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Anonymous Programmers Reveal iPhone Unlocking Software
CNN reports details of a group of anonymous programmers who are planning to sell iPhone unlocking software on the Internet. They demonstrated the software hack for CNN and had a T-Mobile sim card working moments after removing the AT&T sim card. This is bound to stir up a lot of controversy: in the US iPhones are supposed to work only on the AT&T network in the first two years according to their agreement with Apple.
..that people are going to use their gadgets in ways other than the ones they're 'supposed' to.
At the bottom of the
... here in sweden we are allowed to do whatever we want with hardware that we buy.....
The big deal is that there are two companies that agreed to a mutually beneficial deal, ripping off their customer, and someone dared to muscle in and offer the customer what he wants.
In other words, the DMCA must come to the rescue.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't know that you really understand the corporate mindset behind locking down of phones. It's not about making the hardware cheaper, on a world scale it's already about as cheap as it's going to get - America is part of a small and unique set of countries in which the phone companies have given people the ability to get a desirable object 'right now', often with no up front payment - it feels like it's free. The contract already makes the phone company more money than what they paid for the handset, plus enough to keep their systems running, along with a little extra to bolster the profit margins.
They've found ways to make even more money on top of this by tweaking firmware to force customers to pay extra for things they could have already done for free. This is a cash cow, nothing less. People want the phone as soon as they feel the urge to have it, the market built itself around this desire. It's not wrong, I don't even think that it's bad. After all, even in America people can still buy a phone outright. They have a choice.
I haven't heard anything about the functionality of these unlocked phones. Are all of the features of the AT&T data plans functional with a different carrier or is it additionally locked down in some way? Also, what happens when Apple pushes out an update that disables this hack. If the developers can't come up with a new hack in time, what happens to all the people who paid for the original hack that no longer works?
Name...That...Autocomplete!
Now hold on there. I don't believe either Apple or AT&T have (really) made any threats over this. The latter was claimed to have made a threat by one unlocking group that has yet to demonstrate a working product and isn't even located within the US, but it's notable that both the group that's the subject of this article, and the kid who used a hardware hack a week or so ago and thus gets credit for being "first" have not reported any threats of legal action. Given the sheer improbability of this (evil mobile operators would more likely sue real phone unlockers) and given the lack of compelling evidence a lawsuit even exists, most people believe that the "lawsuit" is fictional, made up to drum up publicity.
AT&T, so far, seems content to let Apple handle the issue (which is all they can do, because AT&T doesn't have a legal leg to stand on, not having any relationship to people who have yet to activate an iPhone, and not owning any of the IP associated with the iPhone), and Apple seems content, thus far, to either ignore the issue or use technical measures. Apple's room for legal maneuvering is open to question too, given the US Copyright Office has already given a public, explicit, exemption from the DMCA for phone unlocking.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
"Yes, but we live in Europe, the Continent of the Free"
Free? What? Do you mean you don't have to pay taxes to kill people in places you can't find on a map?
http://iphone.fiveforty.net/wiki/index.php/GUI_App lications
There are currently 32 native iPhone apps on that page including 8 games, an AIM client, 2 IRC clients (not including BitchX), a fully functional VT100 terminal, RSS, eBook readers and much more with the development constantly growing. These are all open source and written in UIKit/Cocoa, with other apps happening that aren't listed there.
Just because the application development isn't officially Apple sanctioned doesn't mean it isn't happening.
That estimate only covers the cost of parts!
/. has all these folks who claim to be
Not to be too cynical, but seeing as
uber geeks and hax0rs, I shouldn't have to state that they must have spent a
fortune on programming for this product. EVEN if they used only ultra cheap
programmers from you-know-where-places, it would still have taken many many
thousands of hours to write, and assuming it was put together in China, and shipped
to the US, a cost of $220 is about as realistic as the $1000 arse value.
No, I suspect, a more realistic cost to be in the neighborhood of $500 to produce.
My reasoning is based on:
1) having worked for years in the assembly of everything from EKGs to IBM Mainframes to 747 flight simulators
(not your video programs, but full scale mock ups of the cockpit), so I have firsthand knowledge of what
it takes to assemble electronic devices,
2) Having worked for years in the shipping business, I know what it costs to ship products from China in 40'
containers over the ocean,
3) the amount of advertising that was done,
4) the cost of software development (my current line of work),
5) cost of prototyping, packaging, product manuals, etc.