Hreb

Just bought a 5th generation ipod mini, instead of the current 6th generation, for primarily this reason.

replaced tweet: "Happy to have everyone taking note "

Rogue01 said:

Hreb said:

What?  Of course you did.  I walked into an Apple store in 2007 and bought an iPhone (8gb) and I never had a cell contract.  This was in the US of course -- I believe the only market with iPhones at that time.  In any case no one was spending $1000 on an original iPhone.

That is incorrect.  AT&T was the exclusive carrier and they required a two year contract to use the phone.  So activating the phone with AT&T required the two year contract agreement.  But you are correct, you had to pay full price of $499 or $599 in addition to the two year agreement with AT&T.  It would not have had a higher price for an unlocked version, because Apple was not able to sell an unlocked version until the agreement with AT&T ended in 2010.

Or just skip the activation step entirely.  Like I did in 2007.  No requirement to pay AT&T for a contract.

dewme said:

I don't know if one way of looking at attach rate is necessarily better than another. 

Ok but one of the ways directly contradicts AppleInsider's "now owned by 30% of iPhone users" headline.

22july2013 said:

Hreb said:

What?  Of course you did.  I walked into an Apple store in 2007 and bought an iPhone (8gb) and I never had a cell contract.  This was in the US of course -- I believe the only market with iPhones at that time.  In any case no one was spending $1000 on an original iPhone.

Okay, you should go correct wikipedia, which says a contract was required to purchase the first generation iPhone. And you should learn how subsidies work: Apple gets paid by the carrier, an amount that the public never sees, which provides more money to Apple on top of the original purchase price.

You are incorrectly quoting wikipedia, which says nothing about a contract being "required to purchase" a first generation iPhone.  Apple never required any such thing -- only AT&T did.  Apple was always perfectly happy to sell end users iPhones, to resell, or leave in a box for 15 years, or whatever they please.  

For a significant number of users, the obvious answer was Jailbreak => SIM unlock => use iPhone without an AT&T contract.  Everything worked flawlessly except visual voicemail.