What you need is a requirement to list the phone bill separately from the phone.

February Service Plan XXL - $80
Phone payment - $20
Total: - $100

Amount of time remaining on contract - 5 months
Payoff amount for phone - $100

After the phone is paid off the monthly bill would then drop to $80 and no contract. The phone itself should then be unlocked at the completion of the payment plan.

I'm guessing you haven't written many letters or made many phone calls to your representatives. Petitions are quite valuable, especially ones that receive responses from the administration. There are very few avenues for grassroots activism that can elicit a response from the president of the US and this administration has created that avenue.

Technological limitations on unlocking your phone aren't the only questionable business practices of cellular providers. I think we need both legalized unlocking, better billing practices, and limitations on the contracts. That is why I put together http://wh.gov/y6kK. Please take a moment to sign it. Body text follows:

Customers of cellular phone plans in the US are treated poorly. We would like to see regulations that require things like:

1) A bill that reflects the advertised price, and separate line items that show the cost of the phone plan and the phone.

2) A bill that shows the cost of the phone purchased and how much of the phone has been paid off

3) Upon completion of a contract the customer has the right to have any technological restrictions removed that prevent its use on other carriers networks.

4) The right to buy out the phone and terminate the contract at any time.

5) A limit to the terms of contracts allowed.

6) The right to buy a 3rd party phone and join a carriers network with no contractual obligations.

In this vain I created an online petition for the White House to respond to. The US banking system could use some movement towards a modern replacement to checking.

Petition to Replace the US Checking System

In this vain I created an online petition for the White House to respond to. The US banking system could use some movement towards a modern replacement to checking. Petition to replace checking

Running an all cash business in Norway would be pretty disastrous. We receive and pay our bills via the bank electronically and in stores with chip-cards (BankAxept) for almost everything else. Visa and Mastercard are not universally accepted since the business would be charged a fee. I keep waiting for the day in which street performers put out little cellular bank card terminals since many people couldn't give them money even if they wanted to for the lack of cash.

I'm an american living abroad and I buy everything I watch through my US iTunes account except Game of Thrones. Why? Because we get every HBO show months or years later. In the meantime, everyone at work has already seen it. I did finally buy Season 1 on iTunes, but that was well after I watched it.

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It all depends in your position on software patents and design. If you live in the US they are the law of the land.

Our company, for example, cannot sell our product in the US because we would most certainly violate a software patent from a US company regarding trading ladders.

If you are offended by the word steal then clearly you don't know much about common usage in the english language, nor can you empathize with Apple's position. Stealing in this case means, "taking sales from." This is common usage of the term. Apple's position appears to be that Android and Samsung have had almost no original thought in their product. Just look at Android SDK around 2007. Then look at the post iPhone releases. Look at the phones from major manufacturers in 2007 and then again in the post-iPhone market. If you can't see that Apple changed the competitive landscape then I guess there isn't much more to discuss.

When you've done that look at Windows Phone 7. There are original ideas and a new approaches to that design. I would be surprised to see Apple ever pursue WP7's design legally.

While I can't speak to your personal finances, iPhone can cost as little as a dollar in some markets with certain carriers. If that isn't affordable, what is?

As a likely candidate for the fanboy title, since I seem to be accused of it fairly regularly, I will say that the whole issue is whether you like software patents or not. I don't like software patents, but that is the environment you live in. Apple operates within that environment, as does the opposition. They all use patents as a competitive weapon. So what? Don't like it? How about changing the law? I'm waiting.

Not scared. Pissed. Android steals sales from Apple using Apple's innovation. Innovation in the form of bringing the user experience together in the right way. I'm not sure if this is the right forum considering the above poster that couldn't spell Samsung got modded 5 insightful, but Apple led the phone business out of the wilderness. They didn't invent touch screens, they didn't event mobile technology, or surfing the web on your phone. Hell they didn't invent a single damn thing on the phone if you want to be academic about it. What Apple did is make it work for the first time. Do you remember how disappointingly shitty phones were before 2007?

Look at the phones Samsung was putting out in 2007 like the Blackjack. Back then they copied Blackberry. Samsung is like a factory sized photocopier.

But what upsets me about Android and Samsung is that the phones and the platform just suck. I hate developing on it. Terrible architecture, 1990s state of the art programming language, poor performance, terrible tools. If you want to buy a phone right now other than an iPhone because you can't bear the thought of owning an Apple product. Consider Windows Phone 7. It is at least an interesting platform that deserves some love.

Ice Cream Sandwich is nothing to be afraid of since is deployed on so few phones. Less than 1.0% of Android users are blessed with ICS. Most are slumming in the 2.x series and will never see 4.0. That is just pathetic. Android is very much a one purchase platform. You buy one, realize that it wasn't a great experience, and look for something else.

The primary demographic for the iPad is people that just want something that does almost everything they ever do, only better. I don't bother dragging a laptop around in favor of my iPad these days, it is lighter and a better tool for reading, email, and surfing the web than my laptop ever hoped to be. The apps are much better in the educational space on the iPad than the computer. An iPad is a better device for viewing videos. In fact, the only thing my laptop or desktop is better at is sophisticated games, typing large texts, and programming. Or for the most part work since I don't spend a lot of time playing games more sophisticated than chess and the iPad version of even that is way better.

I think most people use an iPad because it is a better product for accomplishing the things they want to do. A desktop or laptop is an inferior platform by almost all everyday computing measures.

My screen on my Macbook Pro, current model 17", is 1920x1200. I love Apple's Cinema Display but it is just too big and too hot. I own one so I ought to know. I see the current screen issue with Apple as being strategic, most people don't buy external monitors, so Apple doesn't waste much time on it. Apple is moving more and more toward mobile computing only.