> will have their existing 2-year commitment restarted when buying a new iPhone.

Cellphone companies are the ultimate evil.

Actually I thought this was a very un-evil thing for them to do, considering my experience with cell phone companies in the past. They could have said that you can't upgrade, or that upgrading would tack on two additional years. Instead they said your 2-year commitment will restart, which is pretty awesome I think.

But they are tacking on an additional two years?

Not on top of the remainder of the 2 year contract from the last iPhone. (i.e. rather than extending your contract to 3 years, they just delete the old contract and create a new one that is 2 years)

Yeah, either way, that sucks.

Brilliant evil really. Business genius I guess it could be.

How else can they convince people that < 100 bytes is worth 20cents? (SMS)

Not having any other choice means they don't have to convince anyone.

There goes Apple's main motivation to try and prevent iPhones from being unlocked.

Why would that be motivation in the first place? The contracts have a minimum run-time of 2 years, so Apple wins even if you pop a different SIM in the phone.