I'm not the first, nor will I be the last. But last week while I was on a business trip to the US (Minneapolis, -20 degrees; but sunny and still, so it was actually quite pleasant) I stopped by the Mall of America and their Apple Store … and walked out with a 16GB iPhone, for US$499.
Apple just sell the iPhone itself, and don't mind what you're going to do with it. When it switches on, the only thing it will do is demand to be connected to iTunes. And the only thing that iTunes will do to a new iPhone is to sign it up to AT&T.
Obviously I don't want service from AT&T, being in NZ (and therefore having to use Vodafone …). So step one was to find someone who has successfully hacked iPhones, to tell me what I needed to know … Thanks Alex!
There are two things that need to be done; the phone needs to be unlocked to allow it to work with Vodafone, and it needs to be jailbroken in order to install extra applications and software mods.
The same program will do both; ZiPhone – and it'll do it from both Windows and OS X. You can ignore all the other methods; this one works fine :-) As soon as iTunes detects your phone, and before you ask it to do anything, run ZiPhone, and say “Do it all!”. Sit back for a few minutes and watch the text console scroll by happily …
When it's done, you'll have an iPhone that works just fine with Vodafone NZ, and can have extra applications installed on it with the (new) Installer app. What you choose to put on is up to you!