Want to legally unlock your iPhone? E-mail Tim Cook!
Okay, maybe this tactic won't work for everyone, and likelihood has it that the more people that try, the fewer will get their wish, but at the very least, CEO Tim Cook has reached out for one iPhone owner and forced AT&T to help the man unlock his device.
The story goes like this: a man and his family are deep into Apple products, owning various iPhones, iPads, iPods, and Macs. The man gets transferred to Canada for work. His wife had an iPhone 3Gs, and luckily her contract finished as they were moving to Canada. So, the man bought his wife an iPhone 4 upon moving to Canada, and took the 3Gs for himself as a personal option to his work phone (a BlackBerry), but it was locked to AT&T, so he couldn't use it in Canada. He contacted AT&T to get help with the problem, and he was told to contact Apple, who in turn routed him back to AT&T. An AT&T rep told him to "just jailbreak [his] phone", but he didn't want to do that because he didn't want to "stray" from "Apple's curated experience".
Finally, the man wrote a letter directly to Apple CEO Tim Cook explaining the situation. Soon, AT&T called the man saying Apple had requested his device be unlocked. That was that, he was in possession of a legally unlocked AT&T iPhone. And, it didn't end there. Apparently, Tim Cook then had his special assistant call the man's family to ensure that AT&T had followed through on the request.
As we said, it may not work for everyone, but it's nice to see that Tim Cook at least reads his e-mail and takes action, even if he has yet to personally respond as we saw a number of times from Steve Jobs.
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Things that are NOT allowed: