I don't see why that's a problem, it's free to register. iTunes makes you register in order to download album art. This may be a similar issue.

umm this could be taken out of context, of course your gonna need itunes for the music part of the phone, the phone part is activated by the sim card their is no functionality in the gsm standard for any sort of software interaction.

I don't quite understand why Apple (and Steve Jobs) think that this is a good business model for their products. The whole attitude of Apple is that you buy a product and you get snickered into relying on them for everything. Fortune 500 companies consider this a huge risk because it ties them into a single vendor rather than having any number of providers that compete for their business. I will never buy an Apple product until they realign their strategy to allow other vendors and service providers to be used with their products.

Does this mean the only way you can upload music to the iPhone is over AT&T's service by subscription? Or is this just a trick to make consumers think they need an iTunes account?

Do you plan on putting music on it? You'll need iTunes. Do you currently have an iPod? You already have an account. Settle down, conspiracy theroists and privacy zealots; this isn't any different than registering any other product you buy.

I for one would like to point out, at least they are asking you to register your account BEFORE the launch date, to beat the rush or strain on the registration servers. Of course, you guys are sensationalists and looking for something else bad to say. And that's fine. Nice article where you try to compare a PHONE and MARKETING STRATEGY to a PERSON. Really, has it come to this?

I have an iPod but no iTunes acccount, I have never purchased from iTunes before. I am hoping you will need an account if you want to buy music and put it on your phone, not if you want to use your phone, you will have to sign up for iTunes as the article seems to state.

I have a feeling alot of people are going to be buying this for the phone, not so much as an portable player...but I could be wrong.

"I have a feeling a lot of people are going to be buying this for the phone, not so much as a portable player... but I could be wrong."

I think you will find that people who want a phone are not going to pay $600 for it, they will just buy a phone. This is an iPod that people can use as a phone, not the other way around.

Private users aren't corporations. Corporations carefully consider vendors before getting locked into an agreement where they rely on one vendor for everything. Corporations also have a lot more weight to throw around depending on their size. Apple doesn't care if you don't like their marketing practices because it knows millions of others will buy turds on a stick if they're labeled with the Apple logo. Private users are impulse shoppers, a dime a dozen, and will flock to big names without reading any fine print, especially with regard to electronics where most haven't got a clue what it is they're buying and would sign over their souls just to get that harrowing experience called 'thinking' over with so they can play their songs, watch their movies, text their friends and remain happily ignorant.

Absolutely. These are the people that keep Apple alive today. For example, Windows has been around a long time and until around 2000 wasn't a very good OS, but it's platform was very modular and open compared to Macs (I also think that OSX was the first good, usable OS on Macs). This enabled many vendors to flood the market with great competitive products while keeping the cost down for the consumer.

If you are paying 600 for a phone that will break down after six months you should not be forced to register for itunes. BS. What if you don't have a computer or the internet. (Then once again you shouldn't be spending $600 for a phone)....iSheep.

So this is really no surprise with a first generation phone. Leave it to the consumers and modders to work out all the bugs for Apple for free. Add to that Apple has been taking a page out of Sony since they came up with the Apple "Doorstop". If you want to use their stuff you're locked in. Thats what screwed them early on as a company when all they did was make PCs. Now they've learned a little, and have consistantly come out with with expanded consumer electronics compatible with thier other systems. But, like Sony you're going to eventually piss the consumer off when they cannot seek any options outside of Apple products (Recent DRM issues with iTunes being one case). If they can successfully make their products integratable with other third party hardware, they'll be able to dominate the consumer electronics market as they're superior at developing seamless interfaces...Maybe thats why Bill Gates left, as he saw the impending Doom. One example of them waking up to this fact is the new Mac OS roll out that has dual platform capabilities. Personally, I think we should all become programming savy and convert over to open source Linux, then tell both Microsoft, and Apple to go screw themselves. Then again I am a dreamer.

I own a sony ericson W810c. Its a phone/mp3 player and crap 2 megapixel camera combo. What makes mp3 phones useful is that you'll always have your music with you for those un-expected boring segments of your life like waiting for a delayed flight. I can use it to play standard mp3s and I can load the phone with music *without* installing any special software at all (not even a driver).

Poeple will not buy the iPhone for just the music. They will buy it for the phone first, the gadgets to show off second and the music third. If they also absolutely must install itunes to load music and video on the phone then thats a bad thing! Hardware vendors should not oblige consumers to install bloatware to use their products. Even more so when the product is a portable music player, a phone or a CD (shitty music players and remember sony's rootkit scandal?).

If itunes can be integrated with the phone completely and adds value to the product, then that's great. We'll choose to use it or not.

Just so you know, I'm not fond of apple software (that runs on windows). They always have these useless services that run in the background.. Install quicktime.. and the itune service installs itself and consumes my system memory like the parasite it is....

Have to register with I-Tunes to make the phone work? I was thinking of buying, definetly not now. If you want to download music from I-Tunes, fine. Does this mean I-tunes is the only way to get music onto the phone? If so, it's complete nonsense and I definetly won't be buying one. Somehow we need to put Apple out of their misery.

Why is it a big deal to register for iTunes? It takes 10 seconds and its free. No one said you had to buy anything. It's because iTunes interfaces with the store to download CD track names and album art. I have iTunes and an iTunes account, but it has never cost me a dime. Everyone relax.

It isn't the time or the cost. It is the fact that I would have to give information about myself to a third party because I bought a new phone. Does that not seem wrong to you? Moreover, if access to the iTunes album covers is the key issue, Apple could open the database up to the phones anonymously rather than requiring accounts.

If you ever filled out a warranty card to protect your investment, you'll probably be doing the same thing by creating an iTunes account. You create an account, plugin your iPod (or possibly your iPhone), and you register your device to your account.

Also Apple releasing the database they use to store artist and album information could be potentially lead to server and bandwidth load issues. This would make the actual iTune users especially angry if they registered an account just to use the database. Another thing, you don't need iTunes or even Apple to get your CD information, there's www.freedb.org.

As with all other popular brand devices, you can only use it to it's FULL potential if you register for their service.

Also, most of the arguments here are based on something that may not necessarily be true. The argument: You need to register to iTunes to use your iPhone. This may very well not be the case, you may just need to register to __purchase__ music like you would with __any__ other service.

Like the article says, "Apple did not return calls to clarify this statement."