Apple May Be Breaking the Law With Policy On iPhone Unlocks

an anonymous reader writes "Apple's recent decision to void warranties for folks that unlocked their iPhones may wind them up in legal hot water. The site Phone News points out that Apple appears to have broken a key warranty law relevant to SIM unlocks. The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, a law decades old, would seem to prevent Apple from voiding warranties in the way it is threatening to do with the iPhone, or so the site argues. 'The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act states that Apple cannot void a warranty for a product with third-party enhancements or modifications to their product. The only exception to this rule is if Apple can determine that the modification or enhancement is responsible [for] damaging the product in question ... The legal [questions are]: Is the SIM Unlock process that has become mainstream doing damage to iPhone? And, also, is Apple designing future software updates to do damage to iPhone when said SIM Unlock code is present?'"

Comments

Re:Why this is probably wrong

[betterunixthanunix]

Apple knows that the best course is to protect their exclusive contract, not to leave the phones as-is, and certainly not to shrug off people hacking their iPhones. Apple isn't doing this because they dislike their customers; they are doing it because they don't respect their customers. They also happen to be thwarting attempts to sync iPods with software other than iTunes -- I suppose this is also a completely normal, acceptable practice, to prevent people who use Amarok or Rhythmbox from syncing up their iPod?

Maybe they didn't tell their developers to find a way to cause hacked iPhones to stop functioning. But I doubt that when one of their developers said at a meeting, "...and this update will cause unlocked iPhones to stop functioning..." they thought anything other than, "Good!"

Re:Why this is probably wrong

[betterunixthanunix]

This hash has absolutely no technical use. The iPods worked fine before the hash, and exhibit the same level of functionality with the hash. All the hash does is restrict how the iPod can be synced.

Or can you demonstrate a legitimate, technical need for that hash to be there?

Re:Why this is probably wrong

[mstone]

You haven't spent much time working with real-time signal processing systems, have you?

By way of analogy, think about juggling: You don't throw the ball to where your hand is right now. You throw it to the correct spot in the pattern -- 12" off center, and 36" off the ground -- then make sure your hand is in the right place by the time the ball comes down. It requires some prediction and timing, but it's basically doable.

Now try doing it in an earthquake. The 'correct spot in the pattern' is no longer a simple location. You have to predict where the ground will be when the ball comes down, and adjust your throw accordingly. That's a lot more complicated, and there's always a chance that something will happen between the throw and the catch that you didn't predict.

The number of possible states and unpredictable events is more or less infinite, so there's no way you can possibly cover them all. The best you can do is try to keep everything within a range where you can spot the failures early enough to recover before they trigger a train wreck.

Systems like that are delicate. Screw with the timing just a little, and you can bump a few 'recoverable' cases over into the 'train wreck' category. They won't show up right away, though.. you have to get just the right combination of events before the thing will hang.

And with embedded systems, there's no option to shut down, reload the program, and start from a fresh, known state.

And, of course, the job is just that much harder when someone else has fiddled with the system in ways you don't know about.

Apple's announcement is just their way of saying they can't be positive they've hit every possible edge case that might cause this next update to interact badly with any unknown, unauthorized, and unsupported firmware tinkering people might have chosen to do on their own.

Honestly, I don't know why there's so much fuss about this. Hacking the firmware is very much an "at your own risk" procedure, and anyone who pretends not to know that is being deliberately stupid.

And why is everybody dumping this problem on Apple? Why aren't people yelling at the guys who released the unlocking software, demanding a "100% guaranteed or we'll replace your iPhone for free" reversion kit? If anyone should know how to return a hacked iPhone to its factory state, it would be the guys who hacked it in the first place.