On the bricking of iPhones….
For those who are unaware, or simply don’t care, the current status of the unlocked iPhone’s is that when you upgrade them to Version 1.1.1 with your unlock in place your phone will probably become a brick. Apple released a warning that clearly stated this and you are a fool if you updated your phone after altering the firmware. Frankly, this was expected and reasonable. When you bought this phone you understood that it would only work on the AT&T network. After altering the product to break that agreement then complaining when Apple won’t service it is silly. It is as silly as the class action lawsuit filled a few weeks ago about the battery, or if you were angry that it wasn’t on the 3G network and wanted your money back. If you didn’t know these things before you bought the product then you are a poor consumer who deserves to get screwed.
But the idea that Apple is fighting against third party Apps is insane. When you upgrade your phone to Version 1.1.1 and you have third party apps running, the upgrade will wipe out everything that isn’t supposed to run natively on the phone. Apple has also gone though the trouble of requiring encryption and some sort of digital signing for applications to work on the phone, making it extremely difficult to crack. This is a mistake and it hurts the iPhones future as a new computing platform. In doing this Apple has stated that it wants to monopolize on everything that happens on the iPhone and that is not the model that a computer company should take.
But looking into the future, when third party ring tones were officially broken in version 1.0.3 it was because Apple supported ring tones were coming very soon. This move might mean some kind of SDK is about to come out, allowing people to develop applications that will be authorized by Apple. So Apple might have just closed a window to open the door wide open.
A note, I have not done anything to my Phone with third party software. I did use the iTunes cheat to get free ring tones until Apple broke it. My reason is that every time someone has a hacked iPhone their home page is cluttered with useless garbage that I’ll never use that they tossed on just to prove they can hack their iPhone. I’ve been sitting back and waiting to see what would happen, I’ve been impressed and disappointed so far…. and now that Apple has locked things down we can only wait and see who makes the next movie; Apple or the hackers.
Photo: Wired
THe Hackers. I just hope this does not turn into another Sony PSP deal… Good writing, BTW. Email me if you are interested in writing about Apple for another site.