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Jobs' Next Fight — Dealing With iPhone Hackers
An anonymous reader writes "With Steve Jobs' recent announcement of his intention to fight off the independent iPhone developers, the question worth asking is: How will Apple try to defeat the hackers: Software updates, or lawsuits? Will Apple risk losing its most frequently (ab)used legal tool, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, in order to try and punish the developers of the iPhone unlocking tools? This CNET article explores the legal issues involved in this, which make it perfectly legal to reverse engineer your own iPhone, but illegal to share your circumventing source code with others."
Too bad for Jobs that it is legal to unlock your iPhone to use it with a different carrier.
Shh.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Does Apple truly have much to lose from iPhone hackery?
Yes.
To say nothing of other intangibles like wanting to guarantee a seamless user experience with iTunes, activation, the carrier partner, etc.
... To say roll on OpenMoko http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Main_Page
:)
I know which way I will go and Jobs can stick his iTunes et al. Free your phone!! What more is there to say
Rooster - A friend. "Anyone's friend in particular or just generally well disposed to people?"
Does Apple truly have much to lose from iPhone hackery?
That is a very good question. For the life of me, I can't think of any sound reason why the answer would be "yes."
It seems that Jobs himself is still trapped in the must-have-the-whole-pie mindset that results in user frustration, smaller pies, and hacks. There really is no other motivation for this sort of arbitrary limitation on a technical product.
Incidentally, this is the reason I don't own an iPhone. Instead I bought an unlocked Nokia 5300 ExpressMusic. It has a USB port that allows me to transfer any files I want to and from any computer I want, without the need for special software, and it also lets me use any MP3 I get my hands on (by any means) as a ringtone (no fees, no limitations). Most importantly: I can write my own apps for the phone in Java, or download third-party apps.
My Nokia isn't as pretty as the iPhone, but it actually does what I want it to do, unlike the iPhone. If the iPhone was similarly open, I would have ponied up the dough for one.
Oh well. Eventually a sufficiently unburdened clone will be available and I will buy that (but probably not until my Nokia wears out).
While it says, "Apple is getting an unprecedented windfall on the sale of each new iPhone", the implicit assumption using any level of logic is that AT&T pays Apple based on activations, not on Apple simply giving them a report of the number of iPhones sold and AT&T anteing up without question. Further proof that it is based on activated phones on AT&T, and not just sold phones, and that there is an infrastructure to track and support this, is the fact that Apple is also getting a kickback on monthly service fees, to the tune of a rumored 3%/month for existing customers and a whopping 10%/month for new customers.
Even IF AT&T were just paying Apple for iPhones sold and not activated (which they're not, and which would be utterly stupid), Apple would still lose the monthly fee kickback, and AT&T would likely get very irritated at paying Apple for iPhones not activated on AT&T.
Your statement about AT&T not suffering in that scenario is remarkable, because they absolutely do not get the service fee if the phone is unlocked and not used on AT&T's network. Now if you're talking about people who ARE AT&T iPhone customers that simply choose to unlock their iPhone, I'd agree with you - to a point. But I'm talking about iPhones unlocked and never activated or used on AT&T, which is going to be an increasing number of iPhones. That's a much bigger market than you think it is.
You're right, of course...but the problem with the iPhone is that it's *easy* to update the firmware, and people will want to do so, because it will fix bugs and add new features, sometimes significant (like the iTunes WiFi Music Store, new apps, etc.) And these firmware updates, especially those that update the radio firmware, could at best re-lock or at worst break the phone, even if Apple doesn't intend that to be the case. And as Apple fixes issues in the software itself which were first used to enable unlocking, it may be a long search for the next vulnerability to enable unlocking the iPhone - the first one took months, and while we have a baseline level of knowledge, it might not suddenly mean that it's going to be easy or quick the next time around. So while you're right that unlocked iPhones will absolutely stay unlocked if left at the same firmware, the iPhone is a unique device in that such updates are easy and many people will WANT to do just that.
- Once a contract has been fulfilled, Cicconi says AT&T will "gladly unlock" a customer's phone, if requested
Perhaps that means canceling prior to the 15-day or whatnot window most contracts allow. At least they're talking the right talk, I'd love to hear someone who goes after AT&T to unlock the phones per their promise/assertion to the media, or allow them to face a lawsuit if they don't. I think it would be good for consumers overall, but then again such a small percentage of the US public leaves the US and would need to use a local SIM.From the sidebar of the very article you link:
AT&T will unlock phones for customers once they have fulfilled their contracts, which typically run one to two years. One big exception: Apple's iPhone, distributed exclusively in the USA by AT&T. "That's different," says AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel.
For how the iPhone is "different", see here.
What's more ironic is that the long distance carrier the "blue box" worked on was Bell, formerly AT&T !
~ In Trust, We Trust ~
Both Steve Jobs and Greg Joswiak have indicated they have a "neutral" stance on 3rd party hacking that's related to native application development. The area they have problems with is SIM unlocking.
I'm Canadian, I've been paying AT&T for a while (they make it a PITA too when you don't have a U.S. credit card). I don't have an issue paying AT&T money given how crappy our data plans are in Canada so far anyway.
Now, I've unlocked my phone, and am even happier. Sure, I'll be disappointed when future modem firmware updates break the unlock, but frankly, I expect it. There are no guarantees with hacking. But I also expect the hackers to overcome new firmware changes within a matter of days, unless there is a major software change to the way the iPhone firmware works (not likely).
-Stu
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