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

Official Steve Jobs Response

[Anonymous Coward]

can be found here ;-)

Re:Official Steve Jobs Response

[exploder]

Steve Jobs: "Oh, shit, someone on a discussion forum is threatening a lawsuit? I give up!"

Re:Official Steve Jobs Response

[Planesdragon]

The class action law suite should be thrown out, every Apple customer know that this is what Apple does. Apple is no better than MS, in fact, in many areas they are worse then MS. 1: A law suite? As in, a bunch of lawyers working in a group of connected rooms, like in a hotel? Yeah, that's kind of creepy. Better disbar the lot of them. (It's "lawsuit", one word.)

2: This is above and beyond Apple's previous behavior, and even if it weren't it may very well violate interoperability laws. An iPhone isn't a standalone device like an iPod or a PSP -- it's a part of a fairly regulated network, and the FCC has some fairly specific rules as to what they can and can't do on a cell phone.

When you get right down to it, Apple bricking unlocked cell phones is pretty much exactly what the FCC is supposed to stop with its jurisdiction over cell phone receivers. It's bad for the economy, and bad for the network.

Re:Official Steve Jobs Response

[mrchaotica]

When you alter your phone in a way not supported by company, you lose your warranty.

No, you don't! There is a law, called the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, which says that unless Apple Can prove that the alteration caused the particular problem, it has to honor the warranty. Apple cannot just decide to void the warranty on unrelated components for no reason.

In good Slashdot tradition, here's a car analogy: If you modify the engine in your vehicle and the radio stops working, the maker cannot refuse to replace the radio because of that modification. In contrast, if it were the transmission that broke, and the maker could prove that the transmission broke because it could rot handle the extra torque of the engine created by the modification, then it could legitimately void the warranty of the transmission (but still not the whole car).

Bad move apple

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem here isn't just that you're pissing off people by bricking their phones. The problem is you are locking down a device that would otherwise be a killer development platform.

Remember how you lost the OS war to Microsoft? Its because Windows had more apps, and it didn't matter that it sucked.

The iPhone's is a fine phone, but its UI and hardware are well suited for all kinds of other apps that will drive sales way beyond just the smart phone market: games, vertical business apps, voip, home controller, etc. It's not just an mp3 player. If you need to rework the AT&T deal just do it, because the platform play is a much bigger opportunity.

Please just open it up already.

Sincerely,
    Apple shareholder

Re:Bad move apple

[bky1701]

I am sure, though, if this was Microsoft, you'd be lambasting them for it. Yet, it's OK because it's Apple. Apple is hip and cool, so whatever they do is justified.

If I post a sign on the wall that says "A means a punch in the face, B means free dinner" and ask you "A or B", I would still be in the wrong for punching you in the face for saying A. Just because someone can give you ice to put on that black eye doesn't make it any less wrong.

Re:Bad move apple

[RalphBNumbers]

way beyond just the smart phone market: games, vertical business apps, voip, home controller, etc

I hate to break it to you, but those apps are all part of the smartphone market.
But in any case, it seems to me that Apple is going "way beyond just the smart phone market" in an entirely different fashion that you're advocating.

Apple is pursuing a less-is-more strategy here imho...
Geeks online have flame wars about weather of not the iPhone is a "real smartphone", with the implied presumption that smartphone status is, or ought to be, a goal Apple is trying to achieve. On the contrary, I suspect that Apple is actively trying to avoid having people perceive the iPhone as a smartphone. Smartphones are either toys for geeks or corporate tethers keeping us chained to work; the iPhone is targeted at the mainstream consumer, not a corporate IT department or the individual geeks working in it.

Apple doesn't want to compete in the "smartphone space", it wants to invent the "iPhone space" and grow it by consuming the mainstream featurephone (and, almost coincidentally, smartphone) markets.

I suspect that Apple will eventually allow some form of native apps for the iPhone, just as they eventually added a bunch of random functionality to the iPod (photos, notes, calendar, video, games, stopwatch, etc...). However, it seems to me that they find it essential to their strategy that the iPhone be initially perceived as a simple, easily understandable, and rock solid device (like an iPod that can make calls, rather than like a complicated programmable smartphone).

Personally, as a programmer and potential customer, I was mad as hell when I heard that the iPhone wouldn't let me write my own native apps; I was overflowing with ideas for that gadget the instant Steve started mentioning all of it's sensors in it's introductory keynote.
But if I were speaking as a shareholder, as you claim to be, I would be hesitant to criticize Apple's initial direction for the iPhone here. While their strategy has yet to prove itself in the cell phone space, and replicating the iPod's crushing success in the semi-mature cellphone market is a very tall order indeed, I wouldn't be too terribly surprised if "no user apps, less features than an N95, lame" is 2009's version of "no wireless, less space than a Nomad, lame."

Re:Bad move apple

[jasen666]

The Lisa was not a bad move. It was one of the first GUI based systems available, and helped shape things to come. Its major problem lay in the fact that the damn thing cost too much.
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.

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.

Re:Bad move apple

[cthellis]

Yes, yes... a horrible idea. After all, they had such amazing OS prospects in house previous to the NeXT acquisition, and building enhancements based on BeOS would have been much more viable.

...

o_O

Just about anyone trying to enter the OS business with any real commercial viability has failed, because... well... the deck was kind of stacked, eh? NeXT had some real "holy crap!" technology that they were delivering--and had been delivering for years what other OS'es were promising and NOT delivering--but as has been constantly shown, that's not all it takes to carve out a market presence.

OSX Server was delivered 2.5 years or so after the acquisition of NeXT, with consumer OSX out two years after that (and to be fair, a solid version took until Jaguar's release in mid-2002, but that's still just over five years since the NeXT acquisition, which is well below your "decade" comment), which in the terms of huge operating systems is a pretty good turnaround for a major overhaul. You think they were futher along and better along with Copland, and were not otherwise spinning their wheels since System 7?

Not only has OSX been one of the best-received operating systems in general, but it certainly revitalized Apple. Not to mention the acquisition of NeXT allowed them to bring back Jobs without a lot of embarrassment for either him or Apple management, and in the end that brought solid leadership back to the company, dumping holes, simplifying and solidifying their product line, revitalizing their image, bringing in the iMac, some good sales, some actual good press...

It was pretty much the best decision they could have made, all things considered.

Apple's device?

[codemachine]

But others say Cupertino is well within its rights to control its own device.

Wouldn't the phone belong to the person who bought it, not Apple?

It'll be interesting to see what happens here, since it isn't uncommon for companies to refuse warranty for "unauthorized" use.

Re:Apple's device?

[erroneus]

Bill Gates has done a LOT to screw up the world of hardware and software.

Before Gates, software was not a "product." It was something that helped to make hardware useful. People created it, shared it, ported it and everything that OSS is attempting to recapture. The "product" was the hardware. And sure, hardware makers paid software writers to make stuff for their hardware, but the idea of selling the software to the USER as a product I blame on Bill Gates and the problems that come from that continue on and on and on. Worse is that buyers never "own" the software they think they are buying. They are only getting a 'license' to use it... a license with terms like "if it doesn't work, you can't have your money back and we don't *have* to support it if we don't want to" and "you can't take it apart to see how it works and you damned sure can't modify it and give it to other people!"

The "device" that is the iPhone, is a combination of hardware and software. I'll bet that even though you think you "own" your iPhone, you don't. You own the hardware and if some genius finds a way to unbrick one and installs all new, non-apple, software to make it useful and makes it FREE, then you can claim to own your iPhone. But since the software component is a license to use and not a collection of bits and bytes wholly owned by the owner of the iPhone hardware, effectively, you don't own the iPhone.

Now whether or not a court will over-rule this particular situation is another matter, but as it stands anything with software running on it that's not OSS runs the risk of the licensor insisting on some pretty unreasonable and limiting terms. And the worst part about it all? People [consumers] *still* can't wrap their minds around the idea that they don't own what they paid for.

Re:Apple's device?

[Detritus]

Here's a nickel, kid. Buy yourself a real history book. Software was a "product" long before Bill Gates started hawking his wares. They just weren't marketing it to Joe Consumer.

Users

[El Lobo]

It is true that Apple are in their right to release the device under the license they want. The problem is in the user. How in hell do you want to buy a device with is locked to a single carrier, and more, whith a solded battery (we are talking about a PHONE here!), and wich is imo (and in other's opinions) overpriced, and not even the "best" in their class? Just because it has a rotten apple drawn in it's surface? Well, the buyers **are** the stupid part here. Hell, I don't even own an Ipod because it's not good enough for me. Having the Apple in the white shining surface may make you cool in the eyes of the teenagers, but doesn't mean a thing for me.

Steve brought this on himself...

[Dzimas]

I quite clearly remember Jobs standing on stage at Moscone declaring proudly that the iPhone ran OS X. Everyone oohhed and ahhhed as they began to realize what this meant: the iPhone was a full-fledged miniature PC powered by their fave OS. Think of the killer apps that could be written for this thing, etcetera. Now that reality is setting in, one has to wonder what Steve's thinking. What use is a PC you can't write apps for?

Re:Steve brought this on himself...

[SashaMan]

Agreed. While I realize it was probably inevitable that Apple would lock down unlocked (i.e. running on a non-ATT network) phones due to contract obligations with ATT, disabling 3rd party apps was a major screw up. Apple is pissing off its most loyal customers, the ones who are most excited about the capabilities of the phone. There are probably more Apple fanboys per user on Slashdot than anywhere, and look at how many of us are rightfully mad that Apple is being a prick about this.

I own an unlocked iPhone

[MSRedfox]

As an owner of an unlocked iPhone I think people are just acting stupid. I'm perfectly content to sit back and use the 1.0.2 firmware until a solution is found for the new firmware. Going around and blaming Apple is a waste of time. While I think Apple could've handled things better to prevent bricking of phones, it isn't truly bricked. It is possible to revert the system back to the older firmware if you know what you're doing. The problem is, a bunch of naive users are playing with their firmware and they don't have a clue as to what this means. I think most intelligent iPhone hackers understand that you can't upgrade firmware the day it's released and expect it to work right with previous mods. But I guess all this complaining shows that a lot of ignorant people are hacking their phones without understanding all the complications involved.

Do we own the iPhone or lease it?

[bizitch]

I mean - wtf - do iPhone users own the thing or not? Whose property is it anyway?

If you were to lease the thing then I can side with Apple. But if they sold it then I dont get it ...

Aren't they violating the DMCA or whatever?

Slashdot hivemind re: Apple

[jmorris42]

> Wouldn't the phone belong to the person who bought it, not Apple?

If it were any other vendor Slashdot would be in 100% agreement that Apple doesn't 'own' the product once it is bought, in fact they would be venting almost as much fury at /. for posting such drivel since the way it is posted isn't attacking such a notion as stupid. But since it IS Apple we are talking about and so many here live fully inside the Reality Distortion Field you get Slashdot editors leaving otherwise insane sentences like that one in a post. And no, this isn't just a pile on kdawson rant, CmdrTaco is equally within the Field.

Listen up you primitive screwheads, Steve Jobs is AS evil, if not moreso than Steve Balmer. He just doesn't throw chairs or dance around like a drunken monkey.

iBrick Can Be iReversed

[The Webguy]

A procedure exists - and has been tested quite a bit now - to reverse the iBrick'd efforts. linked here.

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.

Not bricking unless you choose to install

[davetd02]

It seems the problem is easy. It's legal to unlock a phone. But once you've modified the phone to do that, it becomes your problem. Don't install the new firmware. There are plenty of owners that stayed with 1.0.2 and had no problem. Apple doesn't secretly go around bricking phones -- they offer a new software update that's compatible with their operating system, not whatever modifications users made to it.

If I completely wiped the OS and then tried to install the firmware upgrade I'd be shocked if it _didn't_ brick. Once I've made the software my own, it becomes my problem to support it. The easiest way would be to just not install new firmware upgrades (or at least wait until there are new unlocks available).

It'd be nice if they had a "bring in your brick" program whereby they re-flashed phones that had been bricked, but I'm not convinced it's a legal requirement.

Re:Not bricking unless you choose to install

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

It's legal to unlock a phone. But once you've modified the phone to do that, it becomes your problem. Don't install the new firmware. I'm pretty much in agreement. Except for one unanswered question - is the bricking intentional or really and truly a side-effect? If it is intentional, then I'd says Apple is due a class action lawsuit. However, proving it may be very difficult.

Re:Not bricking unless you choose to install

[Hes Nikke]

steve jobs has gone on record calling it a "cat and mouse game" if that doesn't dispel reasonable doubt about intent, i don't know what does

Re:Not bricking unless you choose to install

[adona1]

One of the more intelligent things I've seen pertaining to this....and it's not hard to understand either.

You buy an iPhone, you can do what you want with it. Apple might not like it and maybe has T&Cs forbidding it, but for all intents and purposes, if you want to unlock it, you can. This software update is optional, and by now everyone with an unlocked phone knows that if they want to keep it that way they shouldn't install the update. Those who have are a little screwed, but a workaround will be developed shortly, so they'll get their phones back.

If Apple had released the firmware as a 'stealth update' a la MS - uploading it to your iPhone when you got your email, for example - then yes, the cries of "Evil!" would be justified. But they didn't. Don't download it if your phone is unlocked. End of story.

Re:Not bricking unless you choose to install

[be-fan]

If you bricked your iPhone and you didn't do anything that violated the warranty, they'll probably replace it for free. I bricked my iPod doing a software updated incorrectly, and they replaced it no questions asked. When the random shutdown thing happened with the macbooks, you could just bring in the machine to an apple store, and they'd fix it within a day or two (much better than the 1-week turnaround I had for my dell laptop's repairs).

I used to hate Apple, but over the last several years, I've found myself buying more and more Apple gear. Somehow, I've gone through a PowerMac, two MacBooks, several iPods (including ones I bought for my family), and now an iPhone. Apple stuff looks nice, works simply, takes surprising amounts of abuse, and what little support I've needed in the Apple Stores was delivered very efficiently. You don't have to be a fanboy to appreciate that.

Re:Not bricking unless you choose to install

[Splab]

Really?

Here in Denmark Apple has been involved in a very long legal battle over the iBooks which they in the end lost, but as far as I know still don't honor their obligations, customers still have to fight them.

I for one can't fathom why people buy Apple gear, they hardly ever want to honor their warranty if they can get away from it, when you use their stuff you are usually locked in. Battery replacement is nothing you can do yourself and Apple thinks its outside warranty, even if the battery fails within first year.

I for one won't buy an Apple product until they get down from their high horse and treat their customers with respect.

Re:Not bricking unless you choose to install

[senatorpjt]

I think you might be able to make an argument about the warnings given by Apple before the update was even released. They released the update, knowing that it would destroy a large number of phones, and they have admitted knowing before the fact in public.

It's like if Microsoft released a security update to Windows that would corrupt the BIOS if Firefox was installed. If it just happened, it might be chalked up to a mistake, but if Microsoft released a statement saying "If you have Firefox installed, this update will corrupt your BIOS," before releasing the update, then it looks a lot shadier. And, being a security update, it's harder to say "If you don't want the new features just don't update."

Is Re-Locking Unexpected?

[GaryPatterson]

Apple's update re-locks iPhones that were unlocked by third parties. Given that there have been several methods, none of which were approved or passed through Apple (obviously), how can Apple write OS updates that work around these hacks? At least one hack required physical modification to the iPhone - how can any update be expected to allow for unknown changes?

In fact, should Apple be expected to work around hacks at all?

I see the choice as either Apple updates the iPhones regardless of any hacks (over-writing them, re-locking iPhones) or Apple refuses to update hacked iPhones. Clearly Apple are taking the former path, and I agree with that.

More than enough blame on both sides

[G4from128k]

First, what kind of clueless idiot runs an update on a hacked device after being told explicitly that running the update on a hacked device will brick said device. Second, what kind of feature phone/PDA maker creates a device that doesn't include a usable SDK and APIs so that developers can add functionality without compromising the core firmware and creating the brick-on-update problem.

Both sides have shown less than stellar judgment and both sides will lose. I suspect that the iPhone plaintiffs will lose their case and Apple will lose a chunk of market-share opportunity.

Fixing vulnerabilities

[spooje]

It was a buffer overflow that allowed the hack that was exploited to unlock the phone in the first place. If Apple didn't fix it, people would be complaining Apple had lax security.

Who owns your I phone?

[kurt555gs]

In the story headline I saw

But others say Cupertino is well within its rights to control its own device. and was thinking that this must have been written by a younger person. Some one my age would believe that if I bought something, it belonged to me. I bought it, I paid for it, it is mine to do with what I want. I guess I must have a "customer" mentality being born in the middle 50's instead of the new in vouge "consumer" mentality. Sad state of affairs, that "consumers" let themselves get pushed around in a way "customers" never ever would.

Re:Who owns your I phone?

[tomhudson]

> >"But others say Cupertino is well within its rights to control its own device."

>"and was thinking that this must have been written by a younger person. Some one my age would believe that if I bought something, it belonged to me. I bought it, I paid for it, it is mine to do with what I want."

Naw, sounds more like a Windows user - they're trained to believe that Windows says "My Computer" because Bill Gates thinks he owns it.

Apple simply doesn't have the right to brick a phone - not only is it against consumer law in many areas, but its also against the PATRIOT ACT, which increased penalties under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (iPhones are both communications devices and networked computing devices). Finally, Apple as terrorists ...

I don't think the phone is actually "unlocked"

[MSRedfox]

I don't think the current unlocking of the iPhone is a legit unlock. The current unlock method reflashes the modem firmware(with a modified version) to allow it to use multiple carriers. On my old smartphone, the unlock software scanned my phone and then when I booted with a different SIM, I typed in an unlock code and the phone actually unlocked itself (the same as if my carrier had given me the unlock code). The modified modem firmware, while it creates the unlock effect, it isn't the same method AT&T would use to unlock the iPhone.

I think the unlock method will change over the next few months. In the US, Apple uses AT&T, in Germany, they use T-Mobile, ETC... When the hacking groups begin to compare the differences between the various regional iPhones, they'll find that there is a better way to unlock. I doubt future firmware updates will convert German iPhones to AT&T. So by examine the difference, we should get closer to having a real unlock and hopefully we'll be able to avoid issues with firmware updates as a result.

Hey hackers, stop whining

[jerkychew]

This is not a troll post, I swear. I agree that if we own a piece of hardware we should be able to do with it what we want. But, that line starts to blur when said hardware needs a particular network connection to function.

I can hack my (original) xbox or Wii. I just can't connect to their online services or download any updates because, surprise, the updates may brick my consoles. It sucks, since there's no proof that a hacked console is being used for illegal purposes, but that's the way it is. And I can't attempt to get the consoles serviced, because I've voided their warranty. The same policy applies to my Ford Ranger - If I change the chip in the onboard computer, I've voided my warranty.

Where it's a little different in this case is that the iPhone downloads its updates automatically. There's no real benefit to using an iPhone as just an iPod, now that the iPod touch is out. But it's not like you don't have a choice in what phone you buy. There are plenty of other phones on plenty of other carriers. You chose to buy an iPhone, and you chose to hack it to run on another network, knowing full well that it was not only unsupported by Apple, but would void your warranty and possibly brick your phone. If you didn't know that, you shouldn't have been involved in hacking your iPhone in the first place.

For better or worse, the iPhone is a closed system. It's meant to run one OS on one carrier. Am I going to sue Chevrolet because my Corvette got stuck on a mountain bike trail? Of course not. I used the car in a manner not supported (or warrented) by the manufacturer, and now I pay the price.

All this talk of class action lawsuits and people whining about the supposed Apple 'monopoly' of the iPod and iPhone just makes me mad. Nobody's forcing you to buy the shiny, pretty Apple gadget. Go buy a Zen. Or a Treo. Or a Dell. Stop trying to blame the big bad corporation for telling you how to use its product.

I have mixed feelings about this

[rudy_wayne]

"But others say Cupertino is well within its rights to control its own device."

Control its own device? So Apple takes your money but the phone is still theirs? Sorry but that's just plain wrong.

You give Apple money.
They give you a phone.
You lose ownership of the money -- it now belongs to Apple.
Apple loses ownership of the phone -- it now belongs to you.

That's the fundamental basis of all commerce.

On the other hand, anyone stupid enough to pay hundreds of dollars for an over-priced over-hyped phone with ridiculous limitations deserves to get screwed. So I guess it isn't so bad after all.

Apple is completely wrong on this and here is why

[JoeShmoe]

I'm frankly disappointed by Apple and Steve Jobs on this whole issue. I understand that when Apple was smaller, it would have been suicide for them to put a big legal bull's eye on their back. They paid to license Amazon's one-click "technology", which if I remember write drew howls of anger from us for the perception of giving the patent merit. They did it to avoid a lawsuit over having the best shopping experience for their customers. When they first introduced the iPod with the tabline "Rip. Mix. Burn." RIAA was outraged. Even though "ripping" a CD was perfectly legal and even protected by the Home Audio Recording Act, Apple backed off the message rather than risk a lawsuit preventing the iPod's introduction. Smart move on their part seeing how the iPod turned out.

But now Apple is not some little computer company struggling as a small fish in a pond of predators. Apple isn't even a computer company anymore. They are a consumer electronics company, and they are dangerously close to repeating Sony's mistake of letting fear of the content producers influence the design of their consumer electronics. That's a recipe for failure. Hardware sales directly benefit from the availability of content, and if you cut the flow of content, you strangle your hardware sales. No one would buy a MacBook or iMac no matter how great it was if it was as closed as the iPhone has become.

The reason Apple has to take such a hard line on the iPhone is because, for perhaps the first time, Apple is at the mercy of a "content" provider: Cingular/AT&T (the content in this case is access to the cellular spectrum). I would bet any amount of money that somewhere in the contract between Apple and AT&T is the stipulation that if a Voice-Over-IP application appears on the iPhone platform, Apple will forfeit a big chunk of change. That's why there's no Flash (microphone interaction has been possible with Flash for a while now). That's why there's no native development. It's not about protecting the network from faulty a application that might screw up the mission critical cellular network. Cell phones don't have that power, otherwise you could make the same attack with the cellular PCMCIA cards and adapters that the cell phone providers already sell. Until Apple can negotiate a price they are willing to pay or give up to allow full development, knowing full well that job number one for everyone will be a VoIP app that eliminates the need to even keep Cingular around for Pay-As-You-Go, Apple is going to keep the phone locked down tight.

So I'm understand Apple. I don't expect to ever see native iPhone development as long as AT&T is in the picture. But Apple has gone too far with the warrantee cancellations. It's against the law, at least in California. A manufacturer can't void a warrantee based on a 3rd-party modification unless you prove that it was the 3rd-party modification that caused the problem. Toyota can't tell you that your warantee on your new car is void because you had Audio Discounters install a stereo unless they prove Audio Discounters cut the main system bus or something. Apple is hiding behind the fact that as a software company, they are more familiar with licensing which seems to dictate that Apple can declare the moon made of cheese and anyone who clicks "I Agree" has to live with that. But courts don't let people waive rights that are guarantee regardless of what a contract says, and so I suspect that if this case goes to court, Apple will lose. For the courts to rule otherwise would shut down nearly every hardware aftermarket industry overnight.

And, Apple would also have to prove that hardware can be, in fact, damaged by just software. That's a very scary thing to admit about a product you engineered. If it were truly possible for software to damage the iPhone hardware in a way that it would be unreasonable for Apple to be require to fix it, that's a timebomb waiting to happen. Let's say there is an exploit in Safari (there are). Let's say someone writes some cod

Bad analogy

[smurfsurf]

For your analogy to be valid there need to be a "if unauthorized software present then brick the phone" routine in Apples update. Is that your claim? What is it based on?

A better car analogy would be: You buy your car, go to a tuning shop for some chip tuning. When you get back to your dealer for the next inspection, he fries the motor electronic because your custom chip does not play well with the dealer's diagnosis instrument.

You can't start blaming the dealer for that, now can you?

the end of FOSS on phones

[m2943]

Trolltech has released the QTopia Greenphone

Yeah, the QTopia Greenphone is GPL alright. Unlike Linux and Gnome, Troll Tech wants commercial developers to pay them big bucks for the privilege of developing software for their platform. Even the FSF doesn't go that far. It's a marketing gimmick to help Troll Tech establish their platform on phones--a platform that deliberately excludes major other open source toolkits.

and encourages user development and contributions to its features.

Well, that's debatable. At QTopia prices, it very much discourages commercial development for the platform. Furthermore, although QTopia is released under the GPL, nobody other than Troll Tech can actually realistically develop or enhance it--if anybody tried to ship their own version of QTopia, none of the commercial QTopia apps could run on it.

And it runs Linux. If THAT isn't a better deal than an iPhone, I dunno what is.

Just about anything else: if Troll Tech manages to establish their platform as the default "open source" phone platform, open source on mobile devices would be effectively dead because it would be fully controlled by Troll Tech. You can contribute to QTopia only if Troll Tech lets you, and only if you effectively donate your free labor to them.

So, for now, I'll stick with my Palm: Palm has open source development tools, there is plenty of open source software, and the company doesn't dictate what license I can ship my software under.

(Another reason not to use QTopia is that it sucks from a user interface point of view, but that's a separate debate.)

These complaints are stupid

[laird]

This is all stupid.

If you hack the firmware on the phone, it's pretty obvious that you won't be able to get warranty support if you bring in your phone with the hacked firmware on it. So if you have a physical problem, restore the factory firmware! I've hacked my TiVo, and I kept the original hard drive available to swap in, in case I need a repair, for just this reason. Anyone who doesn't understand this sort of thing shouldn't be hacking their electronics.

Also, all of this talk about phones being 'bricked' is absurd. A device is bricked when the device is so confused (typically by a bad firmware update breaking the firmware loader) so that it can't be recovered from. That's not what's happening on the iPhone. What's happening when people install the firmware update on the iPhone is that it it's restored to the original condition, meaning that if you used 'jailbreak' to run third part apps, the apps are gone (technically still there, but you can't run them), and if you 'unlocked' the phone so that it's activated on another carrier instead of AT&T it'll go back to 'waiting for activation'. In either case, the phone is not 'bricked' as it is functioning fine just as you bought it - it just doesn't do what you hacked it to do.

If you really don't like it, feel free to help find a mechanism for 'jailbreaking' or 'unlocking' the iPhone 1.1.1 firmware, so the game of 'cat and mouse' continues.

Re:These complaints are stupid

[afidel]

Actually denying hardware warranty service on a device because of third party software is illegal just about everywhere. This practice would be covered under the same laws as third party hardware such as RAM in computers or non warranty covered parts in an automobile, unless they can conclusively prove that the third party part is the cause of the failure they cannot deny you warranty coverage.

Re:These complaints are stupid

[Ajehals]

Its interesting to see just how badly this is being handled though.

Your initial paragraph about restoring any device going for a warranty repair to its "factory defaults" is sound advice, and will prevent all sorts of problems, if carrying out a reset is possible of course. I had two experiences with this with two separate vendors;

First off, a few years ago I had a laptop develop red vertical lines on screen, these were visible on boot and I assumed were caused by a problem either with the video card or with the screen itself, (I've seen it a few times when there are cracks in the ribbons connecting the screen to the graphics card). I took the machine back to the shop where I bought it (this was within 10 days of purchase) and was told they could not do anything about it as the laptop had been 'modified' i.e. it was no longer running Windows, well that was annoying but simple to solve, the next day when I took the laptop back again, it was running windows and a new laptop was handed over.

The second incident was a little different, I modified the firmware on my IPAQ, I basically changed the bootloader from whatever the HP one is to LAB (Linux As Bootloader) so that I could run Familiar Linux on it, unfortunately about three months after purchasing the IPAQ it stopped booting at all, (there is a stage one bootloader before LAB that you should see regardless), I also couldn't restore the firmware that I had backed up, the IPAQ was simply unresponsive, so I spoke to HP and was told to send it to them, which I did. I received an email stating that the problem was with the device and that they would send a new one out to me, there was no reference to the non-standard firmware, nor any indication that there would be any warranty issues, then sure enough a few days later a nice new IPAQ arrived, and to my surprise it came not with the standard HP bootloader and Windows Mobile, but with my nice LAB bootloader all ready and waiting. Now I don't know if I should thank someone specific at HP for that, or if they simply transfer everything from the broken device to the new one as a matter of course, but either way, it was a pleasant experience.

So would I go and buy another laptop from the first guys I dealt with? No I wouldn't, there is enough competition out there and frankly the custoemr service experience was generally poor, would I buy another IPAQ? Yes I would, in fact I would prefer to buy an IPAQ than any other PDA and that is largely due to the fact that when I hit a problem it was solved, quickly and sensibly.

So, which part is illegal?

[LKM]

What part of what Apple did was illegal?

1) People change their OS in a way not expected by Apple
2) Apple does not take these changes into account when writing update
3) Apple tells people with changes to not install update in case something goes wrong
4) Users install update anyway
5) Update on changed phone leads to unexpected results such as calls no longer working
6) Apple fixes said results, but old hack is not possible anymore

What part is illegal?

Re:So, which part is illegal?

[LKM]

Actually they PROBABLY did take these changes into account and wrote code SPECIFICALLY to disable the functionality.

Apple specifically said they did do no such thing (quoting Schiller: "This has nothing to do with proactively disabling a phone that is unlocked or hacked"). I believe they did try to close the holes that allowed the exploits to exist (as they should, the SIM hack relied on a buffer overflow, so it's clearly Apple's job to fix that bug). I believe they did not do anything to intentionally disable the SIM cards in SIM-unlocked phones. They probably tested the software with a hacked phone, found out that it disabled the SIM card, and then put out a press release telling people with hacked phones to not install the update.

Frankly, I never even expected them to go as far as alerting owners of hacked phones to ignore the update. I thought they would just not test the update with hacked phones at all.