iPhone Hackers Root Cause Of 3G Lines

The three and four hour long iLines of iCustomers waiting to get iPhones across the US arose from a perfect storm of three contributing factors.

First to shoulder their share of the blame are the consumers themselves, who got exactly what they demanded, and as such were effectively hoist on their own petard. More on that later.

Second was Apple's misguided decision to simultaneously release the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 2G 2.0 software update on the same day.

Finally, the third portion of blame needs to be placed directly at the feet of the iPhone hacker community.

Most of it, actually.

Server Issues

It's true that Apple and AT&T experienced server problems Friday when doing in-store activations of iPhones.

And to be fair about it, Apple's decision to simultaneously release the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 2G 2.0 software update didn't help. Ideally Apple should have released it a week or two beforehand so that millions of customers weren't downloading updates and attempting to reactivate existing iPhones on the same day thousands of customers were trying to activate new ones.

Not one of Apple's better moves.

But even later that afternoon, after most of those issues had cleared, up one still had to wait hours to get an iPhone.

And in fact most of the lines and customer delay came not from server problems, but from Apple's and AT&T's decision to require in-store activations.

Same Time Last Year

Last year, Apple had a simple "pay for it and you're out of here" process in place, with most people actually in the store only for a few minutes, rushing home to plug them into iTunes and complete the activation process.

I personally stood in line an hour to get a 2G iPhone, only to spend two minutes in the store actually buying one. I got to the desk, handed over my card, and they gave me a phone. Simple. Easy. Elegant.

Apple all the way.

Of course, there were a few hiccups then as well, as AT&T's servers were swamped by thousands of simultaneous iTunes-based activation requests. But by the end of the first day most of the kinks were worked out, and Apple was justifiably proud of their "at-home" activation process.

In fact, they went to great lengths to publicize the fact that they were modernizing the cellular phone business.

This year, however, they folded and required in-store activations, just like every other mobile carrier. Why?

Consumer Demand

Well as mentioned earlier the consumer gets their share of the blame. When the original iPhone was released many complained that the price was too high, with others wondering why Apple didn't allow AT&T to subsidize the phone.

This year, Apple gave everyone what they asked for with a $199 subsidized phone. With a catch, of course.

You see, for a carrier to subsidize a phone they have to make it up on the back end by requiring a one or two year contract. And they do in-store activations to make sure you don't immediately take that expensive, subsidized phone and run across the street to signup with another carrier.

Even still, with an iPhone locked to AT&T Apple could still have allowed at-home activations... if it weren't for the hackers.

Thank Your Local Hacker

So with that in mind, the iPhone hacker community probably needs to be thanked... and hit over the head with a baseball bat.

First, the thanks. Jailbreaking phones created an underground pool of applications and demand that undoubtedly went far towards convincing Apple to develop and release an SDK.

Personally, I tend to believe that Apple had always planned on doing so anyway, but didn't because they were swamped with the double release of the iPhone 2G and OS X 10.5. Creating an SDK, APIs, development software, and documentation takes time.

And Apple simply didn't have any to spare.

But the real problem wasn't with Jailbreaking iPhones, but unlocking them so they could be used with carriers other than AT&T.

Which, as illustrated above, is a no-no when applied to subsidized phones. And hence we come full circle, back to our perfect storm.

The Perfect Storm

Cheap, subsidized phones require contracts. But Apple only required in-store activations due to hackers breaking and unlocking phones. Without them, the existing at-home iTunes based process would have worked just fine, and thousands of people wouldn't have needed to spend all of that wasted time standing in line.

And in quite a few cases, only to walk away with nothing.

So if you happen to personally know one of the aforementioned hackers, or even someone smugly using an unlocked iPhone, thank them for me, will you?

I'll even lend you my bat.

Comments

[Jon T]

I personally support what you say here 100%.

Good perspective. Surprised that Apple didn't spread the action over a week rather than go with several major major implementations in 24 hours.

C'est la vie. And were it Microsoft it would take a year to sort out, not 48 hours...