These people deserve what they got if they hacked their iPhones. I used to be a Mac Genius and it really annoyed me when someone would b**** about their iPhone, iPod or their Mac not working because they screwed with it.

...I look forward to the day when trickle down & market saturation entice Apple & carriers to unlock this device to expand market share further... Demand is obviously there...

When it comes to warrantied fixes, I understand where that attitude comes from. Apple seems to be much more stringent about people not messing with stuff than other companies, and when people come in not understanding what was clearly spelled out in black and white, they can be a real pain. However, in my experience, when you pay for the Apple care warranty and the representative at the store starts spouting doom and gloom about what appears to be damage of my doing and how because of that they can't fix an unrelated issue with ADDITIONAL payment, then its the apple care coverage that seems to be extra lacking.

As it was I had to tell a few white lies at a certified repair shop to get my issue fixed under the warranty. However, people who knowingly mod past the warranty should know better. I recently pulled out the optical drive on my PowerBook to replace it with a second hard drive and yep, right there on the drive it said warranty was void if the drive was gone. People have to learn to accept the consequences without being whiny, or at least take a little more care when reading your device manual. Sheesh.

Very often, the Mac Genius can make exceptions to the rules. If a customer is truthfull and doesn't come in blaming Apple for their misfortune, the Mac Genius just might surprise the customer by going outside of policy. I speak from experience. Customers who were nice to me always got better service. Customers who were mean to me got exactly what they deserved... nothing more.

I don't see any reason to unlock my iPhone (although I did have third party applications installed). I was using Cingular before I got my iPhone, so I kept them, and I now have a 2 year contract and it would cost me to switch. AT&T may suck, but so do all of the other cell phone companies. None of the others really suck less.

mike3k, you must not travel much.

I've been on AT&T Wireless since the beginning, and one time I made the mistake of taking my then-early SonyEricsson T68i overseas to Spain with me and using my AT&T Blue SIM card to roam Internationally. Not only did I get reamed with charges, but I got woken up in the middle of the night from telemarketers and other annoyance calls that I get here at home (which I can easily ignore in the daytime). Never again.

Now, when I travel, the first thing I do when I get to my destination (if it's for more than a day or two) is to go out and buy a pre-paid SIM card (like on Virgin Mobile in England or Vodafone in Spain) for 20-odd bucks and use that to make my local calls with while overseas. This is infinitely superior to using International Reami... erm, Roaming on AT&T.

But you have to have an unlocked cell phone to do this, and I refuse to buy one that isn't unlocked - and I won't buy an iPhone until/unless Apple comes to their senses and allows them to be unlocked.

"Very often, the Mac Genius can make exceptions to the rules. If a customer is truthfull and doesn't come in blaming Apple for their misfortune, the Mac Genius just might surprise the customer by going outside of policy."

I can personally vouch for this. I once brought in a monitor that was giving me trouble to the NY SoHo store, & the Mac Genius I spoke to really needed the serial # of the Mac it was purchased with, which I didn't have with me. (It was part of a large company order of several Macs and monitors) This guy tried everything he could think of for a while to see if I could get the replacement part I needed under warranty, even though he didn't have the serial # he needed.

He told me he looked through a database or something where he could possible grab an unused serial or something like that. He finally gave up when it became apparent that he wasn't going to be able to do it. But boy did he try for me. So yes, the Mac Geniuses try their best to help out customers who they believe to be honest, even if they don't have all the"paperwork" in order. Not saying this will be everyone's experience, but I think if you're nice about the issue you really do get further. No-one likes a complainer.