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iPhone 3GS Finally Hacked
Well, the inevitable hacking of Apple's latest flavor of iPhone has happened. Named "purplera1n," the tool will only allow installation of unauthorized applications instead of a full unlock. "The purplera1n jailbreak will free your iPhone from the limitations imposed on it by AT&T and Apple. After jailbreaking, a user will be able to customize the iPhone with home-screen wallpapers and third-party ringtones. But the biggest advantage of jailbreaking is the support of unapproved apps such as iBlackList (blacklists and whitelists for contacts) and many others."
Why would anyone buy a device where someone *else* decides what apps you can run and what you cannot run? You don't own such a device - someone else owns it, and is letting you use it only under conditions they decide.
I'm sure this will get modded down by iPhone fanboys, but I don't mean it as an anti-iPhone thing, more like an anti-any-device-where-the-mfg-regains-control-after-you-buy-it thing.
Why would you run an app that would organize the contacts on your phone, if you're the least bit worried about who the heck they are? Now, the iBlacklist may be just as legit as any app in the App Store, but there's a rather large chance that a version is floating around that actually sends your contacts' names, emails, and phone numbers to an Asiatic hacker or something. Or that the crack itself sends your data to said Asiatic hacker.
I'd say "there's a reason they're unapproved", but the examples of apps rejected by Apple are, to be honest, rather ridiculous sometimes - and they don't inspect the traffic that comes out of their test machines, I'd presume - so I can't say that "there's a reason they're unapproved"... although it does seem like an apt comeback (cue the apt-get comeback joke) to this sort of cracking.
Point? Don't put your data on a machine you can't lock down yourself, I suppose.
Note: I was 13 when I wrote most of this. Take with several grains of salt.
People buy the iPhone, or the kindle, or some other device that requires everything to be signed, then they either "jailbreak" them or whine about the restrictions.
If you want these restrictions to go away stop buying the devices, and educate everyone who'll listen about why YOU won't touch them, then let them make up their own minds.
You wouldn't buy a car that required you to call the manufacturer and get authorisation every time you wanted to put petrol in it or attach those sickly fluffy dice to the rear vision mirror, would you? And if you did buy it despite such a ridiculous restriction, would you then be complaining to everyone about the restriction?
We don't need 2 slashdot stories per week about this. We're just chasing our own tails here.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Why isn't apple getting into deep shit with the DOJ for antitrust practices?
It doesn't command sufficient market share.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Because MS had a monopoly on its OS, and used that monopoly to leverage acceptance of the browser. Apple has no monopoly on cell phones or media players, and thus isn't leveraging a monopoly on one to increase adoption of the other. A buyer who wishes to opt out of iTunes can buy a different phone.
Look at it this way: Apple would only get into that kind of trouble with the DoJ if you were forced to use iTunes to sync any phone with your computer, not just an iPhone. Since that doesn't seem very likely to happen, I doubt you'd see Apple slapped with an anti-trust suit for this. iTMS/iPod is more likely, but since Amazon entered the market, I wouldn't hold my breath for that one either.
Simply pairing a software product and a hardware product together is in itself not worthy of attention from the DoJ.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
There's a difference between not supporting third-party applications and actively working to stop their use.
In this case, Apple's doing the latter, and that's pretty evil.
Only in apple world, you use a software running on a desktop/laptop and meant for music files to control your mobile phone.
Kudos to you and apple.
Jailbreaking is counterproductive. Apple and AT&T will never learn this way. I opted for N97 instead, sure it has some drawbacks, but I am simply not prepared to give any kind of money to companies as evil as Apple and AT&T.