Following up from last week, when I asked:

When you lease an iPhone through Apple Upgrade, you need a cellular account on one of the big three U.S. carriers: AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon. That kind of stinks, and I’m not quite sure I understand why. You’re leasing the iPhone through Apple and Klarna, not the carrier, so I don’t know why Apple cares. If you know why, shoot me a message and explain it. Is it just a simplistic credit-risk evaluation, where prepaid plan-holders and MVNO users in general are viewed suspiciously?

I got a slew of messages about this. Credit-risk assessment is seemingly part of it. There’s a lot of fraud in iPhone purchases specifically and cell phone service generally. The big three carriers do a significant amount of risk assessment before letting you open a new postpaid account; that you have an active account with one of them is a signal that you’re not trying to lease an iPhone using phony credentials in order to sell it.

But the bigger reason is the complex nature of the contracts between Apple and each of the big three carriers. A reader who worked on the carrier team at Apple for a long time (but left a few years ago) wrote:

In response to your question on why Apple would only offer iPhone on the “Big 3” for the new Upgrade Program: Every year, the Carrier Teams at Apple negotiate a deal/program (hundreds of millions of dollars) with each of those Big 3. In return for those dollars, Apple will make concessions exactly like this (or similar.) This is also why, for example, their logos appear more prominently or are the only ones called out on signage, commercials, etc… Although they really aren’t threatened by MVNO’s (the ones they don’t own) or regional carriers, it’s more like Apple is selling it as part of a package deal that’s exclusively offered to its biggest and best “tier 1” partners. It also acts as a carrot to perpetually try to motivate smaller partners into behavior Apple wants.

This might change — some of the bigger MVNOs are trying to work their way into “tier 1” (or maybe create a new “tier 1.5”). But for many years now, part of the co-marketing agreements between Apple and the Big Three is Apple agreeing to require a postpaid account with a Big Three carrier for all “special” iPhone financing deals, including the old iPhone Upgrade Program and the new Apple Upgrade leasing.

One interesting exception is that Boost Mobile is included alongside the Big Three for Apple Card Monthly Installments (ACMI), a program that offers 0% APR on certain products if you pay for them using an Apple Card. From the ACMI small print:

In order to buy an iPhone with ACMI, you must select one of the following carriers (prepaid carrier plans are not supported): AT&T, Boost Mobile, T-Mobile, or Verizon. An iPhone purchased with ACMI is always unlocked, so you can switch carriers at any time, subject to your carrier’s terms.

So perhaps some of the bigger MVNO carriers might work their way into Apple Upgrade — but if they do, it sounds like they’ll need to pay Apple for the privilege.

With regard to fraud, a former Apple Store retail employee wrote:

I left in 2019, but I’d estimate on some days a double digit percentage of in-person phone sales were fraudulent.

This behavior absolutely exploded when you started to be able to do carrier financing in the store. They had stolen the identity of a legit account holder, come into the store with the info needed to access the account. They always wanted the highest end phone, and would pay the sales tax due at time of sale in cash. Never wanted any accessories. Never wanted to open the box or set up the phone.

As bad as it was with the activation requirement, it would be way worse without it. I believe it’s gotten a lot better, and the carriers have more advanced systems in place to detect and deter this behavior now. But ultimately, the carriers ate the cost for millions of dollars in devices they never got paid for.

I suspect that reader is correct that Apple, in collaboration with the carriers, has cracked down on this.

Ulysses S. Grant, in 1875:

Where the citizen is sovereign and the official the servant, where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign — the people — should possess intelligence.

The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.

Not sure if the 2020s count as “the near future”, but holy hell is that a spot-on synopsis of our current moment.

Bobby Allyn, reporting for NPR:

Trump Media & Technology Group is now shopping to traders and investors a premium version of Truth Social delivering early access to the feeds of high-profile users, including the president. Starting Saturday, for a fee of up to $100,000 a month, trading firms can access “Truth API” to get a glimpse of the president’s often market-moving announcements about economic policy and global affairs before the rest of the world.

Trump’s media company says customers have already started signing up. Such an offering would give institutional investors a leg up in areas of finance like high-frequency trading, where an advantage of a few milliseconds can mean the difference of millions of dollars. But will the service be widely adopted across Wall Street?

“It’s insane,” said one Wall Street executive, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation from the Trump administration. “I can say for myself and 200 of my friends in finance, we’re not getting anywhere near this. In another administration, this would be considered criminal.”

It is criminal. It’s prima facie insider-trading-as-a-service, or at least it’s intended to be. And in the next administration, there’s no reason to think it won’t be prosecuted as such. It really is astonishing how far the Trump 2.0 administration is willing to take the notion that it’s not corruption if it’s done in the open. There’s an old adage that it’s not the crime but the cover-up that does you in. They’ve taken this to heart and just eschewed the cover-ups.