Class-Action Lawsuit Over iPhone Locking?

An anonymous reader writes "InfoWeek blogger Alex Wolfe reports that some iPhone users are mad as heck at Apple for bricking up their device in response to non-Apple-authorized software downloads. In a discussion thread on Apple's own iPhone forum, one user posts that he's 'Seeking respondents for possible class action lawsuit against Apple Inc. relating to refusal to service iPhones and related accessories under warranty.' Some who have replied to the post agree that Apple is being unbelievably arrogant and is ripe for legal action. But others say Cupertino is well within its rights to control its own device." Apple seems to have removed the cited post, but it is reproduced as screenshots in the article.

Update: 10/02 02:42 GMT by KD : Reader Cleverboy wrote in to note that the screenshots present in the article are of a posting on Macosrumors, not Apple's forum, and to question the conclusion that Apple removed any posting. The article has been updated since this story went live to make clear that the original posting by user "myndex" was on the Apple forum and was (apparently) removed by Apple; and that the screenshot is of a mirror post myndex made to Macosrumors.

Comments

QTopia Greenphone

[OmniGeek]

Anyone seen the cover of Linux Journal? Trolltech has released the QTopia Greenphone, an Open Source GSM/EDGE smartphone that costs about $695 WITH a GPL'ed software development kit. (http://trolltech.com/products/qtopia/greenphone/index) While it perhaps isn't as sexy as the iPhone in terms of UI, it IS an open device, costs about the same as the iPhone, is guaranteed never to be bricked by the manufacturer, and encourages user development and contributions to its features. And it runs Linux. If THAT isn't a better deal than an iPhone, I dunno what is.

Re:Bad move apple

[Phroggy]

And to be honest, acquiring NextStep back when they did was a failure. NextOS and those cubes, as cool as they were, pretty much tanked. It took them a decade to actually start using a derivation of that OS commercially again (the original OS X Server), and a few more years after that before it was truly ready as a desktop/workstation environment. Apple acquired NeXT in 1996, and Mac OS X Server 1.0 was released three years later, not ten. The consumer version of Mac OS X 10.0 was released in 2001. The big mistake Apple made was in not anticipating the need for Carbon; they expected all application developers to rewrite their apps in Cocoa. Adobe's rejection of Cocoa was the main thing that forced Apple to create Carbon, and doing so is the reason Mac OS X took so long to get out the door, but it was definitely worth it - Mac OS X would have flopped without native apps.