Apple apologizes for slowing down your iphones

[bd139]

Physical design. 200 iOS devices at hand. Same occurrence of smashed oness across our org. Most of the smashed ones you see in public I suspect are contract deals where the owner either can’t afford to get it fixed (could they afford it to start with you have to ask?) or hasn’t had the time yet. Personally I drop mine at least three times a week for the last year and it’s fine. I have the standard plastic bumper case.

Software design. Notably I can’t find anything I care enough to try and customise out. File interchange is one thing people complain about but that’s a non issue with iOS 11.

Hardware design. No microsd card for a reason: storage is bussed to the processor rather than through a restrictive SD card interface. Android SD (and WP) storage was just horrible for me. Slow, unreliable, poorly integrated. I bought a 128Gb handset though because I did fear the running out of space argument so I see where you are coming from. Headphones - yeah I see that. It would be nice to charge and listen to music but got to be honest the biggest turd for me is the earphones that ship with an iPhone 7 or greater won’t work with my MacBook Pro.

Attitude. Bar removal of 3.5mm jack which is not something specific to Apple, you’re right.

Price. Yeah they’re expensive but so am I and having something with no support network risks costing me money at some random point is a problem. I rely on the device to pay the bills. Plus you’re not getting advertising stuffed services with it which are subsidising the decide cost. When you buy one you’re getting eternal email, calendaring, contact management, document authoring, spreadsheets, file storage (to a limit). Tell me what hoops you have to jump through with android to block ads? iOS - install purify. I hate to use the line but privacy is the best feature.

As for innovation, I don’t really want it. I want something which i know if anything goes wrong I can get it sorted that day without burning my workflow. I want something which basically keeps out of my way and does what I ask. After using every major mobile ecosystem, it’s not perfect but it’s closest to where I need to be.

[borjam]

SOFTWARE DESIGN - It's restrictive, very restrictive. You have no where near as many options to tweak system settings as you do on Android or indeed BlackBerry or Windows-based devices. I'll give you an example I ran into today: If your battery charge is below a certain percentage (I think it's around 20-30%), it forces the minimum screen sleep/lock time and doesn't allow you to change it until you charge your phone. So rather than given the user the option (which exists), it just locks you out. That's just one example in a long list.

Software design is fine. If I need to tinker with a real Unix system I use the laptop or the desktop computer. If I am going to do "appliance" tasks such as browsing web pages or anything else, iPhone/iPad is great. My opinion of course.

HARDWARE DESIGN - Compared to phones of the era, it's underspec'd. Arguably Apple users don't need the additional RAM. Also since as long as I remember their cameras were mediocre with many suffering from that green or purple "halo" right in the middle of the photo when exposed to bright scenes. Then of course the is the lack of expandable storage, how many major revisions of the iPhone are there? 15? Yet still no microSD card slot. Then there is the plethora of expensive Apple-branded adapters and cables (which aren't built that well to begin with) just so you can use your peripherals (headphones for example). Want to try and repair your iPhone? Instead of using common sized screws, they've mixed and matched different sizes, just to make sure they are extra painful to pull apart and get back together.

Underspecced? I don't think so.

CPUs are way ahead of the competition, reportedly.

Memory: they aren't running a Java interpreter, unless I am terribly wrong iOS is much more efficient in memory usage. So that's comparing apples to oranges.

APPLES ATTITUDE TOWARDS CONSUMERS - Remember "Antenna-gate", Apple's response was "You're holding your phone wrong".

I remember all the kerfufle about this. The responses were really funny First, every antenna will be disrupted by your hand. I had an iPhone 4, the "antennagated" model, and it was perfectly fine. At that time I had a contract with the 3G operator with the least coverage and it still worked perfectly.

They changed their connector: "You can buy an adapter".

Which they kept for, how many years? Before adopting USB it was common practice among phone manufacturers to have connectors unique to every model.  So wny not USB? Because they do more stuff with it.

PRICE - They are bloody expensive for what you get. I can walk into a retail store and buy a brand new Samsung handset, which is more powerful, packs more memory, has more features and better software for $800. How much does the iPhone X cost? Almost double!

Yeah, capable of powerful blasts, no less! Now, seriously. High end Samsung phones are in the same price range as far as I know.

[Someone]

I look forward to your rebuttal.

No need, anyone can make up their mind on their own from your description now which is a long way from "nothing good". It wouldn't have mattered what brand or product you were talking about but just throwing out non specific and all encompassing dismissal while simultaneously congratulating everyone for being polite and factual was just too funny to leave hanging. Seems you're still in the irrational hater camp and unable to realise there are upsides to most products even if they aren't upsides for you you can still look and consider why things might be a benefit or desirable feature for others.

[Halcyon]

No need, anyone can make up their mind on their own

 

We got there in the end. We do have something in common after all.

Seems you're still in the irrational hater camp and unable to realise there are upsides to most products even if they aren't upsides for you you can still look and consider why things might be a benefit or desirable feature for others.

Which is why from the start I quite overtly explained that this was my opinion. For me Apple products have no benefit over others. As I said, my opinion is no less valid than yours. I also said Apple has a specific target audience, I get why people flock to their products. As for irrational, nothing is further from the truth. Again, you have your opinion (there's that word again) and I have mine. Let's leave it at that.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

There's a poll above, at the top. Vote please! 

[tooki]

There's a poll above, at the top. Vote please! 

It should allow multiple selections! :p I think Apple screwed up (should have been transparent about this from the start), and I think the battery is too small (I’ve been wishing for years for Apple to make (at least as an option!) a small-screen iPhone that’s thicker, but has 2-4 days battery instead of 0.75. The Plus models have much longer battery life, but I do not want the bigger screen.), and I still love Apple and do believe that its intentions are fundamentally good. (I worked for Apple for a while a decade ago, and it’s not a platitude that Apple really, truly cares about customers*, though it’s often the long game whose immediate steps don’t appear to be in the customers’ interest.)

*Apple is selective about who it wants its customers to be. I don’t mean this in a bad way. But primarily, Apple expressly chooses not to chase after the low-margin low-end markets. Nor does it, for example, go after hardcore gamers. So those people sometimes feel ignored by Apple, not realizing that it’s a very deliberate decision.

[james_s]

Not everybody spends $1000 on an iPhone, in fact I don't personally know anyone who did. Mine were both ~$250 which is pretty much middle of the road smartphone pricing for any platform. What bothers me about Apple is more the stereotypical customers, the smug hipsters and fanbois, the weird cult-like crowd that line up for days outside the Apple store whenever a new product launches, that's weird. I have a similar attitude toward BMW, nice cars, but I don't like many of the sort of people who buy them.

[bd139]

Yeah there are a few crazy people and dicks.

This will cheer you up:

[TerraHertz]

This whole topic makes me yawn, since I avoid smartphones as much as possible, and consider both Apple and Microsoft to be enemies of humankind. Planned obsolescence via deliberate software crippling of old models? Of course, it's in their corporate genes. Among many other horrible acts.

And then the Intel processor generic security bug, with software workarounds resulting in up to 30% execution slowdown. Ha ha ha... Excellent.

Anyway, some may find this interesting:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/12/21/apple-admits-they-throttled-iphones-one-graph-tells-the-whole-story-of-why-they-are-slow/

[james_s]

I have no contract, I bought my iPhones free and clear, full retail price of $250 shortly after the new models came out so the price of the older generation dropped sharply. I pay $30 a month for "unlimited" voice/data/text, my plan is grandfathered in though, the current offering is $50/mo.

Yes a lot of people pay more, so what? Just because they can't figure out how to get a deal doesn't mean it can't be done. If you don't feel compelled to have the latest and greatest you can get a good product for a reasonable price. You can pay around $1k for a high end iOS or Android phone if you want to but nobody has to.

As for the next post if this topic bores you so much why did you feel compelled to chime in? Smartphones annoy me too but it's not the phones, it's people. The phones are a useful tool and these days a perfectly usable smartphone is easier to find and just as cheap as a basic feature phone. If you want one of those pretty much the only choices are catered toward seniors and very basic essentially disposable phones.

[SparkyFX]

Planned obsolescence via deliberate software crippling of old models? Of course, it's in their corporate genes. Among many other horrible acts.

And the crowd that has a problem with the distinction of what is new vs. what is old. Just cooking up old technology and selling it as new almost requires that the old stock must be measurably worse. Once both parts come from a single source there is always a risk that things will be staged to show better results.

And then the Intel processor generic security bug, with software workarounds resulting in up to 30% execution slowdown. Ha ha ha... Excellent.

And it always confused me how an operating system keeps memory inside the processor separate from certain concurrently running programs besides pushing or popping stack and registers. Seems they found a way around it using the leftovers of speculative execution in the cache.

Means that one needs to be able to run code on the machine beforehand for that to work, but I got no idea if it needs to run on the same core as well. Admittedly the problem is a hazard on multi user systems and even for a privately used machine, there are many holes circulating that enable remote code execution and privilige escalation.

However, i wouldn´t buy the 30% figure as an overall loss of performance. Maybe it is 30% for code in the kernel ring 0 that does benefit from speculative execution (therefore not all code in a kernel), but usually you want to have a higher workload in the user mode instead of waiting for system calls, so it might only be a fraction of that - depending on the type of application. Maybe it is what the workaround costs in performance for a fraction of kernel code, because it seems it can be worked around in the compiler (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16066968).

Which leads me to questions how the performance of a piece of code is calculated with such a feature in the processor or what this means for realtime systems. If code was only optimal by using such a feature, whats the point in not having a lookup table-like system in place and circumvent it running or cleaning leftovers this way? As far as i understand it, this might be active all the time, even when not intended or useful, so i wonder where the key areas are that need this workaround and how often they are called.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

However, i wouldn´t buy the 30% figure as an overall loss of performance. Maybe it is 30% for code in the kernel ring 0 that does benefit from speculative execution (therefore not all code in a kernel), but usually you want to have a higher workload in the user mode instead of waiting for system calls, so it might only be a fraction of that - depending on the type of application. Maybe it is what the workaround costs in performance for a fraction of kernel code, because it seems it can be worked around in the compiler (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16066968).

Which leads me to questions how the performance of a piece of code is calculated with such a feature in the processor or what this means for realtime systems. If code was only optimal by using such a feature, whats the point in not having a lookup table-like system in place and circumvent it running or cleaning leftovers this way? As far as i understand it, this might be active all the time, even when not intended or useful, so i wonder where the key areas are that need this workaround and how often they are called.

The article at ars technica says this:

"The impact of this will vary depending on the workload. Every time a program makes a call into the kernel—to read from disk, to send data to the network, to open a file, and so on—that call will be a little more expensive, since it will force the TLB to be flushed and the real kernel page table to be loaded. Programs that don't use the kernel much might see a hit of perhaps 2-3 percent—there's still some overhead because the kernel always has to run occasionally, to handle things like multitasking.

But workloads that call into the kernel a ton will see much greater performance drop off. In a benchmark, a program that does virtually nothing other than call into the kernel saw its performance drop by about 50 percent; in other words, each call into the kernel took twice as long with the patch than it did without. Benchmarks that use Linux's loopback networking also see a big hit, such as 17 percent in this Postgres benchmark. Real database workloads using real networking should see lower impact, because with real networks, the overhead of calling into the kernel tends to be dominated by the overhead of using the actual network"

[rrinker]

 See, I sit here still using a 5S. No touch problem. My battery still lasts all day. It has iOS 11.2 on it, and everything appearance-wise still works like it always did. Is it slower than the day I bought it? Who knows I didn't benchmark it then and if I benchmark it now I will have nothing to compare. Suffice to say that when I switch between apps it does so at a perfectly acceptable speed. I also don't keep dozens of apps open all the time, either.

 Underspec hardware? Apple's SoCs are some of the most powerful out there. The memory SEEMS light if you just like big numbers, but the architecture of iOS is completely different compared to Android. Android can seem choked even with 4GB RAM, and even that may seem tiny compared to the laptop I am typing this one which has 32GB! (not an Apple - I may use an iPhone but I can't stand OSX)

 And cameras - oh yeah Samsungs have lots more megapixels. More does not always mean better - the SIZE of those pixels matters too. Just cramming more megapixels in the sensor in general results in worse image quality, not better. A good example is my 5S vs my gf's Samsung S7. In well lit conditions, her pictures can be marginally better than mine. In more dim conditions, such as at concerts - she doesn't even bother any more, her pictures are always blurry because you have to hold the thing still for so long to get a decent exposure. I get some very nice pictures, every time.

 Storage - I've never had an issue with running out on any iDevice, and I never buy the top model. My 5S is a 32GB model and I still have over 10GB free, and the only reason it's that low is I haven't cleaned up and offloaded my photos recently. I had many ebooks, 3 emails accounts, and enough music to drive across the US without a repeat. To clarify, important photos are in locations other than just the phone, I just haven't taken the time lately to reconcile what I saved off on my backed up storage with what's still on the phone - but there's well over 5GB of pictures and videos that can mostly go because I've already saved copies of the ones I want.

 Yes, they should have said up front they would slow the system as the battery was no longer able to keep up, but slowing down functions with high peak draws still means th device is fully functional and retains a good battery life, which beats it just randomly dying for no real reason.

[tooki]

Carriers in China also offer free iPhones with contract, but unlike in US, carrier customized phones are usually weeks or even months later than Apple store version, so those rich kids eager to show off their new phones can't wait.

You know Apple doesn't do carrier customized phones, right? (IMHO, Apple's biggest contribution to the mobile phone world was shattering the stronghold carriers had on the hardware.)

Apple allows carriers to set up a Carrier Settings file, which any iPhone will automatically download/update when a SIM card for that carrier is inserted. It configures things for the carrier, and controls the availability of a few features, like tethering. And that is the extent to which a carrier can modify an iPhone's software.

This whole topic makes me yawn, since I avoid smartphones as much as possible, and consider both Apple and Microsoft to be enemies of humankind. Planned obsolescence via deliberate software crippling of old models? Of course, it's in their corporate genes. Among many other horrible acts.

Ignoring the idiocy of believing in such "horrible acts", you do realize that Android isn't a Microsoft product, right?

[james_s]

Personally I think it should be illegal for any phone to be locked. If a company wants to sell a subsidized phone and require a contract fine, but the phone itself shouldn't be locked in any way.

[bd139]

Giffgaff in the U.K. have the right sales model. It’s a personal loan for the handset rather than a contract. You pay monthly for the service but the handset is separate. The personal loan is cheaper than the carrier markup as well.

[rsjsouza]

Carriers in China also offer free iPhones with contract, but unlike in US, carrier customized phones are usually weeks or even months later than Apple store version, so those rich kids eager to show off their new phones can't wait.

You know Apple doesn't do carrier customized phones, right? (IMHO, Apple's biggest contribution to the mobile phone world was shattering the stronghold carriers had on the hardware.)

Tooki, not in the US. The iPhone started completely locked to AT&T for three or four years and back then the chances of unlocking it were not quite easy for the common person. Yes, Apple manufactured the Hardware, but it entered the market by bending over to the carriers just like Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Samsung.

[Halcyon]

Personally I think it should be illegal for any phone to be locked. If a company wants to sell a subsidized phone and require a contract fine, but the phone itself shouldn't be locked in any way.

Agreed. Come to think of it, I don't think any carrier in Australia bothers any more (I could be wrong). I know Telstra don't lock phones they sell to their own network. It's a bit of a pointless exercise in my opinion since it costs the carrier more to support unlocking when customers request it. Their staff are better utilised for other things.

It's just like software, if I buy it, I should be able to (and will) do whatever I want with it.

[tooki]

Little FYI for you guys trying to school me about iPhones: I’m not a casual user. I was working for Apple during the original iPhone launch, and follow them closely still.

My "customized" means SIM locked. iPhones require Apple activation server in order to finish initial setup after a factory reset, which means if your card's carrier information doesn't match the database's lock information, you can't activate your phone.

SIM locks are not generally considered “customization”. For years, here in Europe, most phones were sold SIM locked, but with stock firmware. In contrast, in USA, carriers put in custom everything, from ringtones to splash screens to apps and various restrictions (such as removing features present in the stock firmware).

BTW, iPhones do come in different hardware versions, Verizon/Spirit version has all-in-one baseband, and ATT/Tmobile version has no CDMA capability and uses a different baseband chip.

Again, not something I consider a firmware customization. Apple makes a few different hardware versions for optimum radio compatibility with various networks, but those models aren’t specific to a particular carrier, as even your own descriptions show. Each carrier sells the hardware variant that best matches its network.

I contribute this to the sin of "shady business" between operators and Apple -- either you sell it cheaper or for free and lock it, or you sell it at original price and give me an unlocked version. Tmobile sold me a locked version for full retail price with "contract free" in item description. I was pissed!

That’s something that pissed many people off in USA, carriers selling locked phones regardless of contract. That said, you should have been able to ask T-Mo to unlock it, since it’s not under contract.

Tooki, not in the US. The iPhone started completely locked to AT&T for three or four years and back then the chances of unlocking it were not quite easy for the common person. Yes, Apple manufactured the Hardware, but it entered the market by bending over to the carriers just like Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Samsung.

Sorry, you’re flat-out wrong. I worked the iPhone launch, dude. It was ATT-exclusive in USA, but not ATT-customized. The exact same phone with the exact same firmware was sold to other carriers in other countries. (Literally the only difference was the pre-programmed SIM lock, which again I do not consider a customization as such, the language on the box and instructions, and the included AC adapter to match the local socket.)

I’m not suggesting, and this isn’t opinion: Apple changed the relationship between carrier and handset maker. Apple’s contract with ATT, if all the public statements/sources are to be believed, was that Steve Jobs approached Verizon (who said no) and then Cingular (which became ATT, and accepted) with the idea of the iPhone, and the contract said that Apple had full control over the entire design. Apple did not “bend over” at all. On the contrary, ATT bent over: it changed its voicemail system to support Visual Voicemail, built an entire new branch to its billing system to allow for the iPhone’s activation and plan selection, which took place entirely in iTunes, and added an entire separate call center for iPhone users.


I think you guys have forgotten the extent to which carriers used to demand customized phones. Heck, on Android today you still have carriers throwing customized UIs and useless apps into phones, preventing users from upgrading Android even on models where the handset maker has released an Android update.

In contrast, Apple releases one firmware/software build per hardware variant, period. Doesn’t matter where in the world you bought it, or from whom, Apple releases an update, and everyone with that model receives the same exact build. (It’s literally one download URL per hardware variant.) The carriers have ZERO control over this process.

[tooki]

Little FYI for you guys trying to school me about iPhones: I’m not a casual user. I was working for Apple during the original iPhone launch, and follow them closely still.

That only proves your biased love to Apple. And to be honest, I'm bias to Android too because my first PI back when I was in China runs a regional Google lab.

No, it most certainly does not prove “biased love” — you may see that as a casual statement of fact, I see it as an accusation lobbed to justify dismissing my deep factual knowledge on the issue. It should be amply clear from my many comments about Apple in this thread (and in the forum in general) that I praise Apple where due, but also criticize harshly where due. (Mostly anti-Apple people think I’m an Apple “lover” simply because I call them out on bullshit when I see it, and people don’t like to be challenged. But I’m not gonna sit back quietly while they spread untruths. Some things are opinion, but when they state as “facts” things that are demonstrably incorrect, I’m gonna tell them. I’m simply a lover of factual accuracy.)

I mentioned it because you two (especially rsjsouza) both seemed to be questioning my knowledge on the matter, but I’m extremely well qualified to be speaking about it.

That's where the BS comes in -- you have to be using their network for a certain amount of time even if you paid in full on day 1. I then looked up online it seems to be one year minimum, and no more than 2 unlocks per year per account.

That’s crazy!! IMHO, it should be EITHER a SIM lock, but no early cancelation fee, or a cancelation fee but no SIM lock. That said, I could have sworn that on some Mac forums, I’d heard that T-Mo allowed instant unlock when full price was paid. But I don’t know where or when it was that I read that, so don’t hold me to it. But it might be worth pressing the issue.

[rsjsouza]

Tooki, not in the US. The iPhone started completely locked to AT&T for three or four years and back then the chances of unlocking it were not quite easy for the common person. Yes, Apple manufactured the Hardware, but it entered the market by bending over to the carriers just like Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Samsung.

Sorry, you’re flat-out wrong. I worked the iPhone launch, dude. It was ATT-exclusive in USA, but not ATT-customized. The exact same phone with the exact same firmware was sold to other carriers in other countries. (Literally the only difference was the pre-programmed SIM lock, which again I do not consider a customization as such, the language on the box and instructions, and the included AC adapter to match the local socket.)

I’m not suggesting, and this isn’t opinion: Apple changed the relationship between carrier and handset maker. Apple’s contract with ATT, if all the public statements/sources are to be believed, was that Steve Jobs approached Verizon (who said no) and then Cingular (which became ATT, and accepted) with the idea of the iPhone, and the contract said that Apple had full control over the entire design. Apple did not “bend over” at all. On the contrary, ATT bent over: it changed its voicemail system to support Visual Voicemail, built an entire new branch to its billing system to allow for the iPhone’s activation and plan selection, which took place entirely in iTunes, and added an entire separate call center for iPhone users.

Technicalities apart, it made very little difference for the regular user that had to be locked to a single operator during quite a lot of time after the purchase of their phone. Given that in the US there was only one carrier, it was quite similar to having an "carrier customized" phone by yhe common man.

And no, you were not the only one working on this market at the time.

[tooki]

Technicalities apart, it made very little difference for the regular user that had to be locked to a single operator during quite a lot of time after the purchase of their phone. Given that in the US there was only one carrier, it was quite similar to having an "carrier customized" phone by yhe common man.

Of course it made a difference. All the carrier lock meant was that, as with every other damned phone back then, the phone was SIM locked for the whole contract (well, a bit longer). But ATT had NO control over what Apple did with the iPhone's hardware or software/firmware. This. Was. Huge. It meant no lock-in to ATT-specific services, no exclusion of apps ATT didn't want. Why is this so hard for you to understand???

And no, you were not the only one working on this market at the time.

I didn't say I was the only one. But you talked down to me as if I didn't know what I was talking about, but I most certainly do.

[rsjsouza]

Tooki, not in the US. The iPhone started completely locked to AT&T for three or four years and back then the chances of unlocking it were not quite easy for the common person. Yes, Apple manufactured the Hardware, but it entered the market by bending over to the carriers just like Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Samsung.

Sorry, you’re flat-out wrong. I worked the iPhone launch, dude. It was ATT-exclusive in USA, but not ATT-customized. The exact same phone with the exact same firmware was sold to other carriers in other countries. (Literally the only difference was the pre-programmed SIM lock, which again I do not consider a customization as such, the language on the box and instructions, and the included AC adapter to match the local socket.)

How is that "talking down on you"? I would not do that. I was talking down on the company and its practices, but somehow you took it completely personal and started being condescending. Based on your posts, it is getting hard to dissociate you from your former employer. Have a nice day.

[borjam]

Tooki, not in the US. The iPhone started completely locked to AT&T for three or four years and back then the chances of unlocking it were not quite easy for the common person. Yes, Apple manufactured the Hardware, but it entered the market by bending over to the carriers just like Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Samsung.

Sorry, you’re flat-out wrong. I worked the iPhone launch, dude. It was ATT-exclusive in USA, but not ATT-customized. The exact same phone with the exact same firmware was sold to other carriers in other countries. (Literally the only difference was the pre-programmed SIM lock, which again I do not consider a customization as such, the language on the box and instructions, and the included AC adapter to match the local socket.)

How is that "talking down on you"? I would not do that. I was talking down on the company and its practices, but somehow you took it completely personal and started being condescending. Based on your posts, it is getting hard to dissociate you from your former employer. Have a nice day.

Tooki is right. There is a lot of confusion around the term "customized".

Nobody will dispute that there are SIM-locked phones. You get them on a contract, they can only be activated with a SIM linked to a certain operator. That's easy to understand and that has been going on all over the world. Not rocket science

However, there is a huge difference between an operator issued iPhone and an operator issued phone from other manufacturers. It often begins with the packaging. When Apple was nogotiating with European operators there was rumor that Vodafone had refused because they wanted "their" iPhones inside the corporate Vodafone red box, as ever other phones Vodafone sold, and Apple said that it was a red line. You didn't even see the Apple iPhone packaging inside a red nox. No way.

Same thing happened with the software inside the phone. I remember an operator issued Sony Ericsson phone I had before the iPhone. For "some reason" it was impossible to update the Google Maps app it had from Google's website. You were stuck to the "Vodafone customized" version included. Same for other programs, some of them quite similar to the bloatware you get with Windows PCs.

Apple was the first mobile phone manufacturer to draw a red line with a simple principle: "The iPhone is an Apple product, not your product. Take it or not". And while the traditional mobile phone makers had the operators as their customers, Apple made it clear that operators were middlemen, dealers, and the end user was Apple's customer.

You can like their practices or not, but it's difficult not to agree that this policy was good for end users. Had the carriers got what they wanted, you would have found iPhones in which Facetime would be banned for policy reasons, or maybe banned to use Whatsapp, Telegram and other alternative messaging systems, forcing the user to SMSs or some carrier backed service.

Anyway, again. "Customized" is not the same as "SIM locked".

[Someone]

You can like their practices or not, but it's difficult not to agree that this policy was good for end users. Had the carriers got what they wanted, you would have found iPhones in which Facetime would be banned for policy reasons, or maybe banned to use Whatsapp, Telegram and other alternative messaging systems, forcing the user to SMSs or some carrier backed service.

Some (most?) people here don't remember the days of WAP and the pre-smartphone era when features came with monthly and/or usage prices and those pricing models continued right on as phones gained sophistication. One area where apple did work with the carriers was tethering, many early jailbreak and sideloading was solely for this feature.

The cornerstone which the apple platform may be eroded on is net neutrality, all the services running over commoditised IP links could be throttled or blocked returning the control back to the carriers.