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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."
The iPod is already available in countries without DMCA-style laws.
...ummm no, it means that people in a position too are trying to help others not get screwed by a vendor locked-in product that wants to charge you for a ringtone that you can make yourself. Instead of attacking developers who wish to enlighten a public entranced by Apple, perhaps they shouldn't base a revenue stream on vendor lockin and ripoff ringtones. If you ask me (flame on that noones asking), they should be the ones providing such a ringtone app. They are all about ease of use for the masses... oh wait, I forgot its easier for someone to pay them then do it themselves.
Walk with Music;
They be takin' on the Jolly Roger. I be thinkin' they be changin' the iPhone to detect meddlin' with their cabal. Add a checksum or something.
Lawsuits be expensive.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Too bad for Jobs that it is legal to unlock your iPhone to use it with a different carrier.
Shh.
Does Apple truly have much to lose from iPhone hackery?
The only people this really harms is AT&T, and Jobs has never shown the slightest inclination before towards caring about a business partner getting fucked over. If it suits his needs, he'll probably want Apple to subtly encourage it.
I would.
For the record, I will be surprised if Apple actively tries to re-lock already-unlocked phones, but I would not be surprised if they try to prevent unlocking in future firmware updates, considering the current unlock mechanism uses an overflow condition that will likely be, well, fixed in future updates (should Apple not fix a potentially exploitable buffer overflow on the iPhone?). Then, someone will find some other exploitable condition to unlock the iPhone, and the game continues.
Every GSM handset under the sun has been unlocked. The main difference with iPhone is that people are more likely to do regular full firmware updates with the iPhone due to the kind of product it is and the ease of doing so via iTunes, as opposed to other GSM handsets. But I can't see Apple relocking already-unlocked phones.
That said, while an explicit exemption exists that allows end customers to legally unlock GSM handsets in the US, no such requirement exists for a vendor to allow it, document it, or provide such a capability to the customer (see also "DMCA Exemption Attorney Weighs in on iPhone Unlocking".
Further, requirements in various jurisdictions that the carrier provide a means to unlock the handset after the contract term, i.e., after the subsidy is paid, MAY NOT at all apply to the iPhone, since the iPhone is technically unsubsidized. Apple appears to be negotiating backchannel subsidies and unprecedented monthly kickbacks from carriers...but the iPhone itself still isn't subsidized under the traditional subsidy model: you can buy an iPhone, walk out, and NEVER activate it, and the phone is yours to keep. However, this may also mean that no carrier is ever obligated to unlock it for you.
Also, Apple is depending on the expected profits from AT&T kickbacks for AT&T activations...that's how the iPhone price is structured. Now, if you can figure out how to unlock your phone and use it on another carrier, great. But also don't cry if Apple throws roadblocks in the way. You can argue that "it's only good for Apple" if people get to use unlocked iPhones, but that's not your decision to make, unfortunately - it's Apple's. Don't get me wrong: YOU can decide it's good for YOU. But you don't get to decide that it's good for Apple, or anyone else. And with things like seamless activation via iTunes, Visual Voicemail, and all the tight integration that requires enormous amounts of backend cooperation with the carrier partner (think about how iPhone activation works and how it must have been to pull something like that off), is it any surprise Apple wants to keep the iPhone experience with the carrier partner?
And think of all the other ways iPhone is unique: you get to walk out of the store with it sealed in a box, it can be easily bought as a gift, the customer does activation themselves in the comfort of their own homes with a pleasant interface, and so on.
So if people can figure out how to unlock the phone, great. But don't expect Apple to not fix actual bugs like buffer overflows in the phone that are coincidentally used to enable unlocking, and don't assume that ANYONE will ever be "required" to unlock iPhones, unless it is simply flat out illegal to have a SIMlocked phone in a particular jurisdiction, in which case Apple would probably elect to skip that market entirely.
This is a lot like the Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware arguments. People always say it's "better for Apple" or "free advertising for Apple". No. Pirating the OS is not good for Apple. And even if you say "but I'd buy it for $129!" that also doesn't solve it...the $129 price is predicated on the fact that there is Apple hardware that goes along with it. So then you say, "Well, I'd even pay $250 or more! Would that fix it?" No, because part of the Apple experience is the seamless integration and things "just workin
Mr. Jobs, can you tell us why it's your job to do that? You sell hardware. We are the customer. Is AT&T paying you to keep that exclusivity by all technical means? Oh, wait, I see. We are the consumer, not the customer. See, whenever industry uses the word consumer, it means there's someone else (such as another company) who is actually the customer. "The customer is always right" doesn't apply if we're just sheeple consumers.
[
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
I love how companies don't deny your right to fair use, they just put restrictions around the device that make it illegal to even access fair use. That's like saying, "You have the right to free speech, but only at this designated microphone that can be found inside the 4th underground level at Area 51."
"Thank you for using Stop-n-Drop, America's favorite suicide booth since 2008"
Yes, it is. (And apparently you didn't read any of the linked articles, because there are a lot more issues here.)
But it the manufacturer doesn't have to allow or enable it. If you can figure it out, great. But if they also stop that same unlocking procedure in future software or hardware iterations of the phone, they can.
And I really don't think Apple will be "relocking" phones...they'll likely just be plugging the holes that allowed them to be unlocked in the first place in future firmware versions. That said, I guess I wouldn't be stunned if some unlocked phones broke, intentionally or otherwise. But all of this has NO BEARING on the DMCA exception. The vendor is under zero obligation to enable unlocking.
So it's not "too bad for Jobs" at all, unfortunately.
Lip service. There is very little interest for Apple to stop people modifying their products because their current business model focuses on hardware sales. The problem is, though, if they are not looked upon by their content partners as working very hard to protect their content, then there will not be anything to put on that hardware... So, the end result is a constant stream of weak patches and allot of talk. (The recent iPhone ringtones "patch" is a great example of this) At the end of the day, though, nothing will change...
Apple does not seem to know who its friends are. People are taking a great hardware design (for which Apple is justifiably famous), and improving its functionality through improved or additional software. Everybody wins!
Except when some company becomes egomaniacal and starts trying to grab it all for itself. Even Microsoft did not go so far as to actually try to block "independent developers" outright.
I think Mr. Jobs is required to say things like this. How would it look to his big (and only) US carrier partner locked in for 5 years or whatever it is, if he said "We condone the hackers and their unlocking software". What they actually do about it will really tell the story, and that's a wait and see game, so no use speculating.
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
I think at times we forget at times Apple is a company and they are in it to make money.
I thought Apple was a religion.
But then most religions exist to make money/fleece the err customers.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
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.
Ultimately, if there is enough motivation in the tech community to hack products then they will be hacked. Look at the RIAA and music files, P2P file sharing and hacking is prolific even after years of intense legal battles. But let's look at what's happening here. Not all hacking is for evil and malicious ends, often times hacking products or developing new programs for them is a way to improve a product. If there is enough interest to crack the iphone and generate a lot of 3rd party apps, then maybe apple isn't doing enough to deliver a product that consumers really want. Finally, look at a company like Sony. They were very draconian about DRM, proprietary formats, and not letting their devices be tweaked and they've had a lot of lost market share and failed products. Does anyone remember the MiniDisc player? Letting the community be involved in a product, whether through 3rd party apps etc. helps generate users, as well as keeps people interested in the product.
I believe that statement was for the benefit of AT&T and future partners. The fact of the matter is that since June 30th, Apple has released only two updates to the iPhone software. Is this the action of a company desperate to keep people out? Jobs is not concerned with hackers playing around with iPhones. Presumably they bought them, Apple got paid.
Remember when all the fanboys were soapboxing that the iPhone was going to revolutionize the cell phone market and make it more open? Misinterpreting the fact that the phone wasn't going to be subsidized by AT&T as a sign that there would be no carrier lock-in? Those cynics among us - which oddly were in the minority - predicted that no subsidy meant you're simply paying more for a device that STILL requires a two-year contract, and that Apple's attitude toward developers and users was going to be exactly like every product they sell. Tightly controlled hardware and software. The braying of the faithful never ceases to amaze me. When people started circumventing the iPhone's locks, they claimed that Jobs *intentionally* made it easy to hack the iPhone. Now this... Wait for the OpenMoko, kids.
I have always wondered why there are so many FOSS advocates who put up with Apple's DRM'd little empire. Somehow, if Apple does the same thing that Microsoft does, Apple gets a pass, but why? And perhaps, more important, what can the FOSS community do to move Apple in a more Free and open source direction.
Are people really happy with Apple's contributions to BSD and Konqueror code?
If people are willing to put up with lock down just because Apple products are slick, I have to ask, are Apple products really that much more slick than Compiz? Is slick performance alone enough of a difference that people will give a pass to Apple?
I am not someone who believes everyone must use gNewSense and use only Free Software, because that is inconvenient for most users. But can't we make a little more effort to support vendors such as HP, Dell, Zareason, TechCollective.com, Emperor Linux, and other similar vendors who offer decent hardware with a better balance of Free to non-Free software?
IMHO, desktop Linux is good enough that we should try to encourage people to give it a shot, rather than just putting up with tyrannical insistence on having everything his own way, including his own little DRM'd desktop. Why put up with a company that would resort to the DMCA to attack its own customers? I understand that there is a lot about the iPhone that is cool, and yes it is a nice platform to hack, but why go to such lengths to hack it when you can't share your hacks?
Mr. Jobs, can you tell us why it's your job to do that? You sell hardware. We are the customer.
People often get this wrong on Apple, like them or not, they don't sell hardware... or really software (much). Apple sells you a solution, an experience, a total package. Their focus and developments are all based on expected hardware and software components being in a certain order or place to ensure they can provide a specific experience to the end user.
In this case the contracts with the carriers probably have explicit clauses saying they will fight to combat unlocks in the same way they fix their aac every quarter or so to try and appease the music companies.
--- I do not moderate.
Even Microsoft did not go so far as to actually try to block "independent developers" outright.
Have you tried writing an app to run on the Xbox without paying licensing fees/royalties to Microsoft?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
... 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?"
Note that I'm not talking about SIM unlocking, which is a seperate issue. Apple should simply offer SIM-unlocked phones for a higher price to make up for the lack of AT&T subsidy.
-b.
At the UK iPhone launch Steve basically reiterated this stance:
Oh, wait - it's not locked in the first place. It does everything the iPhone does, except calls, and cost $300 less. Actually, it does more - I can run whatever code I please, and even write my own programs on the Palm. iPhone owners share the dubious distinction of owning a computer they aren't legally allowed to program.
I'd like to own an iPhone. Honestly, I would. But, though I can pay for the phone, only AT&T can own it. Jobs, Apple, and AT&T want it that way, and if you've paid for an iPhone, you've essentially told them that they can have your cake and eat it too.
The very thing which makes the computer such an enabling device is that it can be reprogrammed to perform almost any task. Unlike the single function devices of the past - such as a calculator, which performs at most one function - a computer is a totally open piece of hardware. The task which it can be programmed to do are limited only by the ingenuity and creativity of the programmer/user.
Until now. With the advent of cellphones, especially locked ones, we are seeing a new trend in computers. Rather than expanding the functionality of computers, they seek to limit it, in order to serve the greed of Corporate America. A device which formerly could be repurposed for any task the owner thought fit is now restricted to performing only the functions which make the manufacturer money. Consumer benefit beyond the original purpose of the device is explicitly and legally forbidden.
And here ends the computer revolution. A formerly beautiful piece of machinery, capable of solving almost any problem, is reduced to serving the utilitarian greed of corporations, in effect, an intellectual slave of the willfully ignorant.
How long before the same happens to the PC? When a PC can only be bought in conjunction with an internet service, and users are legally prevented from installing their own software?
I hope those who buy the iPhone are prepared to deal with a future in which everything they possess is owned and licensed by a corporation. Because they're paving the way for the increased use of restricted, defective by design, hardware.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
If you actually read the link you provided, you will see that Apple gets the same amount of money from AT&T whether or not the phone is unlocked.
And AT&T doesn't even suffer, they get they subscription fee whether or not the customers use any of their service.
iPhone unlocking only have winners.
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.
...but if Apple had their way, they would force those that did buy it to buy ringtones from them as well, instead of making free ones which is their right. Hell even if it was a ringtone of their kid singing whatever it is that kids sing, should u not have a way to make that your ringtone without Apple crying foul?
There seems to be a recurring and ever-increasing theme, especially here in the USA, that customers of any kind, for any product or service, are supposed to be forced into being limited and tightly controlled in what they can and cannot be permitted to do with any product or service they might buy and what products and services they can buy and from whom. This is most disturbing and needs to be reversed.
One of the most ludicrous examples of this kind of mentality I've seen recently was at one of my hometown's city council meetings. The council was voting on spending some money for its I.T. department to upgrade most of their desktop machines with bigger hard drives, more memory and in some cases faster processors so they would be ready to upgrade to MS Vista and Office 2007. One of the local computer vendors who had sold the city some PCs in the past got up during the public comments session and began ranting and raving like a lunatic that it should be against the law for the city govt's own I.T. employees to do this kind of work on the city's own computers, that the city should be required to always have to contract out these upgrades and that they needed to pass a new city ordinance requiring this. He accused the city of "stealing business" from him by doing the work in-house themselves. One of the city aldermen asked him if he thought the city's public works department was "stealing business" from the local plumbers too, for installing and maintaining the city's own water and sewer mains and this idiot said "absolutely".
"Your stance has absolute zero support from the consumers around the world."
What? Frankly, the vast majority of consumers really don't give a rat's a**.
Karma Schmarma
More realistically, what happens when thousands of developers start making awful applications for the iPhone and potential customers see how crappy apps crash and ruin the iPhone's functionality? Combatting this sort of free-for-all development mentality is what has made Macs superior to Windows but at the expense of market share. As an iPhone customer, I bought my phone knowing it works, and works well, and I don't ever want it to be screwed up by a loosely controlled bunch of hack third party mal-ware developers. I can just see it know: I have 252 new visual voice-mails, all of them offering Viagra, P*rn and Free stock quotes. Gee, thanks.
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.
Now if you're talking about people who ARE AT&T iPhone customers that simply choose to unlock their iPhone, I'd agree [that Apple doesn't lose money if the phones are unlocked] - 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.
But the question is, if the iPhone couldn't be unlocked:
a) How many of those phones would have been bought and activated with AT&T (at a potential gain for Apple of $250-$200 bounty plus $9/month for 2 years), and
b) How many would have NOT BEEN SOLD (at whatever their profit margin is on the vastly overpriced piece of commodity hardware)?
IMHO, while a) is very lucrative per phone, b) is a LOT more phones. Especially if the ability to crack iPhones retards the rise of lower-priced but unlocked competitive products. (For starters there are areas of the US that AT&T doesn't cover but some other carrier does. People who live/work/travel there have no reason to buy an iPhone unless they can unlock it.)
Apple needed a network partner to insure connectivity and enable the launch. And the partnership is an enormous revenue stream. So they needed to launch the phone as a locked product and not visibly encourage circumvention of their partner's lock-in. But as long as it doesn't jeopardize their revenue from the phones that are subscribed with their partner it's in their interest to have people buy additional phones and unlock them to use with other carriers.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
A more effective way might be to be vocal about it, discuss it among themselves, etc. That is exactly what this article and discussion is.
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
The posting talks about "Steve Jobs' recent announcement of his intention to fight off the independent iPhone developers..."
This is incorrect. Jobs only said they have to fight the unlock. The actual quote of what he said is,
Q: What are you going to do about iPhone unlocking?
Steve: This is a constant cat and mouse game. We play it on iPods with DRM. We promised music companies to stay ahead of this problem. We try to stay a step ahead. It's going to be the same way here with the iPhone. It's our job to keep them from breaking in. That's job security.
In fact, last week Greg Joswiak, a high level marketing guy at Apple, said that Apple would neither forbid nor support native code on the iPhone/Touch. (He initially said something a bit more positive, but later corrected it since he thought people would read too much into it).I'd imagine that Jobs said that (TFA read way too much into what he said) in order to keep the providers happy. Truth is, the plan w/ att is better than tmobile, for the same or less $ and Jobs will only sell more out of contract iphones to current tmobile users that want to upgrade their phone.
:-)
Jobs will probably break the unlocking for the next few updates just until all the contracts with the providers all over the world are finalized, and then he will shrug his shoulders and say "we tried, but the hackers are just too good," while he watches his sales keep going up
Fix your Dell XPS m1210 screen! -- http://m1210screenfix.blogspot.com
Steve Jobs is not fighting off independant iPhone Developers, indeed Apple has specifically said that they are not going to deliberately fight them off. What Apple may fight off is the illegal distribution of unlocking tools.
There should be a very broad distinction drawn between folks writing productive applications for the iPhone, and folks trying to ruin this by deliberately trying to circumvent the protection measures in the phone.
Do not group these two separate activities together.
Lastly, the posting of articles like this to the Slashdot front page written by Anonymous Cowards should be banned. Be prepared to stand up personally to your article. Real Journalists do this.