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Jail-Breaking iPhones at the Apple Store
An anonymous reader writes "According to an article in Xconomy, iPhone hacker and author Jonathan Zdziarski was invited to speak at an Apple Store in Cambridge, MA last week where he talked about the history of iPhone hacking, jail-breaking, and limitations of the official SDK. From the article, "Zdziarski was one of the first software engineers to figure out how to hack the iPhone, and he's the author of a forthcoming O'Reilly Media book called iPhone Open Application Development, which gives readers explicit instructions on jail-breaking iPhones. So for Apple to give Zdziarski the podium at an Apple retail location is a little like Steve Ballmer inviting Linus Torvalds to speak at a Windows product launch." Zdziarski reports in his own blog how the open source community was on the iPhone developer scene as early as 2007, long before enterprises got there, and estimates that nearly 40% of all iPhones have been jail-broken to run the third-party community software installer. Finally, this story from Top Tech News suggests that open source software might actually create competition for Apple's "official" developers, because applications using the open source iPhone compiler are not subject to the same limitations as official Apple SDK programs are."
Both Apple and ATT have non free practices at the core of their business. It is not surprising that they would each pretend to be more customer friendly than they really are. The iPhone suffers restrictions from both companies that are integral to each company's business model.
It would be better to have free software devices that could use free spectrum. This would remove the ability of others to restrict your communications and such things are vital if we are to undo the damage broadcast media has done to democracy.
No calls now, I'm
...why not invite the person most knowledgable on the subject?
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
I wonder if this is like that police sting in which they told criminals they had won a boat / car and got them to basically walk into jail...
:P
I for one won't be surprised if Apple loses an expensive piece of equipment while he is there and it mysteriously turns up in his jacket pocket.
Not jailbroken, an overpriced pretty piece of junk (yes I own one) jail broken and with installer, an awesome tool and I love it.
I get the feeling Apple secretly likes the fact that it's been cracked and made useful, regardless of how ATT feels about it.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
This article is a hoax. iPhones are provably 100% secure.
"So for Apple to give Zdziarski the podium at an Apple retail location is a little like Steve Ballmer inviting Linus Torvalds to speak at a Windows product launch."
I would say very little like this if at all, when you use a hacked iphone you still had to shell out the bucks(to apple) for the device. When you run Linux you can completely avoid giving any cash to Microsoft.
Apple is really running behind in this battle. Currently, there is only one SDK-created, legit application for the iPhone/iTouch that has been released in the wild.
Will people give up the ability to run really nice iTunes unfriendly apps like the NES emulator? Or will developers see the potential and follow the Mac party lines so they can make money on their legit applications...
So far... only one legit app.
open source software might actually create competition for Apple's "official" developers
:)
Riiiiiiight, just like the homebrew scene creates competition for Sony, Nintendo, and the Xbox 360. If someone want to goof around with doing homebrew iPhone apps, great! But, there is no way that jailbroken apps will be any sort of successful business model for the iPhone. No business will pay for it or install it, and too few consumers will be brave enough to jailbreak. 40% of iPhones are jailbroken? Ridiculous.
If devs really want to do open source phone applications why aren't they using Android or OpenMoko?
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
This is not a mistake on Apple's part. Their contract with AT&T probably prevents them from releasing an unlocked phone within the time period of the contract, and if Apple were to release unlocking instructions themselves it would legally be almost the same as releasing an unlocked phone: ie contract violation. Instead, they have been careful to remain neutral about it, in order to respect their contract with AT&T. At the same time, they are very happy that people all over the world use (unlocked) iPhones, and Apple executives have probably spent a lot of time thinking about how they could have played the game differently with AT&T to still get the contract with them (which you'll remember took a major infrastructural investment on AT&T's part to bring the iPhone -- and only the iPhone -- visual voicemail) , while not having to wait on their laurels for third parties to purchase, unlock, and ship their phones to the rest of the world. It must be very painful to have to keep mum, when the whole world wants your product, and you have a contract you've signed in your home country that keeps you from giving it to them. The news that they are inviting a speaker who is active in iPhone unlocking just confirms this suspicion, and of course the biggest confirmation will be seeing if Apple suddenly changes policy upon the expiration of the AT&T contract. We don't know the terms of that contract, but it's safe to guess it's a 12, 18, 24, or 36 month contract. I'm betting it was a 12-month contract, which is a very long time in the mobile phone world, and that upon the anniversary of the release of iPhone you will see an end to the silence on Apple's part regarding unlocking.
Ignore them, don't give them attention, money or whatever.
They need us, they want OUR money. Let them jump through OUR hoops to get it.
Have you forgotten YOUR place in the world? Seems you have.
You are the same people that have forgotten what the constitution is, its just a piece of paper until you remember what it is.
Until then. Continue being assfucked.
I don't have to make money from a program for that program to compete with another. If I give my program away with freedom it will be a better competitor than one without freedom. Pull your business model out of the 80s and you will make more money.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Despite how much GPL advocates like to talk about FREEdom, proprietary libraries are more FREE in this case.
GPL application linking and using non-GPL libraries: ok.
Non-GPL application using LGPL libraries: ok
Non-GPL application using GPL libraries: not ok.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
You are mistaken. As yesterday's thread clearly demonstrates, Apple and its admirers are firmly on the side of restricting your devices for your own "protection".
And people have tried to develop such devices. And no one has bought them. No one has bought them because the UI is bad, the industrial design is worse and when people have problems they are told to fix them themselves or to search the forums.
Apple is extremely customer friendly. They make it easy and pleasant to use their devices for the purposes advertised. However, they are not particularly Open Source friendly. Not as bad as some, not as good as others. Open source and customer friendly occasionally overlap, but most open source is not particularly customer friendly and many of the basic devices that make our lives easier are not open source.
This statement is bizarre to me because, according to Shannon, information capacity is directly proportional to bandwidth. So it seems like the scarcity in bandwidth also exists in information capacity. Care to comment?
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Open source/unlocked apps will be a competitive option only for those who have the technical gumption to risk bricking or otherwise crippling their phone, and the burden of time and attention required to learn how to uncripple it. This is acceptable to the hacker community, but not to the majority of iPhone users, who just want a stable, uninterrupted user experience.
Is broadcast media making your city council miserably dysfunctional too?
The problems you have with democracy are probably more related to getting what you asked for than they are artful manipulation.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
What is free about a Non-GPL (non-free) piece of software?
I suggest you read about free software on http://www.gnu.org/ for a couple of hours to assimilate the concept.
You, along with most people, are confusing jail-breaking with unlocking, unlocking modifies the sim so it works on networks other than ATT, jail-breaking is just modifying the phone software so you're able to upload programs to it. This guy was involved in jail-breaking not unlocking. The two are completely unrelated.
Pretend to be more customer friendly than they really are? From some of the anti-Apple stuff I've read on here, it seems that Apple is, in fact, more customer friendly than they appear to be. After all, if this was Microsoft or many other companies, I'm sure DMCA letters would have been sent out by now. I think it just goes to show that Apple are generally only as restricting as they need to be.
Not all of us mind paying for software, you know. That's one thing I have never understood about the OSS movement -- that some people think that everything should be free and that anyone who tries to make a profit from software is somehow "bad". The two worlds can co-exist together.
A post on ZDNet and /. threads from anonymous internet users "clearly demonstrates" Apple's internal corporate policies and intentions? Are you serious? I would say this article "clearly demonstrates" the exact opposite. In other words, no one really knows if Apple is pleased with the situation or not.
Personally, I think they are pleased, yet cautious. If they damage their relationship with AT&T they will not have future relationships with any carriers, and the iPhone will die. Yet the iPhone's popularity appears to be viral partly from unlocking. So they have to walk a fine line for now.
Developers: We can use your help.
I would suggest that Apple aren't keen on jailbreaking and will be less so in the future. When it first came out it was easy to jailbreak them when they were using 1.1.1 firmware, and it has got steadily harder since. If you want to jailbreak an ipod touch/iphone you still have to downgrade to 1.1.1 so you can exploit a hack that they did fix in 1.1.2. I think this puts more people off than anything - I don't want to run a hacked firmware from a source I don't know on an application that I use to sign into various sites...
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
I agree with you, and the (grand?)-parent post. Another glaring indicator by what Apple isn't doing is the lack of legal retaliation. Apple has a history of meticulously tracking down and punishing, or at the very least, settleing with NDA violators. If Apple cared about keeping the iPhone in-jail, or locked-down, we'd hear about it in the form of NDA and intellectual property lawsuits. But the Apple legal team is quiet... a little too quiet. The first Beta of the iPhone SDK appeared on torrents and usenet almost immediately after its release... but we haven't heard of any complaints from Apple about it.
The Admin and the Engineer
Yeah, they are actually. They want to protect the user experience so that people don't end up with flat batteries in 30mins and stop using 3rd party apps or stop using their iPhone altogether. Those that really want to can always jailbreak their iPhone and manage the whole thing themselves. Or buy another product. Is this really so "evil"? Apple's decision is just a sound business decision, because that's what they are. No need to read any more into it than that....unless you're a conspiracy theorist.
why not? What happens that FLOSS references are constantly made using the OSI-politicaly-oriented speech ?
Linking to non-free system facilities is acceptable. You can distribute GPLed software that you compiled using Visual Studio and linked in the MS libraries. At a quick glance through the licensing I agreed to, I didn't see anything that would stop GPLv2.
GPLv3, however, requires releasing installation instructions, which is going to be a problem. If I were to write a program using GPLv3 software, I couldn't distribute it on the iPhone unless I could give out complete installation instructions, including a valid certificate. I don't think I'm allowed to do that, so there will be no GPLv3 software on the iPhone legitimately.
Of course, if you include instructions on how to jailbreak the iPhone and install it yourself, you should be good to go.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
No, their official statements and the EULA of the iPhone SDK demonstrate their policies and intentions. Have you not been paying attention?
Wishing for something hard enough does not make it come true, and your speculation is just wishful thinking.
I keep seeing these two concepts being confused. Jailbreaking is the act of circumventing the original OS to run arbitrary code. Unlocking is the act of disabling the link between the handset and the AT&T SIM, thereby allowing the use of other mobile providers. The former does not imply the latter.
I have said it before and I will say it again. Apple is a publicly held corporation. Their fiduciary duty is to their shareholders. Their goal is to be profitable. However, their business model (strategy of doing business in order to be profitable) centers around making well-designed, elegant, easy-to-use, robust products. (By 'robust' I mean in a design/UI sense, not necessarily in a hardware sense.) They believe that controlling and streamlining the entire consumer experience from start to finish is the best way to deliver their product--this is the reason behind the Apple Retail Stores, the near-obsessive attention to the packaging, and the restrictions of the iPhone OS. Make no mistake; Apple doesn't do this out of the goodness of their hearts. They do it because it is a way to stand out in a competitive and rapidly shifting industry, and be profitable. But this long-held strategy of attention to the consumer experience and design excellence has created a community of Apple enthusiasts, and they often misinterpret Apple as being more altruistic than they actually are.
The hacker philosophy runs completely counter to Apple's view because they believe devices are meant to be experimented on, each component dissected, analyzed, and understood. They are unafraid of taking something apart and reassembling it to meet their needs. Apple's model is geared not towards these hackers, but to the average consumer, who, if allowed to tinker, would probably break something and have no idea how to fix it. The wildly popular success of iPods and the increasing market share of Macs in the face of the MS monopoly demonstrates that Apple's strategy is the correct one to adopt--the average user values stability and predictability over the ability to play Dr. Frankenstein with their precious, beautifully designed Mac/iPod/iPhone. The idea that "it just works" is in itself a kind of freedom.
Apple knows they can't keep the iPhone OS locked down forever. They knew it before they even had built the thing. They realized, however, that (1) upon initial release, the OS would not be complete, (2) they needed to buy themselves time to establish a user base and fix stability issues, (3) locking the OS would prevent the casual user from messing around and then complaining that the iPhone sucks because it's too easy to break, (4) it fits with their business model. The only good thing the hackers/jailbreakers have done is to push Apple to develop the SDK faster, and put more emphasis on security. I don't see their actual jailbreaking as being particularly relevant, because it is still not something that most users would do. Many users so strongly enjoy the integrated, streamlined Apple experience that the last thing they want to do is run some "shady" code and open themselves up to the unknown. It all goes back to the philosophical dichotomy mentioned above.
Can anyone provide IPA on Zdziarski? Gee, that's seems unpronounceable
The EEE PC proves that your logic is backward. It's not that "Open Source" is unfriendly it's that most hardware vendors are. EEE PC uses free software and has one of the easiest interfaces to use of any portable device. It also boast accelerated graphics which can be used by other free software to do what Apple's iPhone does. There are plenty of YouTube movies of the EEE running Compiz Fusion's nifty cube interface. Free software will make it's way to other devices because the devices make money for the vendor. At that point, it will be the phone company that objects, yet another layer of unfriendly people.
The beauty and real joy of free software is that you can chose the interface you like rather than having it forced on you, so you will get the interface you want along with privacy and security. GPE and Opie are both better interface than Windows Mobil and better interfaces are on the way that will rival iPhone in every way. People love graffiti for text input and it's still available with X stroke. Really, it kicks handwriting recognition's. Complete platforms have been available through OpenZaurus and Familiar for years, despite the lack of cooperation and outright sabotage by most vendors. Apple's multitouch interface has much to be admired but these features should be trivial to reproduce and will be if Apple does not block the user community with bogus software patents. The move to free software by other vendors began with Zaurus and is now picking up speed. These devices will kick ass.
I'm sorry that you have had bad experiences in user forums. If you want to see a really ugly exchange, try this forum on for size. Nothing is less friendly than non free software because it's owners all ultimately think they way Creative does. Apple seems to be moving away from that with this lecture but the iPhone is still customer hostile because it won't let you do what you want.
No calls now, I'm
they are very happy that people all over the world use (unlocked) iPhones, and Apple executives have probably spent a lot of time thinking about how they could have played the game differently with AT&T to still get the contract with them (which you'll remember took a major infrastructural investment on AT&T's part to bring the iPhone -- and only the iPhone -- visual voicemail)
I'm always impressed at how some people can apparently divine altruistic motives from Apple's management decisions. Every unlocked phone deprives Apple of a large chunk of potential revenue from the sale of its device in the form of monthly cash payments. Several reports last year estimated the cost to Apple of so many unlocked phones as ranging from $500m to well over $1 billion (the difference comes about depending on whether you account for the "missing" devices as languishing in the supply chain or reshipped to Asia).
But critically, apparently believing Apple's propaganda regarding the "difficulty" of implementing visual voicemail functionality leads me to lose trust in any of your assertions. Visual voicemail is not hard to do - it was around for several years before Apple's version, and if it's so difficult, how is it that companies like GrandCentral/Google can retrofit visual voicemail onto basically any phone with either a WAP browser or SMS facility? Add in a 3G+ network and a real web browser and it really shines. Given enough network neutral bandwidth, many things are possible. Microsoft can add Visual VOIP to phones with Portrait. Apple's continued invocation of the Herculean nature of its visual voicemail is a marketing smokescreen designed to convince its more fannish customers that bedding down with the telcos comes from necessity, not avarice.
Da Blog
apple primary sell hardware, not software. as long as a jailbreak leads to a hardware sale, they are happy.
and a jailbreak voids warranty iirc, so you cant go to them if a future update bricks your jailbroken phone.
now, if someone found a way to copy the iphone software onto a similar hardware platform (like say the fic neo or freerunner) then i think the DMCA would be rattled.
hell, just look how they hunt for insider identities, when just about every other corp just hands out the kind of info those insiders are spreading. apple get a lot of its press from playing coy or being secretive. at times its like watching a damn striptease.
even now there are unanswered questions around the SDK and what kinds of apps apple will allow into their appstore.
what one have to keep in mind about apple is that it has more in common with HP or dell then with microsoft. that they choose to use in-house software rather then third party do not change that. their real products are hardware based.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
"It's not that "Open Source" is unfriendly it's that most hardware vendors are."
I have no experience with it, but here is a hardware company that says they make a SIM that unlocks the iPhone: 2008 new turbosim unlock iphone. (The web site is written in Chinglish.)
Well, if he voluntarily "tells on himself" at the open request of apple, it would be really difficult for him to claim ignorance or deny much of the charges.
I give kudos to him but I would still be cautious in what and how something was said. Simply switching an attitude of It's mine, I bought it to a everyone should have the right to not be limited by corporations can go a long way in persuading a judge or jury to take a specific stand. I remember having a car malfunction and losing control and running off the road once. I told the cop that "I noticed problems and pulled over to park while it became increasingly hard to control the vehicle". He tore up a "failure to control" ticket because I ran into a ditch that I rightly should have gotten and instead gave me a fix-it ticket where if I could show the car had been fixed in a certain amount of time, it wouldn't cost me anything. There was no mechanical error until after I left the road, I wasn't paying attention and came upon a corner too fast.
Still, this would only work a couple of times so maybe it is to collect evidence on other people?
You are welcome on my lawn.
This got cut from the submission:
"And when I say it's like Torvalds speaking at a Windows launch what I mean is its not like that at all."
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
Not all of us mind paying for software, you know. That's one thing I have never understood about the OSS movement -- that some people think that everything should be free and that anyone who tries to make a profit from software is somehow "bad". The two worlds can co-exist together.
When OSS people use the word "free", they are referring to freedom, not price.
Software freedom does not keep people from profiting.
I agree, and it comes down to different business models. There is room for different business models, and in Apple's case, they have choose one business model over another. Perhaps they could make it work by being more like IBM, or perhaps for the kind of products that Apple wants to sell, their business model works better for them. And why shouldn't they have that choice?
The moral objection comes from stripping people of their software freedom.
But that assumes that the product would otherwise have been made using another business model. It also assumes that putting one's own interests above others is immoral. Uncompassionate or selfish, perhaps.
People who do this pretend that it's the only way for them to make money but it's clearly about means of extortion now.
Really? everyone who charges for software pretends that it's the only way? Perhaps for some, it actually is, and for some, it's simply a choice. And I'm sure there are some who pretend that, too. I'd hardly call it extortion in most cases.
Non free software is bad for you, even if it does one or two things you like. It's owners think they have a right to tell you what you can and can not do. If you give them that they will simply take more from you.
How is it bad for me? If Apple didn't follow their business model, they may have simply chosen not to do it at all. Then I wouldn't even have the choice to buy it. Your argument hinges on a false premise and makes assumptions about what I value.
Correct, Apple has said in the past that they will not actively prevent people from installing apps (they didn't say the word jailbreak, but it wasnt a common term at the time), BUT they would work to prevent unlocking of the phone itself. They just won't support it if you do.
I'm guessing that they cannot allow unlocking both for profit issues and also because ATT probably put it in their contract. For example, Apple's iTunes contract with the record labels says that Apple MUST patch any DRM-circumvention within weeks or all that label's music would be pulled from the store.
Be aware that "Mactrope" and "inTheLoo" (the person who posted the original message) are the same person, both sockpuppets of well-known Slashdot troll twitter.
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
If you want to jailbreak an ipod touch/iphone you still have to downgrade to 1.1.1
Not any more. With ziPhone, jailbreaking and unlocking any iPhone up to 1.1.4 is trivial; details here.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
The lack of freedom in the Apple SDK is quite clear. "No background applications" kills off entire categories of useful software.
I'm just waiting for Dan Eran to come in and explain to all of us how being forcibly restricted in software on hardware we paid for is really beneficial to us, we just don't know it.
If Apple officially allowed the existence of jailbreak, with the caveat that you would lose all software support outside of "restore the iPhone to its original software load," none of this would be an issue.
+++ATH0
No one in the Free Software and Open Source movements actually thinks that. Seems like you've fallen into the old Free vs. Free trap. Freedom does not mean free of charge. What F/OSS proponents think is bad is restricting people from modifying the software they use as they see fit and from helping others with their modifications.
Most Slashdot users are technical people. We find having an ssh client/server on the phone to be enormously useful. We like having access to the BSD underpinnings of the machine. We like being able to use AIM without going through a slow website. We like being able to stream music from our iPhones to computers at the houses that we're at with Firefly Media Server. We even like having MobileScrobbler around.
And no, Apple's apps are not more refined than all the stuff on Installer. MobileScrobbler, Sketches, and MobileChat are examples of how you're wrong, especially when you compare them to something like MobileMail.app which STILL cannot delete multiple emails at once or switch between accounts in any kind of convenient way.
The jailbreakers have, in fact, shown Apple up at every turn.
+++ATH0
is what you get for synonyms when you look up "miserable failure" in the dictionary. What's it been, two years now, and there has been hardly any progress in the project? They're still working on the damn keyboard, ffs -- not that a virtual keyboard is of any use with a resistive touchscreen.
I'm waiting for the last gasps of that project to finally expire. It is going exactly nowhere at about Mach 5.
I was really excited when I heard about Android, and then I found out that everything runs in its own separate little Java sandbox. No thanks.
"But, there is no way that jailbroken apps will be any sort of successful business model for the iPhone."
Actually, people are already selling jailbroken apps.
+++ATH0
In fact, in a post-Shannen Doherty model, information capacity is directly proportional to boobwidth.
Yeah, sorry, see my reply to the previous poster.
Who do you suppose he was shilling for? The Open Source movement, who I'm sure pay him thousands of dollars to do it?
+++ATH0
Seems simple enough to me. The author is pretty weak on technical understanding, instead choosing to use fuzzy social arguments.
Spectrum is like land. Its limited, and in demand. It can be public or private. If its to be useful at all, everybody has to agree on how it is to be used, otherwise the guy with the biggest gun (transmitter) wins.
Like land, the solution is to both sell some of it (with specified requirements for how it is to be used) and to keep some of it for public use (with specified requirements for how it is to be used). No matter which option you choose for a particular piece of spectrum, somebody has to build the infrastructure to make it useful.
Both Apple and ATT have non free practices at the core of their business. It is not surprising that they would each pretend to be more customer friendly...
I should hope that they have non-free practices, given that a business is a money-making endeavor, and a customer is someone who pays for goods and services.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
You have noticed the progression here, right?
Apple at release: No third party apps.
Apple a few months later: Web apps only.
Apple a year later: Here's an SDK for third party development. There are a couple of restrictions. Yes, you may put wifi VOIP on the iPhone.
Hm. Apple seems to be saying one thing and doing something entirely different. I wonder why?
And still have yet to meet anyone with one. A couple of folks I know have Eee PCs though. Go figure.
[quote]The beauty and real joy of free software is that you can chose the interface you like rather than having it forced on you, so you will get the interface you want along with privacy and security.[/quote]
The interface I want is the mac OS. It is (IMHO), the best. I am willing to pay money for it. It saves me time and it makes me happy.
If gnu/linux had anything anywhere near as satisfying for me to use I might use it. But it doesn't.
At least this is true for me. Others have different priorities.
Sometimes choice means paying (free as beer) or giving up perusing the source code (free as in speech) for the better option. I'm willing to pay for the best stuff, either with speech or beer.
I came this close to driving to an apple store (or AT&T) and getting an iphone today. I was able to restrain myself, barely, due to reticence over breaking my verizon contract, as well as all the rumors of a 3G iphone.
I'm very skeptical of a 3G iphone being introduced with iphone 2.0 in June, or even announced, because that will detract from the new software. I doubt Apple will ever ambush us with new iphones like they do with everything else, since the FCC has to vet everything and they don't want people renewing their contracts right beforehand. But it may still drop in 2008. What do you guys think?
So right now I'm waiting for 3G or my contract expiration, whatever comes first, but damn it's hard...
So for Apple to give Zdziarski the podium at an Apple retail location is a little like Steve Ballmer inviting Linus Torvalds to speak at a Windows product launch."
I'd say it's more like Citibank inviting Mitnick to talk about security, or the MPAA inviting DVD Jon.
Many have also speculated that it was not Apple's desire to lock down the phone to the extent that it has been, and that AT&T has placed certain requirements on the iPhone that Apple believes is not in the best interest of their business model. It would not surprise me in the least that when the exclusive Apple / AT&T deal expires, we will see the iPhone immediately become a much more open platform. Surely not as open as everyone wants, but certainly more open than it currently is. But even then I think we'll see people continue to complain that Apple is not as open as they'd like them to be, no matter how open they go.
This fits perfectly with Apple's present behavior of locking the phone down to a certain point, and not pushing it. I think if Apple really wanted to lock the iPhone down, we would not be seeing jailbreaking anything like this.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
What about "makes a product that does what the customer wants?" Sales figures agree, there are a lot more people who would like to buy a phone+music player+light PDA than buy some hardware and make their own.
You're such a shill. It's truly awe-inspiring. Can Apple EVER do anything wrong, Dan? Don't you think it's a little odd that they're always right? How incredibly unlikely! What possible confluence of events could have transpired to make one company always successful and always right in every policy?!
My comments are already all over that entry, and I think those of us who support openness in the mobile application arena stomped all over the Apple apologists. Thanks for spamming your blog on Slashdot YET AGAIN, though.
The short version: remember the headlines gasping that the iPhone could have spy software installed that took pictures with its camera and mailed them to the Terrorists? That can't happen with SDK software. It can (hypothetically) happen with jailbroken phones.
Yes, I remember those headlines. Remember how it didn't happen? Remember how it hasn't happened with Symbian? Remember how it hasn't happened with Palm? Remember how it hasn't happened with Windows Mobile? It hasn't happened not because it "can't," (note the SDK is actually entirely capable of working with the camera, so try again), but because something like that would be almost entirely pointless, as the user would have to be pointing the lens in the direction one wanted to perform "surveillance" on, and HOLD STILL long enough for the camera to take a shot.
Apple isn't "trying to be responsible." They're doing a couple of things. First, they are trying to control yet another revenue stream they see as ripe for exploitation, and are tiptoeing around AT&T with the silly VOIP restriction -- as if VOIP is even remotely practical over EDGE, though that's another matter. Second, Jobs is OBSESSED with control. He considers every iPhone deployed in the world to be "his" iPhone. Deviation from his vision of how it's supposed to look and function really, really gets on his nerves. That's what this is really about: money and preserving the "perfection" of his beautiful little work of art.
I said this on your blog, and I'll say it again here: Windows Mobile, Java and Flash(?) don't suck because of a lack of Big Brother-esque control by an OEM. They suck because they suck. They are badly designed. It's been EIGHT YEARS since we saw the release of PocketPC (more?) and they STILL haven't figured out that poking hesitantly at a screen with a stylus juuust might not be the best interface for a handheld device. The PocketPC/Windows Mobile shell still tries to squash a desktop PC UI metaphor into a handheld format. The system as a whole is still slow, slow, slow, not to mention unresponsive. Java runs interpreted code on whatever device you're working with, has no real filesystem access most of the time, and operates in a gimped sandbox. Apple is the first company to have really figured out what a handheld interface should look and work like. Apple is better because the product is better, not because they have better control over your experience.
You don't have to support Apple's outlook, but representing it as a pointless limitation that hurts users is simply irresponsible.
I would never suggest that it's pointless. The point is obvious: generating revenue for Apple and feeding the ego of Jobs and the company as a whole.
+++ATH0
It is not actually the existing policy. The existing policy is to stomp on jailbreak whenever convenient and engage in no communication with the community at all.
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I will never understand OS wars. I run XP, Vista, Ubuntu, Arch, BSD, and OS X on various machines and partitions in this house. Right tool for the job, that's all there is to it.
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Partial List
MobileScrobbler
Sketches
Flashlight (amazing how often this comes in handy)
OpenSSH (server and client)
MobileChat
bsflite
ScummVM
VNsea
iPhysics (SO ADDICTIVE OMG)
PocketGuitar
VNotes
Firefly Media Server
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I think this is a case of a store manager or regional manager not giving corporate the reacharound they insist on. I bet someone is going to get fired for letting this guy speak at an Apple store.
All pass beyond reach of medicine. None pass beyond the reach of love.
This is a very subjective thing to measure. For one person, "customer friendly" might mean "makes a product that the customer thinks makes him cool" and for another it might mean "helps the customer adapt a product to his own purposes, rather than expect the customer to adapt to the purposes of the manufacturer".
You know, if you'd been fair enough to point out some of the things the iPhone does well -- say, "provides a smooth and unexcelled mobile web browsing experience" or "offers a well-integrated convergence between music player and phone" -- instead of "a product that the customer thinks makes him cool," you might have delivered some genuine insight and actually deserved the mod up.*
You started off so well, too. Lots of people on Slashdot (and elsewhere) can't seem to understand that just because a given product doesn't embody their priorities, there may still be a legitimate market for it.
And then you went south, essentially suggesting that anybody who finds the iPhone sufficient for their purposes must be buying it as a status item.
And people wonder why Apple fans sometimes end up with a chip on their shoulder.
Tweet, tweet.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
"Losses" due to iPhone unlocking are even less plausible than the inflated "losses" from software piracy.
I agree. However, over the past year, most of the dittoheads that "cover" Apple stock on TV and in the business magazines factored in every iphone sale according to the rosy future revenue stream projections that Apple gaves them. During November/December, these people (who tend to know very little about the actual dynamics of technology markets) became increasingly skittish because of news filtering out of Asia from the iphone component sellers and assemblers regarding Apple's reduction in 2008 anticipated order volumes. Coupled with the increasing disparity between Apple's reports on iphone volume sales versus official telco activation, this accounted for a good deal of the crash in Apple stock before the general market crash.
These are the "momentum" media people and investors that bid up Google to ~$700, and during the previous bubble bid up the dotcoms and Cisco/Sun to ridiculous levels. If you get them on your side, it's great and your execs can make a fortune selling their option stock at wild prices. But once you lose them they will ignore fundamentals and overshoot any selloff.
Da Blog
Free Software is never about price, and always about freedom. Specifically, the freedom to run, modify, study and distribute software. Lots of people sell free software, and make money doing so -- earning money is a useful thing, but it should never be more important than freedom. If Apple can find a way to make money from iPhones whilst remaining free, that would be a good thing.
One such way for Apple to do that would be to sell iPhones. Which they're already doing.
Join the Free Software Foundation
But that assumes that the product would otherwise have been made using another business model. It also assumes that putting one's own interests above others is immoral. Uncompassionate or selfish, perhaps.
The question has a bit finer shading in many cases. I think we all understand that most people will balance their interestes against other's on a weighted scale. The going social custom seems to hold that the tie should go to the other. For example, If two want a piece of cake (normally a balanced interest), they should each be willing to yield to the other. If that weight is somehow shifted, for example, if I want it as a bit of dessert and the other guy is starving, I am called upon to insist that he have it and nobody expects him to willingly yield to me.
Further, the amount that one over or undervalues the other's interests when weighing an action translates roughly to a scale from saintly to evil incarnate. Adjectives such as 'upstanding', 'moral', 'rude', 'unethical', and such fall in the intermediate points in that scale. Most people place those adjectives similarly on the scale, though there is variation.
The question in business is one of setting the weights. Nobody is going to starve over the openness of the iPhone, clearly. It's NOT a simple matter of Apple putting it's interests over those of their customers. Some maintain that limiting openness buys Apple very little (small weight) but grants a lot for their customers collectively (large weight), so Apple should yield to the greatest good.
In truth, corporations (like all psychopaths) place no weight on others. The more intelligent ones understand that their greatest good is served by appearing as if they DO value others interests. Some try smoke and mirrors in an attempt to avoid short term losses while keeping the long term gain, others decide that they must ACTUALLY act in their customer's interest sometimes or they'll be found out.
Uhh, the 1.1.1 exploit was a security hole in the libtiff library that they use. Should they leave the phone open to remote buffer overflows and code execution so people can jail break it?
The iPhone was clearly not ready for 3rd party developers at launch time so they gave you web apps to get by for a while. As the software and frameworks mature they open it up to 3rd parties.
There were no web apps at launch either. Apple specifically said there would NOT be an SDK for third party developers. Then there was a web SDK. Now there's a native SDK.
Sure, maybe Apple was just stringing everybody along because they actually weren't ready. They tend not to release half assed products though. I suspect Apple wanted to test the market and gain a foothold. Now that the iPhone is a hit they feel more secure throwing their weight around and telling AT&T how it's going to be. After all, there's really no reason Apple would want to restrict (quality) third party apps on the iPhone. There are lots of reasons AT&T would, from a profit motivated anti-chat/text and anti-VOIP stance to a deeply engrained corporate fear of letting anyone do anything with their phones.
The nice thing about Apple is that they generally do both.
and remember that "use-friendly" == "programmer-hostile"
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
The only good thing the hackers/jailbreakers have done is to push Apple to develop the SDK faster, and put more emphasis on security.
They put more emphasis on locking it harder. That has very little to do with security.
So use the GPL2. Sheesh.
I attended the event at the Apple Store. The event was an Apple iPhone SDK party sponsored by the Boston Chapter of Mobile Monday. Since it involved the Apple SDK, the event was conducted at the local Apple Store, a first for a Mobile Monday meeting. After the talk, and demos, there was a party at a nearby hotel. The hotel party was sponsored by local companies only, no known Apple involvement. Not sure if Apple had anything to do with the event other than supplying the location since it was celebrating the release of the iPhone SDK, and sponsored by Mobile Monday. The main speaker only talked for about 20 minutes, and the talk was very general in nature. The store was too small to host all that attended, and the store was trying to conduct their normal retail operations while the meeting was in progress. No seats, standing only with one or two exceptions. Would have preferred the meeting at the normal locations - MIT classroom, or nearby Nokia Research Center.
I have an iPhone, but there are many things I miss about my treo phone; The innumerable GPL applications, the video camera, the zoomable still camera, the fact that I could play midi files as ring tones/alarms, the ability to use a sound recorder on the phone and record any ring tone...while Apple seems to be poised to charge me for every little app, ringtone, download etc.
The iTunes store will offer free apps (no charge to you or the developer beyond the usual signup fee for the dev program itself) and you can make your own ringtones out of any sound file that you can import into GarageBand for no charge.
So you can pay if you want or you can stick with totally free offerings. Just like you can with any other OS out there.
i am a soviet space shuttle
very nice indeed, thanks.
i'll might be able to succeed with some inversions on that and apply even to speeding. i.e. deliver like accept speeding ticket, of course, go to court (mb appeal)... but first have some associated part replaced --may work.
I live in a country where the iPhone isn't sold, yet I know about two dozen people who own one, and see a few on the street each week. The only eee I've ever seen was yesterday, in a computer shop's show room (it was pink).
Dude.
Flamebait much?
It's very simple for me. If apple never finishes accepting us
into the program (no, downloading the SDK is not getting accepted into the
$99 a year program) then we will have to find another way to distribute
our iPhone games. Either way they are getting ported and the only coding
difference will be in the screen management base class.
You are welcome on my lawn.
And who can argue against such a sophisticated argument based entirely on a homophobic pejorative?
Are you so deep in the RDF that you can't even interpret English correctly anymore? Whathomophobic pejorative? "Sucks?" Are you for real?
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but empowering CLI scripting, X11 apps and Unix power tools on a desktop machine is not equivalent to allowing developers to convert the iPhone into another junk mobile platform with the interface of WinCE, the stability of the Palm OS, the performance of Java ME, the viruses of Symbian, and the political feuding and incompatibilities of mobile Linux.
You have repeatedly failed to explain why the one leads to the other, and why changing from a desktop to a mobile device magically makes this a huge problem. The reasons cited (which aren't reasons so much as emotional reactions) are often something along the lines of "OMG ITS A FONE IT HAS TO WERK!!!!1" Well, see, here's the problem with this logic. Take a look at Windows Mobile phones, which I think we can agree are an example of some of the worst mobile device design in terms of software that you can find in the industry. Even when these break, they do so in a manageable fashion. They get slow. They get unresponsive. They become cruddy. They can, however, typically still make phone calls. It takes a LOT to crap your phone up to the point where it can't even make phone calls.
Now let's look at Mobile OS X. My jailbroken 1.1.4 iPhone, for example, has about 20 applications loaded on it, including Samba, AFPd, OpenSSH, Firefly Media Server, MobileRSS, and PureFTPd. All the applications I just mentioned run daemons in the background. Strangely, not only have I ALWAYS been able to make phone calls, but this doesn't seem to slow down my phone at all -- mostly because good software development and the sensible organization of OS X prevent them from doing so. Where Apple leads, developers follow --this has been demonstrated time and again in the desktop release of OS X, and it leads to good software development practice.
One reason the iPod worked is that Apple didn't clutter it with a public API for adding bells and whistles.
What? What could that possibly have to do with A) the iPod's excellent value B) its excellent integration with iTunes C) the terrific, simple UI? Again, a question you have failed to answer over and over is how person A's installing Widget Q onto their device somehow ruins person B's experience with THEIR device.
Adding a limited SDK is better than turning it into a Linux Tinker Toy set that converts into a pile of junk after you install a few apps.
Oh, Linux hate, too! You've managed to cover all the bases! Lovely! Very cute comment, except this doesn't happen. With any device. Installing applications does not magically convert devices into piles of junk. How do you even believe the garbage that you write? Have you even used a jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch? Have you worked out the system by which fully-capable devices destroy the happiness that stock users have? I hope you can describe it for us here, really, I'm all ears.
Despite all of Apple's restrictions, there will apparently continue to be a jailbreak community adding unsupported apps, so I don't understand what the controversy is here. It looks like we can all have our cake and eat it too.
The problem here is that we are never promised this will always be possible. All we are told is that Apple won't do anything to specifically hurt jailbreak, which was already proved false in the 1.1.2 to 1.1.3 transition -- the AFC hack that allowed it was deactivated, despite its not being a security risk and not causing errors.
All Apple would have to do is put somewhere, out of the way, on some obscure portion of the iPhone bit of their site, "here is how to activate 'developer mode' on your iPhone or iPod touch. Please note that activating this mode will void any software support Apple offers on the device and is intended for advanced users only. Developer mode may damage your device, so take care." This, of course, would be total bullshit, as no iPhone or iPod touch has ever been bricked from simply jailbreaking, but the warning would stop casual users, who would then be free
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Ah. Just this once, then.
Apple is anything but customer-friendly. Check out the iPod support forums and watch for courteous, informative posts about Nano bugs being deleted. Call Apple customer support, tell them your Nano won't shut off (it probably won't if you have a 1st gen Nano), go through the reset and restore hoops, then send in your iPod for repair when they say they've never heard of this problem. Get the iPod back a couple weeks later with a note saying they couldn't reproduce the problem. Confirm that it's impossible to turn the iPod off, and thus that Apple definitely saw the problem and lied in their response. Discover the thousands of other users online confirming that this seems to be a problem with most Nanos.
Then tell me Apple is customer-friendly.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
They're doing it again...I found this story on a social network I'm a member at. http://my.wallst.net/blog/Brad_MyWallSt/2008/04/03/att-boss-confirms-3g-iphone/