It's not illegal to hack your iPhone, whether you jailbreak it to allow 3rd party applications to work, or unlock it so that you can run it on a network other then AT&T in the US. The only thing the owner is violating is their Apple warrantee.

In the US, Apple should have adopted the model they were forced to use in France and offer a supported, albeit more expense, version of the phone that was unlocked. That would save them the wasted expense of trying to stop this practice - no DRM Jobs knows this is a losing battle - while also picking up some revenue from people who are willing to pony up the extra cash for the unlocked version and this whole thing would be a non-story.

big deal,I do not see how it will affect apple only at&t.

How is unlocking an iPhone illegal? Please point us towards the law you are referring to.

Thanks.

As soon as native apps are produced with the SDK release that make it worth people switching back to AT&T there will be a lot of people who move back. The iphone OS cannot be updated on unlocked phones and eventually the benefits of a locked phone will outway the negatives IMHO.

Steve Jobs think like a mobile home park operator. Once you haul in your trailer, you are supposed to be stuck there paying space rent until you die of old age...

The premise of your whole blog is lost on me as you can point to no evidence supporting your statements.
Can you imagine a million people in the US hacking anything?
You couldn't find a million people in the US knowledgeable enough to set the time on their VCR's.
I personally find it more plausable that these phones have been bought with the sole intent on exporting tham to Asia, East Asia and Europe.
Granted, these phones produce no profit for Apple going forward but they did give Apple a profit when they were initially sold and they serve to virally spread the religion to people that might never give OS X or Macintoshes a second look leading to a halo effect as it were.

Why dont yo go ask Champion Ent to move overseas and buiild trailers for the poor families and tell the daddies to quit smoking too. They can afford trailers instead of buiilding their own shanties themselves. Sell something good to them isntead of Cokes, Big Macs, and cigarettes!!! Even gold!!

Has it occurred to the "analysts" that a certain number of people buy the iPhone in advance of their current cell phone contract expiration. This would cause a percentage of rolling delay between purchase and AT&T sign up.