Ok, so I was going to stay off this topic completely but there are things brewing that I just have to talk about. I played with an iPhone a few weeks ago and outside of the next to worthless text input the phone is really really neat. I think this phone may actually be considered a disruptive product in that it's going to send everyone else back to the drawing boards and a lot of really expensive designs will get scrapped. So you're probably thinking that I ran out and bought one. Well, no actually. I don't really like cell phones but I'd love to have a connected PDA but it looks like the iPhone and the iPod touch may just function very well in this role. There are however a couple of reasons I haven't purchased one and now those reasons may be vanishing.......
Reasons
- locked
- closed software stack
As for number 1 - there are several groups of people that have claimed to unlocked the iPhone and now you can even download software to do it. Note: I have not tried this so if you brick your iPhone it's not my fault. :-) iPhone dev team website
To solve number 2 just head over to Gizmodo and follow their handy SSH guide to the iPhone . This allows you to install SSH on your iPhone and log into it from across the network. You know once this happens the software stack will be blown wide open.
Now that I can install software on the iPhone and unlock it so I can use other carriers and the recent price drop I might just be there. Now if I could get it in the 16 GB version with 3G and I might be happy.