Nobody would argue that Cingular is the biggest, but "best"? Microsoft is biggeset...do I really need to finish the comparison? Cingular consistently ranks at the bottom of Consumer Reports' surveys. I'm not necessarily saying it was a bad business decision by Apple, but if you look at Apple's history, it's always been about making the best products, even if that meant not having the largest marketshare. Quality over quantity.

I do know a few folks who are happy with their Cingular service, but the vast majority of people I know intensely dislike Cingular, both for their poor phone service and even worse cusomter service (an area Apple consistenly leads). In fact, the only thing that really sets Cingular apart (in a positive way) from other carriers are their bells and whistles, NOT the quality of their phone service.

So, since when has Apple been more concerned about bells and whistles over solid basic functionality (iPod is a music player first, I expect my phone to be a phone first) and quantity over quality? If this is a trend for Apple, it concerns me.

The only thing Apple-like is the price. When I first saw the price tag I assumed it was for an unlocked phone not tied to a contract!

Apple had no other choice but Cingular. T-Mobile is falling apart, and US currently has no other GSM carrier than Cingular. CDMA (Verizon, Sprint) are out of the question, since that would mean having to re-engineer in order to penetrate global market. US mobile telephony is still technologically 3-4 years behind Europe, Asia and the world. GSM is still leading globally. Therefore, it had to be Cingular. Bear in mind, though, that this phone is still only V.1 and will only keep getting better and cheaper (much like iPods). Next MW show will undoubtedly bring a re-fresh; what it most likely won't bring is a CDMA device.

I would be surprised if, once it becomes available, this phone doesn't sell like crazy. Cingular will be thrilled, Apple will make lots of money, and Motorola and Nokia will begin worrying.

...since much R&D was doubtlessly necessary at the network's end, to support the phone's features. Otherwise you have a cool locomotive, but no track.

It's therefore not surprising that joining the iPhone at the hip with Cingular, at least in the short term, was a business necessity.

Where I'm at (PA), Cingular is _THE_ best carrier. Verizon, T-Mo, and Sprint can't beat them. And I've had Verizon, T-Mo, and Cingular. Cingular has been more reliable for me than Verizon or T-Mo.

So, I can't wait. Only thing is do I dump my Treo 650 on ebay now or wait. I have a spare phone that still works fine, so that's not a problem.

The GSM thing is necessary for a world phone. CDMA is mainly a US/Canada technology where GSM is US/Canada/Europe/world. Purely a decision to reach the highest # of people.

that they got cingular to change their service AT ALL is indicative of apple's growing influence. nobody else gets away with that kind of stuff, not motorola, not nokia.

otherwise, all the cell providers completely suck, so choosing cingular isn't a particularly bad thing in and of itself.

Damn! Using Cingular means my company will NOT purchase any of these for employees. I get DSL speeds of up to 1400Kbs on my Verizon EVDO enabled phone. Cingular's FASTEST speed is only 100kbs. The network simply isn't capable of anything approaching broadband speeds. I am really disappointed - I simply can't use this phone!

Small EVDO footprint. We here in Pensyltuckey just got it this last month.

And then you have Verizon's invisible caps.....

No thanks.

Can anyone help me with this question: Will Cingular allow the iPhone to be unlocked if you are traveling overseas with it?

With T-Mobile, when I bought a razr phone and had to travel, they allowed me to get it unlocked.

To follow up on vasic and jerryfrit, there's just no way to launch a phone in the USA without getting a network to sign on first. "Network exclusive" contracts pay out handsomely for hardware producers. (Plus, imagine how an $899 unlocked price would have shocked Americans used to "free" phones!) Network specific features like Visual Voicemail similarly demand a lot of effort on the carrier side.

Regardless of which carrier Apple chose to partner with, they would've ticked off umpteen customers who've already signed elsewhere for whatever other reason. Me, I'm with T-Mo because I'm cheap.

Another inevitable downside to carrier contracts is the delay in international launches, since partner carriers have to be located and then signed in each country.

3G is planned, people, but the fact of the matter is that it would have added cost, complexity, and size to a product that's already at the upper limit of pricing in the USA's consumer market.

bikinijack57 asked about taking it overseas...I'll briefly share with you my experience with Cingular overseas, and why it was the last (of many straws) in my decision to pay to get out of my Cingular contract (yes, it was that bad).

I was going overseas for work for 3 months. My phone was GSM, but what they didn't tell me when I got it was that it was US GSM, not the GSM that the rest of the world uses. So I had to buy a new phone, and decided to start a new 2-year contract to get the phone discount. When I ordered the phone Cingular said my account was activated for global roaming. They also promised me that the phone would be unlocked so I could swap out the SIM card with my company's UK SIM card so I'd have a UK phone number for business calls. Before I left for London I also stopped by a local Cingular store just to double-check that everything was set. I told them exactly how I was going to use the phone.

Of course, the only way to find out that they had lied on both counts was to try to use the phone once I got to London. No international roaming, and the phone was still locked to my company's SIM card wouldn't work. It took 3 weeks and $50 of overseas long distance calls before they finally got my phone working. Then entire time they insisted that it was Motorola's fault because THEY were the ones that locked the phone! That it complete BS, and they knew it. I finally got a Cingular rep (actually an old ATT rep) who admitted that every other customer service rep was lying to me.

When I returned to the US and contacted Cingular about the problems I had, they had NO record of all the calls I made and the problems I had (just like they apparently have no record of dropped calls in their commercials).

Ok, that wasn't so brief...bottom line, I paid the $150 to get out of that contract and switched to Verizon. The phone service and customer service have been top notch. Couldn't be happier.

ender I'm sorry your experience was so sour but I'm curious as to what phone model you had so much trouble with... I actually was a Cingular rep for a while and until the razr all the tri/quad band phones advertised as World Phones shipped unlocked... afaik they still do but it's been a couple years. Back then it was on a phone by phone basis, so I assume it still is. Regardless, it's possible the phone you purchased wasn't a world phone at all.

I was kind of hoping the iPhone would come out on T-mobile but I've never had much of a problem with Cingular... although I'm sure the upgrade price for an iPhone will be pretty painful. Time to get a new number perhaps...

Is recognized as the slowest of the online broadband services available. Argue all you want about the realities of the U.S. cell market, you cannot disagree with the facts. There is nothing special about the technology behind this phone. I really wanted this to be a home-run, but it's just a single. I hate my Treo, but it will reliably get me 1000K down (and will act a a wireless modem for my PB) where the top speed for Cingular edge is 100K. Its a no brainer. Keep my iPod and hope apple keeps investing in computer technology - this iPhone just isn't the "killer app" we all hoped it would be.

As a Cingular employee, I can't say anything directly about the iPhone and whether service will be more expensive for it or not because I simply don't know. That said, however, other than the visual voicemail, the phone uses technology we've had for years. Those "on-the-fly conference calls" are aka three way calling. Check your phone's user guide to see how to do it on your phone (there's a menu available while you're on a call), Apple just made that easier from a hardware perspective. All those other advanced features exist on current cellphones. SMS, MMS and web surfing all use the same data platforms. Again, Apple just made it easier on the handset.

We have used Sprint for years and that isn't going to change as everyone we know (practically), both personally and professionally, use Sprint.

It seems that the Apple Phone is not going to happen in our home. The sad part is that most of these features on it are not new, merely prettier versions.

Now, if this type of device had been a dedicated Newton/iPod with real storage capability (especially with video support) then I would have snapped on up, but the cell extras just add too much baggage and price for something my $25.00 cell phone already does...make phone calls.

stray 8...yup, it was a "world phone" (my original phone was not). The new phone was moto v551 (I think that was the number, didn't have it long enough to remember). I told every Cingular rep exactly what I was going to do with it while overseas. I did some basic research before getting that phone, and it appears that when it first came out, that phone model was unlocked. This was in 2005, if if you were a Cingular rep before that, the policy must have changed after you left. So it was a quad-band world phone that was supposed to have been unlocked.

I can actually understand that if the policy was a recent change that some reps didn't know the new policy. But not having my overseas roaming activated when I asked for it several times and then the lying about having to call Motorola to unlock the phone is unforgivable. They even gave me the customer service number at Motorola to call to get the phone unlocked. I could hear the frustration in the Moto reps voice when she tried to politely explain to me that Cingular had given me the wrong info. It was obvious that they deal with that all the time. I'm surprised Moto puts up with it (just another sign of how much power the carriers have over the manfacturers).

Extremely limited video and audio codec support...this makes it a non-starter. Why not support the entire (or at least most) of the QuickTime codecs? And as far as I know, none of the audio codecs support surround sound (AAC, Apple Lossless, MP3, AIFF, WAV)?

I've notice off-topic posts on MacNN's comments pages. My 2nd post above is an example. It was posted on the Apple TV comments, not this one. What's the deal here? I was switching between tabs in Safari. Looks like MacNN has some work to do on their programming.

A marriage made in h***?

"Apple chose Cingular because they are the best and most popular carrier in the US," says Steve Jobs

Mmmnn clearly Steve was using a definition of the words "best" and "popular" that I was previously unaware of.......

The experience of the consumer side of Cingular/AT&T that I have had ranks amongst the worst of any carrier in the world I have used previously. Worse even than Vodaphone who were truly awful.

Great looking phone with some nice features but I would rather have my private parts removed with a rusty pen knife than suffer Cingular "service".

D

ender, thanks for your response. With T-Mobile, when my wife bought a Motorola razr v3, it was Motorola that actually helped us unlock the phone when we traveled. That is why I am wondering how this would work with the iPhone... Would Apple unlock it? Cingular? Why not sell it that way to begin with, imagine the larger world market? if it was unlocked, presumably you could even use it with T-Mobile also which uses the same GSM technology.

Like most people I have heard the worse about Cingular's customer service (I have T-mobile). However, for our overseas readers, they have to understand that every US cell phone carrier is terrible, some because they use CDMA instead of GSM, others because their technology is behind where it should be (Cingular and T-mobile). The reality is in the US you only have the choice between Bad and Bad. So, as far as I am concerned, I might as well have a cool phone that doubles as an iPod. It's one less device to carry.

too bad that cingular isn't the best phone company. they're going to miss out on a huge market in the us by only making this gsm (great for europe, but bad for us). i would like one, but cingular works for c*** where i am in the madison area. lots of macheads living here too.

I'm surprised not to be reading more about the REINVENTION OF UI - not just of mobile phones.

If the iPhone interface proves to be successful and cosmetically durable, the next logical step seems to be reinventing (if not completely remove) the static-keyboard and mouse as well. Computer screens that accept magic Multi-Touch input in addition to a keyboard.

Bye-bye to the beloved mouse, when you can just point/click/drag right on your screen. Try it yourself on your laptop for pretend-sake.

I'm a Verizon person and so I'm disappointed too, but you are all forgetting a few things that ARE important:

1. Verizon in its own announcements this week has already set up to compete with Apple in music and video downloads. Maybe Apple wanted Verizon and Verizon decided to compete with Apple rather than partner. Whatever happened back in the board rooms, We know have the beginnings of a two-sided war (like DVD-HD and Blue Ray). Check out the studios going with Verizon. No way did they want to help Apple in any of this. I don't like it, but we all now - at least in 6 months - have to pick sides!

2. Cingular will have to change its system to support this phone. It won't remain the slowest network by year's end. I won't be in the market for a new phone until 2008 anyway, so I'm happy to let early adopters carry the load for awhile and work out the kinks.

3. The tech for communications may be "old" but everything is about the interface and Apple needed to get this out into the market with patents to protect to stake its innovations in UI - not in 3-way calling. Just as with Intel, Apple will change Cingular's DNA a bit.

4. This friggin thing runs OSX!!! Have you no clue what that means? This is a proof of concept for tablets and pda's of the future. Apple just needed to enter a stable market, with partners in the telecom industry to get the thing going. I predict in 3 years (Cingular keeps saying "multi-year" but not how many) Apple will have more than Cingular and more then one iPhone for all of your choices. It just probably won't have Verizon (see #1).

but as macnngregor said, maybe this will help improve Cingular's DNA.

and i still gotta get me that phone.

lock the iPhone to a service provider ? If Apple had left it open, the service providers would have gone to Apple all by themselves ...

Sorry, for what ever technical/business reasons made the exclusively Cingular the best choice, unfortunately makes the iPhone a no-go for me. GSM-only kills the whole deal for me. GSM isn't widespread enough across the US yet for me -- I regularly hit areas that have NO GSM service. It may not make much of a difference for many, and it will likely improve with time, but for now, it's a deal killer.

Also, Cingular's "fewest dropped calls" claims bug me. It's not "the fewest percentage of calls dropped". They've got the smallest customer base of the majors due to them being GSM-only, of course they have the fewest dropped calls. Sheesh, nice lie via statistics.

Hmmmm. I've had Cingular for over a year and it's not so bad here in Columbus. It all depends on where you live as far as coverage goes. No carrier has great coverage everywhere.

I'm looking forward to being one of the early adopters. This phone/micro Mac is just plain cool.