Blog: IPhone

Apple's iPhone is being released today amid tremendous anticipation and publicity. Several people have asked me if I'm going to buy one. But despite the great innovation it represents in mobile technology, the iPhone is also a step backward for some of the worst practices of the mobile industry, and I'm not planning to get one.

The phone will only work on AT&T's network, unlike other GSM phones, making it impossible for a customer to lawfully purchase it and then connect it to another GSM network in the U.S. (T-Mobile) or any GSM system overseas. This is the same AT&T that recently announced its intention to built technology to spy on its customers on behalf of the RIAA and MPAA.

AT&T will charge an early termination fee if you cancel service, even though they don't subsidize the phone at all, despite the widespread claim in the mobile industry that the purpose of the ETFs is to recoup their cost of providing a free or discounted phone with activation.

And worst of all, the iPhone doesn't allow third party applications at all - even worse than Verizon's practice, the previous worst, of requiring all application writers to go through an arduous approval process and pay high costs to Verizon. The iPhone does allow AJAX Web apps to run on the phone's Safari browser, which ameliorates much of the problem, but that has many limits, most of which aren't yet known. Will the apps be able to access the camera or microphone? (Porbably not.) Will they be able to take advantage of the innovative input gestures like zooming by moving fingers closer or farther? Access the address book? Save files locally? Apple could have built an API for developers, but they've never been particularly interested in fostering a development community around their technology.

Many defenders of wireless industry practices like early termination fees and locking argue that if consumers really cared about these things, they wouldn't purchase phones and plans with them. Well, I'm not purchasing an iPhone. And I hope you won't either.

Working Assets Wireless has launched a campaign to pressure Steve Jobs to unlock the iPhone for any network and has done a terrific job of building awareness of Apple's and AT&T's anti-innovation, anti-consumer practices. I encourage you to sign their petition, and most of all, don't buy an iPhone.

Apple gets huge plaudits for each product it releases - sleek design, simple user interface, powerful features. But Apple's products are also built on another basic principle: do everything their way.

Apple has never played well with others. Sales of PCs surpassed those of Macs when IBM licensed the rights to build PC clones while Apple did not, and when the PC made it easier for software developers to control more PC functions than the Mac did. They only tolerate add-on products that interoperate with the iPod. And the new iPhone, despite its initial chorus of praise, looks to be one of the least flexible devices of its kind.

An article in today's New York Times, "Want an iPhone? Beware the iHandcuffs," discusses the extreme restrictions Apple forces upon its users with music they buy at the iTunes store. In fact, the article reveals, Canadian music publisher Nettwerk allows stores like eMusic to sell songs by leading artists such as Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan without DRM restrictions, but Apple keeps the DRM on for its own purposes.

Terry McBride, Nettwerk's chief executive, said that the artists initially required Apple to use copy protection, but that this was no longer the case. At this point, he said, copy protection serves only Apple's interests. Josh Bernoff, a principal analyst at Forrester Research, agreed, saying copy protection "just locks people into Apple." He said he had recently asked Apple when the company would remove copy protection and was told, "We see no need to do so."

DRM isn't the only limitation on the iPhone. Despite the ability for GSM customers generally to switch their phones from one provider to another by swapping SIM cards, Apple has apparently gone to great lengths to force buyers of its phone to use Cingular. And Steve Jobs doesn't intend to allow third-party applications on the iPhone either. Continuing the pattern of previous Apple products, it's clear that if Steve Jobs had his way, there would just be Apple and a bunch of consumers, no developers pushing the envelope of what technology can do.

How does Jobs justify this control-freak behavior? He spouts the same reliability excuses wireless companies use to keep their networks closed off - "Cingular doesn't want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up." But the Internet doesn't go down when some application messes up. It's entirely possible to design a network that's robust enough to deal with misbehaving devices. AT&T made the same argument to preserve their monopoly in phone manufacture in the early days of the telephone system.

Innovation happens most when it's easy for someone to improve a piece of an existing system, and plug that in. Since anyone can write software for a personal computer, software developers can give you the ability to do something on your computer even if the computer manufacturer didn't think of it. Many phones have the same flexibility. Steve Jobs doesn't like that world. He'd rather you just bought your devices from Apple, and they do only what Apple lets you do. I'd rather decide for myself, and many consumers will feel the same way. And many observers believe that this will ultimately cripple the iPhone's growth just as it did for the Macintosh twenty years ago.