U R BIAS
It is real money but there’s no law that says they have to accept it. And it has nothing to do with big business. Are you indignant about every hotdog vendor that refuses to accept a 50 dollar bill?
People are sheep? By not buying their product in the way they weren’t going to buy it? The outrage by proxy bit has to end…
I like how you guys spin this into consumer protection by Apple.
I haven’t heard of any iPhone shortage or anybody not being able to walk into the store and just buy it - even shortly after the launch this was the case.
Apple is protecting themselves and their deal with AT&T from professional unlockers. Nothing more. Consumer protection my ass.
More on legal tender from snopes.com and the US Treasury. (Which just repeat what El Guapo said, more or less).
I think we need to establish an official FAQ for Living, and make it mandatory that everybody read it. I can’t count how many times this kind of thing has come up and people have gotten all indignant about it.
Very true… there is no iPhone shortage to speak of, you just log onto apple.com/store/ and buy it. So the only thing they are doing is restricting people from overseas from buying it through a 3rd party.
The professional unlocker thing is much funnier.
I like how you linked this thread when Anders posted one in Games when, as Kareem pointed out, yours was already a duplicate.
I also like how all three of you used the exact same format for your posts.
It’s customer hostile in the same way that copy protection on software is. It causes undue hassle for legit customers. It doesn’t matter if it’s just a relative few, it’s still undue hassle.
It’s customer hostile to force a limited set of payment options on customers for no reason other than you’re making a blanket assumption that every customer is a potential ulocker/reseller/speculator.
Putting aside the “no cash!” rule, the rule that one person can’t buy more than 2 iPhones is stupid. God forbid a parent want to buy 1 each for their two children, and a 3rd for themselves!
The iPhone isn’t in short supply (that I know of) currently, and there’s plenty of time to produce enough for the holidays. Why does Apple care if Joe Smith buys an iPhone and sells/gives it to Jeve Stobs unlocked (question is rhetorical)? Why doesn’t Apple want to sell as many iPhones as humanly possible?
Because it is in their financial interest to encourage that the person buying it is under contract with AT&T (in the U.S.) – they get a kickback every month for every user.
IIRC, that’s precisely what the phrase “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private” means: If it’s offered as payment, you must accept it in the U.S.
But I’ve been wrong before.
Way to fanboy up and miss that I mentioned that the question was rhetorical.
I love my iPhone!
I really dont have any regrets buying it when it was full price.
Apple benefits directly from, not only the sales, but subscriptions. I’ve heard something like $17 per month per subscription. And the iPhone can’t be used without unlocking the iPhone to use another SIM or registering with a subscription for AT&T service.
iPhones that are sold to speculators means Apple and AT&T are losing out on those sales that aren’t activated.
Agree with this policy or not, but it does have the potential of hurting their bottom line.
That’s the key, and i think your numbers are right or at least the same that i’ve heard. Do the math over 2 years and each iPhone brings in to Apple probably 2x to 3x it’s net hardware profit (assuming at the new lower price something like 150+$ profit per phone). Apple’s concern isn’t out of the goodness of it’s heart here, every unlocked phone means it’s lost close to 400$. Apple is going to try everything it can legally get away with to stop and/or punish unlocking.
That’s certainly plausible, but what about all of those people who have no desire or are unable to purchase an AT&T plan? Consider everyone who is already locked into a several year contract with a CDMA carrier or T-mobile, they probably aren’t going to switch to AT&T and lose a ton of money on contract early terminations.
What about those people who are outside of the USA? They don’t even get a decision! They simply can’t get AT&T even if they wanted to.
To say that they are losing 2x-3x profit on every single unlocked iPhone is thus absurd. It could be as simple as everyone who bought an iPhone for the purpose of unlocking it wouldn’t have bought it if there wasn’t a possibility to unlock it.
I know that I am planning on buying an iPhone soon, and I’m going to unlock it and use T-Mobile. If there wasn’t that possibility, I wouldn’t even bother.
Yes it does. It precisely matters that it’s a relative few (and it’s not relative, by the way, it’s a genuine few). Every business decision affects some customers adversely. You make the decision based on what will benefit the bottom line and (if possible) harm the fewest customers.
It’s customer hostile to force a limited set of payment options on customers for no reason other than you’re making a blanket assumption that every customer is a potential ulocker/reseller/speculator.
No, you’re making the blanket assumption that every customer PAYING CASH and/or buying multiple iPhones is a potential unlocker/reseller/speculator. Everyone else using a credit card and buying fewer than three iPhones is free of any assumptions. And even if they’re not, they don’t feel the ill effects of such assumptions.
Putting aside the “no cash!” rule, the rule that one person can’t buy more than 2 iPhones is stupid. God forbid a parent want to buy 1 each for their two children, and a 3rd for themselves!
I guess that’s the price little Timmy will have to pay. Of course, mom might have her own credit card (if dad is particularly lenient with the household finances). Why does God have anything to do with it, by the way?
The iPhone isn’t in short supply (that I know of) currently, and there’s plenty of time to produce enough for the holidays. Why does Apple care if Joe Smith buys an iPhone and sells/gives it to Jeve Stobs unlocked (question is rhetorical)? Why doesn’t Apple want to sell as many iPhones as humanly possible?
They want to sell as many as mechanically possible. Humans paying cash in the store can fuck… off. Anyone paying cash for a $400 cell phone is probably unlocking it. The only other possibility is drug dealer.