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So now that AT&T “refurbished” iPhones have started flooding the market, a few details about how AT&T was able to offer such a great price are starting to float up to the surface.

For those of you unfamiliar, a few weeks ago AT&T began to sell “refurbished” iPhones in their corporate retail stores in the Northeast US. The prices were too good to be true - $249 for an 8gb iPhone, compared to $349 for Apple’s refurb, or $399 for brand new. Even better, the impossible-to-find 4gb iPhone began to resurface in AT&T stores at a price point of $199. There was such a scramble to get a hold of these deals, that iPhone forums were quickly filling up with posts from members that weren’t in the Northeast, begging members that were in the Northeast to pick one up for them. I’ll admit, I did this for one person.

Then, the refurb deal made it to AT&T’s website, and thanks to sites like SlickDeals and FatWallet, AT&T was sold out of inventory within mere hours. After all, for a $150 savings over brand new iPhone, how could you go wrong?

Well, we’re starting to find out now exactly what makes up that price difference… and it’s a lot more than just the retail packaging that the phone comes in.

For starters, according to “Nathan C” - reportedly an Apple Employee according to his profile - AT&T refurbished iPhones have been refurbished … by AT&T! Well, what does “refurbishing” mean to AT&T? So far, it doesn’t seem to mean much more than using the Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings on an iPhone. I know this personally, because the 4gb iPhone I purchased for my fiancee … was already “activated”, and on firmware 1.0.2. Some folks got firmware 1.0.1. And I wasn’t the only person to have this happen. In theory, I could have just put in an existing AT&T SIM and had a brand new iPhone to use without a new contract required. If Apple had refurbished these, I would have expected them to have at least reflashed the firmware to 1.1.3 or 1.1.4.

Additionally, reports are beginning to surface about refurbished AT&T iPhones showing up in pretty rough shape, and already jailbroken! Want someone’s body smudges all over your new “refurb” iPhone? Just get an AT&T refurb, and if you’re lucky you’ll have the remnants of the previous owner still on the casing.

But for saving $150, it’s ok - right?

Well, the icing on the cake may actually be the warranty. Apple offers a 1-year warranty on their new iPhones, and their refurbished iPhones. But what about AT&T’s refurbs? Initially, reports around the web when this deal first hit was that the iPhone warranty claim posted on AT&T’s website was “One year”. However, owners that are now getting their iPhones are checking their warranty support online, and finding out that not only do they not have a one (1) year warranty - some are barely 90 days long in the case of getting an AT&T “refurb” that was actually purchased on launch day, June 29th… which is when Apple thinks the one-year clock started ticking.

So what does “Nathan C” from Apple have to say about the subject? He simply states that the AT&T refurbs “have the Apple warranty” - no timeframe mentioned. Some Howard Forums members have apparently been able to get their warranty timeframes “reset” to the date of their AT&T purchase date - but this policy is not entirely clear yet.

I’ll check this out with my fiancee’s 4gb this evening and post an update as I have more detail.

UPDATE: Thanks to HoFo member Tristan! for posting a picture of his AT&T refurbished iPhone box, which clearly states that “Refurbished iPhones have a full 1 year warranty” through Apple. I’m still trying to dig up our receipt for our 4gb refurb, so that I can get our warranty status updated with Apple.

There has been a lot of discussion of age during this presidential race, and while I don’t consider myself very political — I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the ages of previous US presidents - all 43 of them - on the day they assumed the oath of office of President of the United States.

Thanks to a lot of help from Wikipedia, I didn’t have to go hunting down every single president’s inauguration date and birth date. And thanks to Excel, I didn’t have to calculate anything either! I simply had Excel determine the number of days between the two dates, and then divided by 365.25 (the .25 is to account for leap-years). Not sure if this is the most accurate approach in the world, but it seems to deliver the results I was looking for. Then, I added in the current four leading candidates - Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Mike Huckabee - into the list as well, assuming one of them will be sworn in on January 20th, 2009.

A lot of interesting facts fell out of this simple exercise.  For instance, did you know that Barack Obama, if nominated, would be older on the day he is sworn into office than Bill Clinton was on his first day?  Did you know that John McCain, if nominated and serving a single term, will exit the White House younger than Ronald Regan when his two terms were up?

Where does your favorite candidate fall in this list? Were you surprised by any of the figures here? Tell me in the comments!

The Presidential Candidate Age-O-Meter:

This is simply amazing … in a mad scramble for customers reminiscent of the fare wars that major airlines engage in, every major carrier in the US has just introduced a $99 unlimited nationwide minute plan for their customers - all in this week!

Verizon seems like they were the first out of the gate with their plan, and you can read the details about this plan on their Unlimited promotion page - Verizon Truly Unlimited Calling, which appears to be available immediately. Text and picture messaging seems to be an additional charge, as does data usage (unless you like paying $1.99 per MB).

Not wanting to be out-done by Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile fired back with both barrels and launched equivalent plans, each with their own perks. The AT&T Unlimited Calling plan, which will be available on Friday the 22nd … and T-Mobile’s Unlimited Calling plan, which is available on Thursday the 21st.

The T-Mobile deal, so far, seems to be the best as their $99 package also includes unlimited SMS and MMS messaging. Not bad! However, AT&T’s press release specifically states that no contract extension is necessary. That’s pretty good too! No word yet on whether or not iPhone customers on AT&T will be eligible for these plans or not, but I’m optimistic.

Sadly, there’s nothing so far for Sprint/Nextel customers, or any of the smaller carriers like Alltel. Perhaps, much like the airlines, they’ll have to respond or see a major dent in their sales - not to mention, lost customers.

Feb 28 Update: Sprint has now joined in, and has launched their “Simply Everything” $99 plan.

If you have a minute plan that’s higher than $99, save yourself a few bucks, call your carrier immediately and get on this program!

So, for all of you that are considering an iPhone purchase, and are looking for reliable information about the release of a 3G iPhone in the US … here is everything verifiable that - as of today, February 5th, 2008 - you probably want to know.

1. Officially, Apple has announced nothing about a 3G iPhone. Nothing at all.

2. If and when Apple has a 3G iPhone ready to hit the market, Apple still may not announce anything at all, before the day it is available for sale. This is very common for them, as it avoids eating into existing sales. Case-in-point: The new 16gb iPhone, released today — two days after I bought another 8gb iPhone to replaceme the one I broke. No real advance notice at all, otherwise I would have waited out the two days.

(See Also: Osborne Effect - “Most technology companies today guard against the Osborne effect by very strictly controlling information. In general, the stronger the market position of a company, the less it will reveal about product plans and pricing.“)

3. You think you read/heard a rumor that Steve Jobs said it was coming in 2008. No. Not exactly. On Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 after the UK iPhone launch, while fielding questions, Steve Jobs reportedly said the following:

“We’ve got to see the battery lives for 3G get back up into the 5+ hour range,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll see that late next year.“

“Hopefully”, “late next year” … and depending on how you read the sentence above, it could mean a few different things. So take that with a grain of salt. It seems very dependent on 3G chipsets getting to the power efficency levels that Apple wants.

4. You think you read/heard a rumor that AT&T said it was coming in 2008. Maybe. And maybe not. On Wednesday, November 28th, 2007, Randall Stephenson, Chief Executive Officer of AT&T was speaking at the Churchill Club. You can listen to the complete audio of the event here on AT&T’s website (or go here for the direct MP3 link). If you’re feeling impatient, skip forward to roughly the 45 minute mark, where you will hear Randall answer the following question:

Q: “The 3g iPhone. When?”

A: “Uh, has Jobs announced that? I don’t think he’s announced that.
You’ll have it next year.”

Q: “How much is it [the 3G chipset] going to affect the price of the phone?”

A: “I don’t know. Steve will dictate what the price of the phone is.“

Given that this was on November 28th, and that Steve had made his “Hopefully … late next year” comment about 2 months prior, for all we know, Randall might have just been playing off of Steve’s comment. It’s impossible to know for sure.

5. “Won’t they have to file with the FCC well in advance, and then we will know?” Yes, Apple will have to file with the FCC in advance of releasing a 3G handset in the United States. But that information can be kept confidential (i.e.: not leaked on the FCC website) until the product is very close to becoming available the market. While I wouldn’t even try to claim to be an expert on the legalities of what companies can ask the FCC to withhold, versus what the citizens of the US have a right to know, looking at the first iPhone launch paints a pretty clear picture. According to the FCC website, it would appear that Apple filed their documents for the iPhone on March 9th, but were able to keep them suppressed until about May 17th — about 43 days before the actual US launch on June 29th.

6. “I heard they were going to release a 3G iPhone in <insert non-US market here>”. I have no idea. And neither does anyone else. See point #1 above.

That’s it - that’s the FACTS as they exist today. Beyond that, anything else is rampant speculation … even if it comes from “financial analysts” from big brokerage firms.

But since no post about a 3G iPhone launch would be complete without add my own best guess in for good measure - so here it is: New 3G iPhone, not much sooner than Christmas 2008. And *at best*, you’ll have about 1 months’ advance notice…

Ok, let’s play a little game here …

The news around the web is that News Corp and Yahoo! apparently have been in some sort of talks about an acquisition. Might happen, might not. But the one thing that does seem to be known is the pricetag of $12 billion.

Ok, first off - kudos to Robert Murdoch if he can pull that off. He’ll have made the stock market equivalent of a real-estate flip, and profited handsomely from the process. But am I the only one, or does this seem like such an insanely large acqusition price, that it could be risky for Yahoo! as a whole?

I always find these analysis interesting, because people quickly start looking at the trees (”Ah! But they have a $1bn agreement with Google!” and “Well, it’s an all-stock transaction, so blah blah blah…”) and ignore the forest completely — the simple fact that Yahoo!’s current US market capitalization is $37bn today, according to their own quotes, which means they are effectively betting one-third of their company on a single acquisition. Perhaps I’m just a naieve idiot who doesn’t understand the more subtle complexities of market economics … but boy this really feels dot-com-bubbleish to me!

Am I wrong for thinking that? Maybe there are plenty of examples of companies that have paid one-quarter, one-third, or perhaps even more on a single acquisition that have done well with it. But perhaps more often than not, it leads to spectacular failure? I don’t know …

So that’s the game - how many examples of successess or failures can we come up with, where one-quarter of the acquiring company’s market cap (or more) was involved. Doesn’t matter if it’s cash, or stock, or cash and stock …

I’ll start the ball rolling. In 2000, PSINet acquired Metamor Worldwide for $2 billion dollars. At the time, their market capitalization in the US was $6 billion. Guess where they ended up? Bankruptcy 12 months later, and they never made it back out (they were sold off in parts). So — that one was a failure.

Got other examples? Leave them in the comments below … I need to figure out if I should start selling Yahoo shares short