Apple’s iPhone literally paved the way to more innovative products that are related to the world of mobile communications. Its interface of touch screen panel became the craze of millions and reached in selling a million items in less than a year after it was introduced.
But as much as iPhone gives out an elegant look, it has a definite ugly side. All iPhones purchased are locked for two years with AT&T. Not that AT&T is bad but monopoly of iPhone makes everyone think twice before purchasing this nifty phone. And there are now reports of using really, really small fonts to charge you with thousands of dollars. I’m talking about the terms and conditions that no one seems to read. This was used by AT&T to literally charge thousands of dollars to users who unwittingly used their phone for a good use. Worst, there was even a family that was charged with more than $3,000 even when the phone was switched off for a month – all because they are in another country and iPhones charge an exorbitant per minute rate.
That’s why hackers of iPhone are scrambling to unlock the mobile phone to make it available to other networks. Within days of the first release of the iPhone, someone already claimed that they have unlocked the phone. They even showed it in YouTube how to do it. It’s quite complicated but to computer geeks and mobile phone fanatics, nothing is impossible. It’s not against the law, so Apple and AT&T can’t do anything about it. Steve Jobs was quite mum about it and preferred not to say anything….until recently.
Steve Jobs was in recently in UK for the launch of iPhone. iPhone will be available November in UK and various parts of Europe. Each country will have a sole distributor – just like the AT&T’s iPhone in the US. In the launch of iPhone, Steve Jobs was not pleased at all with the hacks that have been going on in iPhone. He implied that the Apple is constantly trying to create innovations to “protect” the iPhone from the hackers. The cure will apparently be available when iPhone updates will be available. The updates will run in Wi-Fi and will give more security to the iPhones. Steve Jobs considers this as a “cat and mouse game.”
Although it may sound good that Apple is taking steps in getting things done for security sake, they are alienating the product from most of the users that can’t even access AT&T in their area. However, as what Steve Jobs indicated, there will always be hackers who will try to crack the iPhone. Apple may have very good software engineers to deal with this, but these engineers will be up against garage based tech freak to deal with iPhone day and night. What we can do is just wait for the update and the hack will be there just in time to save the day.
