York last Sunday for a meeting. Amazing how time passes ... last time I was in New York it was some 15 years ago! It was only when I went for a walk after the meeting that I realised I was staying right next door to the Chrysler building, one of my favourite New York landmarks. I wish I had a little more time in New York to explore the town. Next morning I flew to Chicago, where I am now until the end of the month.
Monday, 7 January 2008
Starting the year with a one nighter to Milan!
After clocking some 250,000 miles of air travel last year, spending about 10 months away from home, and passing through the best and worst airports in the world, one of my new years' eve resolutions is to travel less this year. This one I intend to keep. At least so long as it is within my power to do so.
To start off, I didn't travel this Xmas. I let someone else do the travel and come to visit me over the holidays. It was nice to be home for a change, and not having to battle the queues at the airport. My contribution to the hole on the ozone layer this Xmas: nil, nada, zippo!
Work dictates that I travel, so I do. The first trip this year was to Milan and was supposed to be a 2-night away affair, but I've managed to cram everything I needed to do in one day, ran to Malpensa airport and got back to Zurich just over 24 hours after I left. Great to be back home again and not having to suffer another night on a anonymous hotel bed, after yet another dinner in a restaurant I didn't feel like going to anyway.
To start off, I didn't travel this Xmas. I let someone else do the travel and come to visit me over the holidays. It was nice to be home for a change, and not having to battle the queues at the airport. My contribution to the hole on the ozone layer this Xmas: nil, nada, zippo!
Work dictates that I travel, so I do. The first trip this year was to Milan and was supposed to be a 2-night away affair, but I've managed to cram everything I needed to do in one day, ran to Malpensa airport and got back to Zurich just over 24 hours after I left. Great to be back home again and not having to suffer another night on a anonymous hotel bed, after yet another dinner in a restaurant I didn't feel like going to anyway.
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