Apple’s WWDC keynote yesterday was probably one of the more exciting one’s we’ve seen for a while now. We got a few quick looks at Snow Leopard (and it’s amazing $29 price tag) and we got the big announcement of the new iPhone. I for one was completely excited. Unfortunately, there’s a huge stink brewing on the internet from iPhone 3G[pre-s] customers who are upset that they wont be able to take advantage of the $199 and $299 price points. To those people I’d like to say the following: “Owning a iPhone 3G[pre-s] is not different than owning a Blackberry, Motorola, or any other cell phone. If you’re ineligible for an upgrade, you have to pay more”.

This is the way the cell phone industry has ALWAYS worked. The cost of the phone is always far higher than what you’re paying. Your carrier, in this case, agrees to pay a portion of the phones cost if you are willing to guarantee them that you’ll stick with them for 2 years. This serves two purposes: 1) the cheaper price point is more attractive to the customer (you), and 2) they can afford to do it because they’ll make that money back by the end of the two years.

The whole ‘upgrade plan’ that all the carriers have (I think Verizon’s is called ‘new every two’ or something like that) is not them being nice to you. At the end of your two years, you’re no longer on a contract. This means that at any point you could just decide you want to move to another carrier and ditch them. So, they sucker you in by offering to subsidize a new phone for you. You agree and then you’re locked in.

Now if you ever decide you want to switch to a new phone while you’re still on the old contract, this causes a problem. Your carrier still hasn’t made that money from you completing the alloted term of your contract. So, why should they subsidize another phone for you? Well, the truth is they shouldn’t, and they don’t. It’s no different than any other phone upgrade.

I know, I know, I can hear the replies now. “but what about when the second phone came out. iPhone users didn’t have to pay extra to upgrade to the iPhone 3G[pre-s]!” You’re right, but I’d like to remind you of two VERY important facts regarding that:

1) The original iPhone was not subsidized! We all paid $499-$599 for the damn thing. ATT can subsidize our next phone because we’re not still paying them back for our last one.

2) The SAME EXACT price increase applied for ineligible people trying to upgrade to the iPhone 3G[pre-s] from their RAZRs and Blackberry’s.

So in short (well, you know what I mean), before you all get up in arms and cream out to the masses that apple is screwing over everyone who bought an iPhone last year. Just take a step back, breathe a bit, and realize that unless you want carriers to completely stop subsidizing phones all together, this is how it’s always going to be.

posted by Christopher Schnese

I understand that there are a lot of people out there who don’t really care about the order in which applications are stored on their phones. They just sync their applications and let them fall where they may. I simply cannot work like this. I personally have my applications divided into pages of similar applications (default home screen, utilities, reference, social networks, audio , photo, puzzle games, full games, etc.) and then alphabetized within each page. I also prefer that the bottom-right application space remain empty on all pages (yes, I know). The problem is that as the number of applications increases, it becomes harder and harder to keep your applications organized. This is why I want an organizational feature to be added to iTunes.

Here’s how it would work. When you select the applications tab of the iPhone (or iPod touch) settings panel in iTunes, you would see an extra button called ‘Organize’. When clicked, you’d be taken to a new screen that would look very similar to the current ‘Applications’ view in iTunes. However, instead of all your applications being displayed in the main window, they’d now be stored in a new side panel to the right (where the ‘Genius’ suggestions display). In the main window, you’d see all your your current app pages. In this view you’d be able to add and remove pages and then drag individual applications to any position you’d like. Then you just click sync and within moments you’d be in organization bliss.

So what do you say Apple? I wanna see this in the next version of iTunes/iPhone firmware. I think a lot of people would like to see this. Even if they’re not as ODC as me.

posted by Christopher Schnese