I read and heard various opinions in the past few days since the “iPhone dev-team” released the updated tools for doing the things above. (Granted, unlocking the 3G iPhone isn’t yet possible.) Most of the people obviously think these things don’t matter anymore.
But they still do, maybe even more than before. It’s not about the new phone, but the old. Apple sold millions of these and they won’t go away soon. Especially the people exchanging their old for the new will want to sell their phones, for example on eBay. Are the buyers of these old phones going to use a new official plan by AT&T, T-Mobile, etc? They’ll probably want to stick to their current provider.
If they want to do this, there needs to be at least the activation and unlock, which now exists. Jailbreaking? Not so much. The App Store still has its problems, but once everything is working smoothly the jailbreak apps will only be a small niche market for apps that Apple doesn’t allow. But how long do you think Apple will keep the route of, for example, not allowing a video recording app? My guess is as good as yours, but with a growing user base the pressure for obvious applications like that will increase. The same goes for true navigation solutions like TomTom.
Unlocking will also stay important because of the growing number of business users who stay in various countries and have different SIM cards to avoid the crazy roaming charges. Or think about how many people you know who already have two phones. Why not use the 3G phone for surfing while you can save battery life on the old phone you use just for calls?
So, activation hacks and unlocks are here to stay. The phones will change owners who might want to change providers.
This post was written entirely on the phone using the WordPress app. It works but it’s not a great experience.