You're mad that the wireless industry is consolidating, and "oh, by the way the iPhone is going to make me sign a contract now."

They made you sign a contract before as well, but you hacked it. Hack it again. Sure you won't get the discount, but you didn't mind full price before.

Even if you can't hack it, the fall of the wireless industry has nothing to do with iPhone. If anything, it's the opposite, and I can't believe you haven't picked up on this yet.

The biggest shortcoming of the American wireless industry is that it is too controlling of their platform, and hence stifles innovation. Apple is challenging that.

Except that the iPhone isn't really innovative. Touch-screen phones are plentiful, and numerous devices straddled that PDA-phone boundary for years. Just because Apple says it is reinventing the phone does not make it true.

The old phone was not too hard to hack, but it got secured pretty quickly. I bet the reason that it was so hobbled (no HSDPA, no GPS) was that Apple wanted to see what it needed to do to secure its platform before releasing a phone that is at least comparable to its competition. The 2.0 will be hard to hack, further stifling competition. Best way out? Buy another phone.

"the iPhone isn't really innovative."

Have you used an iPhone? It is innovative not because of it's features, but because of its usability.

I have. It's not particularly good. No better than the HTC Touch in any case. The point is that they didn't invent anything. They just marketed it better than anyone else. One has to respect that, mind you, but let's not get carried away.