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Apple Wants Patents For Crippling Cellphones
theodp writes "Evil is in the eye of the beholder, but there's certainly not much to like in the newly-disclosed Apple patent applications for Systems and Methods for Provisioning Computing Devices. Provisioning, says Apple, allows carriers to 'specify access limitations to certain device resources which may otherwise be available to users of the device.' So what problem are we trying to solve here? 'Mobile devices often have capabilities that the carriers do not want utilized on their networks,' explains Apple. 'Various applications on these devices may also need to be restricted.'"
This can only mean the iPhone is coming to Verizon!
All iPhones will now play the Imperial March on startup.
Caffeine is my anti-drug!
Duranin - A NWN2 Roleplaying Persistent World
Oh wow, that was quick.
When most phones, including the iPhone, come into contact with anything Apple, they become crippled.
At least we can officially call it: The Apple Effect.
This tag has never been more appropriate...
They're just patenting this defect so they can sue anyone that would try to harm us.
restriction of features doesn't seem very patentable
Haven't been around the patent office lately, have you?
Apple and any inventor should be ashamed to put their name on such a crappy patent; there is not a bit on an idea in there.
However, if this serves to keep others from implementing carrier-based restrictions, I'm all for it: implementing this is going to hurt Apple and help everybody else.
The patent component of this news aside, we've seen iPhones turned into web servers, iPhones running PHP and Apache and even playing reduced frame rate WoW on your iPhone. So, when we saw these articles it is easily suspected that they could be an abuse to the network. But how could an Apache server on my iPhone be anymore of an abuse than an Apache server on my home computer connected to Comcast? I mean, the networks are probably different but can't they institute a cap and just let my phone slow to a crawl due to limited bandwidth while everyone else doesn't even notice my usage? Are the cell phone networks really that helpless in that they cannot cap usages on cell phones?
...
Either there's something about the potential abuse of cell phones on networks or Apple just wants another patent. Probably both.
All I ask of Apple (or anyone really) is that -- if they implement this patent on a phone -- they advertise this "feature" and stay true to the numbers of what you can expect out of your potentially crippled device. My biggest problem with my ISP is that they flat out lie to me about what I'm paying for. When I see things like "unlimited data plan" on cell phones I can only laugh
My work here is dung.
...on my own personal iPhone. Why? Well, it's easier than remembering how to hook it up to the 5 Google calendars I need it to sync and edit...
Yeah. Just one phone. I don't have to be a big corporation to find tools like that useful.
This makes me evil, right?
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
So, I didn't buy my iPieceOfShit, I iLicensed it? How is this even legal?
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
Or alternatively, why not use an appropriate charging structure, so that it becomes prohibitively expensive for the end user to consume excessive resources? And use the extra revenue earned from those users who are willing to pay for large consumption to increase the capacity.
It is not "their" network. It is hosted on the radio frequencies effectively leased to them by the FCC which is ultimately owned by "we the people."
With all that said, it is within the rights of the property owners to determine how the leased property can be used. I find that it is past time that the FCC or even congress enact rules that prevent carriers from harming consumers in much the same way that Bell Telephone abused consumers.
Apple, it is not for the carriers to say what specific services are enabled on what devices so long as the devices are compatible with the network. (Compatibility can be defined broadly so I would also urge that this is defined appropriately as well.)
It is inappropriate for wireless carriers to determine what specific devices are inappropriate for use on a publicly owned radio frequency resource just as it would be inappropriate for any one entity to determine what specific vehicles are permitted to travel on public thoroughfares. While certain general prohibitions should be appropriately directed, they should be enforced to by a regulating body, not by carriers who often use such restrictions as leverage to sell other services.
...does anyone else ever get the feeling that there is a whole cabal of businesses, government organizations, etc, out there just trying to manage the piss out of them? Managed content, managed hardware, managed media...there is too much management...
If you don't like a company crippling a product, what are the alternatives?
Well, one alternative is that the company couple sell different physical products with the different capabilities. Of course, that would increase costs, so both the crippled and uncrippled versions would cost more.
Or, the company could only sell uncrippled hardware. Now, what price would they sell it for? They certainly can't sell it for the lower price of a crippled product, because they'd lose money. So now you've lost the choice between a lower-price/lower-featured product, and a higher-price/higher-featured product. In other words, richer people win, poorer people lose.
So we should recognize that there's a benefit to being able to sell different sets of features to different consumers. More people get what they want at a price they can afford.
Now lets be realistic here people.
You get a Cell Phone and most of them even the low end systems are more powerful then computers 10 years ago. So most phones can do a lot of stuff.
Now you have different carriers. They can Suck and have a small limited network where only some services will properly run. So if you had a phone that can do anything on a network that cant when you try to do something that the network can't handle you get an error, or it just doens't work. The geeks like us will see this as either a reason to switch carriers or hack the system to get it to work. But for average joe it will be like. Why offer us the feature if we can't use it, or it is broken so the entire system is broken.
So if your carrier will not support the feature then it shouldn't be on the phone. So people will be happy with your product as it works. And if they see someone on an different network with the same product and there is a new feature then you think about switching the carrier not the phone technology. So if the iPhone will be on different networks and there is one willing to support different features you need. You can switch to that vender without thinking man this iPhone sucks because I cannot tether with my computer. While the truth is the iPhone can teather it is just you stupid carrier who won't let you.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
That's one option, but there is still the risk of a rogue app (perhaps a virus) getting installed and bogging down a local cell before the user is hit with the excess charges. Worse if it is a popular app.
Or alternatively, why not use an appropriate charging structure, so that it becomes prohibitively expensive for the end user to consume excessive resources? And use the extra revenue earned from those users who are willing to pay for large consumption to increase the capacity.
Now that's a good business idea.
If Apple successfully patents this, it'll be harder for other people to do it. Why is this bad, again?
This story is tagged "defectivebydesign", but what Apple wants to do is anything but.
Operators have a hard limit on the amount of service they can actually provision. Allowing any and all devices to run willy nilly on the network would be certain death, even for the best-laid network. By throttling certain services, turning off certain capabilities, and allowing remote provisioning management, Apple is making sure that the device they are providing to users will work and continue to work on the network.
This is a very important feature not only for the NOs, but also for businesses who would provide these phones to their field teams. Though, to be honest, restriction of features doesn't seem very patentable, at least there are other implementations that already exist. WinMo has had this since WM6.1, for example.
You don't seem to understand the flawed business model that communications providers have been running with since the beginning. They never had enough capacity for their customers. They could, but they need to pay their CEO's $20M bonuses instead of grow their infrastructure. So as it stands today, there just isn't enough network for us, which is why when there are city/county/state-wide emergencies many calls do not go through.
The only analogy I've been able to come up with that paints a good picture about why it's such a flawed model is what I call the Coca-Cola Principle. If Coca-Cola was suddenly able to reclaim the soda in the can I just purchased before it hit my lips, they could in effect resell my can of Coke before I could even drink it. This is exactly what every single communications provider has done. Comcast (unfortunately my home ISP) is perhaps one of the worst offenders of this. Having resold the bandwidth I paid for multiple hundreds of times. Eventually instead of providing me with what I have been paying for (unlimited broadband, as in no bandwidth cap), they reneged on their deal and put in a hard cap of 250gb/mo.
You sound a lot like a corporatist to me. Oh noes those poor Network Operators need to cripple us to continue to be able to oversell their product/service. Well, what I say is, shitcan the CEOs taking these ridiculous sums of money and grow your infrastructure to meet YOUR promises as well as the economic DEMAND.
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
So, you build this super-nifty gadget that does all sorts of cool things... but you don't want those cool things to actually be used?
Why not build them without that capability in the first place?
I could agree with this if and only if they are giving you the phone for free and you are only buying the service. But when you are expected to buy the hardware, it is no one's business what you do with it. Too many companiess want to control what you do with the gadgets that you buy. Why are we allowing this in our society?
Crazy scenario, if you buy a toaster with a computer chip in it that has a little app that holds memory of who you are and how you like your toast toasted, should we then allow the companies to own the rights to how you want to modify the toaster?
I know I know, someone will say, it's about the network and keeping it clean of apps with viruses or that the apps are what make a company $$$, but it's all becoming too invasive.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
You don't seem to understand the flawed business model that communications providers have been running with since the beginning. They never had enough capacity for their customers. They could, but they need to pay their CEO's $20M bonuses instead of grow their infrastructure.
Wow, only $20M to put in a $1.7Bn infrastructure upgrade, with $2.3Bn extra costs to implement it with strong integration to the current infrastructure and while prematurely terminating part of the current infrastructure before value's been realized on it? You must be the best business process accountant ever!
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So if I want a phone that isn't crippled, all's I have to do is not buy an iphone? GO PATENTS!
... just with the caveat that they can't license it to anyone else, and they must sue any infringers who cripple phones also.
Operators have a hard limit on the amount of service they can actually provision. Allowing any and all devices to run willy nilly on the network would be certain death, even for the best-laid network.
Do you have any examples of this? Apart from the non-standard system needed to support the iPhone's voice mail stuff, I can't figure out what you might be referring to.
Is "ON A CELLPHONE" the new "ON THE INTERNET"? A quick glance over the claims reveals nothing that hasn't been done with DRM before in other settings.
By throttling certain services, turning off certain capabilities, and allowing remote provisioning management, Apple is making sure that the device they are providing to the users who aren't cut off will work and continue to work on the network.
There, that's better
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Wow - didn't take long for the apologists to come out of the woodwork. Here's what I'd like to see instead: A balanced comment that takes into consideration the needs of BOTH parties in a transaction/business relationship/whatever, rather than just the point of view of the party with the most power. I think we (i.e. "reasonable people") understand that one-sided relationships that favor one party over the other aren't optimal in a civilized society. But I can't quite understand the psychology behind those that rapidly spring to the defense of the powerful. Unless you're working for them and will directly benefit from maintaining or adding further imbalance to the status quo, WHY?
In your particular example, I would counter that the real reason for crippling devices has much more to do with control for the purpose of maximizing income than control for technical reasons. The fear isn't that willy-nilly allowance of device capabilities will bring down the network, it's that it will allow customers to create their own solutions rather than paying a lucrative monthly fee for the officially sanctioned service that optimizes monetization of the service rather than optimizing the ability of people to do what they need/want to do. Use of the term "crippling" isn't accidental - it's an accurate description of what is being done.
Hey folks, you all have a path open to you if you don't like the way Apple and AT&T manage the IPhone. Simply design, build, market, and sell a competing phone and service that is as popular as the IPhone. What's holding you back?
I am not in the business, but lower the $20m to $2m and you can probably "electrify" a couple more rural areas. People making $2m shouldn't be starving and we are getting more people on the grid.
No good! Don't understand! Your analogy has no cars!
Man, I hate Micros... err Apple. Actually, I think I just hate Steve Jobs. Most of Apple's fascist type behavior appears to be coming from him.
Really Slashdot? A troll comparing an executive bonuses to the cost of infrastructure is modded insightful and someone calling him on it is modded flamebait? I'm a socialist and these socialist drones disgust me.
You can do all of this via Blackberry Enterprise Server.
My 'berry is so locked down by the guru's at head office that I have the same web browsing restrictions on it, that I do on our point of sale desktops, all courtesy of the BES and SonicWall routers.
I wish I was a neutron bomb, for once I could go off...
My last phone from T-Mobile is hardware capable of MP3 playback and ringtones. It is however flashed with T-Mobile firmware locking those features out *unless* the ringtone in question is purchased from T-Mobile.
This has nothing whatsoever with them provisioning services and everything to do with them wanting me to pay extra for permission to use my own music files or pay extra for permission to use their music files.
If you don't have enough network capacity to deal with the number of users, the solution would be to stop accepting new customers. Either that, or raise prices so either you can improve your network, such that it will handle the number of people using the network. The network does have limited capacity. This means that if your network is going beyond capacity, you need to expand the network, or kick some people off. Everybody complains when their ISP throttles their internet connection, or when they don't get the speeds they are supposed to due to an overloaded network. I don't see how this is any different.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The the slashdot groupthink would complain that they are reaping huge profits and overcharging customers for service that is sub-par. Hypocrisy runs rampant on /.
Why the patent, I couldn't guess, unless it is as others here are saying - patent it so you can sue carriers who want to implement the system to prevent them from crippling the iPhone.
This is Apple's ultimate goal!
Provisioning Computing Devices should be Poisoning Computing Devices
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Thanks Apple !
Hasn't this sort of thing been done for years? I bought a Motorola Razr phone with AT&T some time back and a number of the standard features were disabled. Verizon takes phones all the time and mucks with the software to disable features, often so that they can rent the features back to you at some cost. So, what's new about Apple's approach that makes it patentable?
The only thin that I can think of is that traditionally carriers would "provision" the phones by licensing the phone's firmware then writing a new variation and burning it into all the phones that they sell. I can only suppose that Apple's solution is reduced to a secured / signed configuration file so that you can simply install that and not screw with the phone's firmware/OS.
As a former Motorola mobile devices employee, I can attest to that. All cell makers have provisioning, it is nothing new, interesting, unique, or patentable (in my opinion). Just another example of Apple thinking that it excretes golden feces...
Isn't that what slashdot has been ripping into the cable ISPs for? Throttling certain services, and charging for "excessive" use (bandwidth caps)? AT&T and Verizon are always bragging about their networks ... why don't we make them live up to the hype?
...
Oh, yeah, because it's hype
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
Let's patent it!
I don't care why you're posting AC
Tie up a crappy idea in lawsuits over bad patents.
"Method for intentionally introducing flaws in products."
Does that mean it would be a patent violation for any other manufacturer to limit capabilities? If so I'm all for it. Let Apple restrict their products if it means everybody else isn't allowed to!!!
$18M is pocket change. A few million dollars doesn't solve anything; how about you stop buying the occasional order-out pizza, because $18 for a meal one night a month is outrageous when you could make some chicken soup to last the family a whole week for twice as much (making it $5 instead of $18)! That whole $216/year saved is MASSIVE!
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you are absolutely right. That is why in Europe, where phones are not restricted, not a single Carrier has survived today. Oh wait... try again
you are absolutely right. If users were to use their USB cable to install a free ringtone, this would totally overload the network. Oh wait... mmm; bollocks
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
This phone crippling crap is performed by US carriers mostly in order to maximize their profits and there are no technical reasons whatsoever to restrict any capabilities of a certified GSM phone.
Like it or not: A phone, which is crippled by design, like the iPhone, is defective by design.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
The carriers would need to implement it pay as you go or there would be millions of people with 4 figure bills at the end of the month saying "WTF - I just downloaded this app for $0.99 and a month later I've got a $2,500 bill? FU carrier - see me in class action court!"
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Are you kidding? Not only does trusting client side security always end up in disaster, but European cell phone networks seem to be doing just fine.
Stop buying into the carriers' propaganda already and start buying your phones directly from the manufacturers. You'd never be in this mess if the average American had done so from the start. The world's largest cell phone manufacturer would prefer to not sell you crippled devices, and look how much US market share it's been rewarded with.
My Sig: SEGV
... that's what Apple are showing themselves to be. If, occasionally, I feel interested in their innovative products, this kind of news is what always keeps me from acting upon it.
It seems that Apple has become too successful for its own good -- somethings that seems to affect (virtually?) all major corporations these days. At first they start out with a cool product and they're good at keeping their customers happy about it. Then they become a success and make a lot of money. But, almost inevitably the company gets sold and/or one or more assholes take over the helm. Assholes? Yeah, they're the type that understand that "It's the stockholders, stupid!" Therefore, if a decision to do something differently will probably make the company more money -- even if it's likely to piss off many customers -- then it's the right thing to do. Hell, they usually don't even care about breaking the law; normally they're careful that the potential fines don't exceed the resulting profits, but that's not always the case. Not that I'm accusing Apple of ever having done anything illegal, but I see no reason to trust them either.
Show me a successful company that has always put customer satisfaction before profits, and I'll show you a company that you can trust (at least until the next change of management). Actually, I'll bet that there are lots of them... just precious few (if any) that are publicly owned.
In my opinion, the license fees for the monetization of this proud piece of Intellectual Property cannot be set too high. A license fee of 15$ per appliance for any other manufacturers wishing to license this remarkable piece of Intellectual Property seems wholly appropriate.
Incidentally, I do not own an iPhone or any other mobile communication device manufactured by Apple and I definitely have no plans to acquire one. I am quite happy with my 3-year-old mobile telephone, which is a prepaid model, and I have no plans to convert to a subscription. Thanks.
A joke, but hasn't Nokia (possibly among others) been doing this for ages? I had a Nokia N73 and my carrier's unique firmware disabled features like Stereo Bluetooth and PTT. The N73 was released Q3 2006 according to wiki.
This makes me want to cancel my iphone
You don't seem to understand the flawed business model that communications providers have been running with since the beginning.
The business model since the beginning has been to build networks with business users in mind, and then selling unused capacity to consumers at bargain rates.
At one time, a buck a minute was normal, and for business users, still a bargain compared to the "mobile phone" that Perry Mason used.
Since the networks grew at an amazing rate, eventually reducing costs to commodity levels, that model was hardly flawed.
They never had enough capacity for their customers.
There have always been areas where use has jumped fast enough to outstrip network expansion.
If you mean network resources have never been unlimited, I'll grant you that.
So as it stands today, there just isn't enough network for us, which is why when there are city/county/state-wide emergencies many calls do not go through.
YOUR calls don't go through - the important ones do.
That's by design.
Cell operators are required by Federal law to interrupt consumer cell service to prevent the network becoming unavailable to emergency responders.
Comcast (unfortunately my home ISP) is perhaps one of the worst offenders of this. Having resold the bandwidth I paid for multiple hundreds of times. Eventually instead of providing me with what I have been paying for (unlimited broadband, as in no bandwidth cap), they reneged on their deal and put in a hard cap of 250gb/mo.
So...what you are saying is that your monthly charge should cover 25 terabytes of transfer or more?
The fact of the matter is that you didn't buy ALL their bandwidth - they aren't reselling YOUR bandwidth - that's pure rubbish.
The question is how to strike a balance between use and cost.
There is a certain cost per byte that has to be recovered, or no one gets to play.
I probably come pretty close to the cap at times, but have never heard anything from Comcast.
On my business accounts, I shatter that barrier every month - that's why I have business accounts that aren't subject to it.
You should stop whining and do the same.
Comcast COULD have simply limited your speed so that you couldn't exceed the cap.
It would still be unlimited.
That was rejected as a bad compromise for obvious reasons - most people don't use bandwidth at a sustained high rate.
Then they should limit the amount of service they provide and not what you do with that service. They should also quit advertising capabilities they have no intention of actually providing. In the case where their network is already overloaded, they should quit advertising PERIOD. After all, if they're overloaded they don't have room to add more customers and might be better off if a few leave. They can spend those advertising dollars on expanding their network capabilities instead.
It's amazing, when ISPs and cellular providers talk to the FCC, their networks are stuffed to the rafters with packets and teetering on the edge of collapse due to the load, but within minutes of reading their claims to the FCC I inevitably see an advertisement where they offer more and faster service. One of those is a lie.
Most of the restrictions are a scam anyway. They want to claim either unlimited or that the limits are large and then implement a lower constructive limit without technically committing fraud (or more properly stated, make the fraud more difficult to prove in court). Of course, in many cases the features they disable have nothing to do with use of resources and everything to do with making you pay more to get them to flip a bit for you and "generously allow" your phone to do something it is already capable of at no cost to them.
How about they just offer a simple plan at a fair price and compete on quality and price for a change?
What you are forgetting(or simply eliding) is that many of the features commonly crippled by carriers are ones that reduce load on the network and whose existence creates little or no network overhead.
Little niceties like not being able to transfer/play media files from a computer onto a phone whose hardware can support it. That takes zero network resources, while the "Vcast" option involves considerable data transfer. Same thing with not being able to transfer pictures off the thing, in order to drive MMS revenues. Or disabling GPS in order to drive revenue for your own crippled nav-app.
If this was about the health of their precious little networks, the only control they'd have to exert would be over the cellular modem portion of the device, and they'd be encouraging as much off-network data traffic as possible(USB/BT/WiFi) and local storage of things like map data. I'm not saying that that never happens; but, empirically, the clear direction of the crippling trend is in favor of more network load, not less.
This reasoning just doesn't hold. Some netbooks already have 3G chips, I bet that will be a standard feature in all mobile computers in the near future. The result of this is that the network operators cannot control the clients.
It should be blindingly obvious to anyone that the network has to cope with rogue devices. Assuming that wireless clients are all well-behaved is a phenomenally stupid idea.
The "we're only protecting the user from excess charges" idea might hold water if the same companies weren't happy to send you insane roaming charges...
You don't seem to understand the flawed business model that communications providers have been running with since the beginning. They never had enough capacity for their customers. They could, but they need to pay their CEO's $20M bonuses instead of grow their infrastructure. So as it stands today, there just isn't enough network for us, which is why when there are city/county/state-wide emergencies many calls do not go through.
That's not a flawed business model. You can meet 90% of your customer's needs for X dollars, and 99% of your customer's needs for 10X dollars, and 99.9% of your customer's needs for 100X dollars, and 99.99% of your customer's needs for 1000X dollars... see the problem? Increasing capacity to a point where you can fully satisfy state-wide emergencies is incredibly expensive, and leaves half of the network unused at regular times. That is a flawed business model, which is why it's not done by any infrastructure provider - there are brownouts in summer heat waves, there are water shortages in droughts, there are network shortages in emergencies, etc. This is the trade-off we make in exchange for not having $5000/month cell phone bills.
That wouldn't be a problem if they gave people what they REALLY want, a warning that they are about to incur excessive charges! They carefully avoid letting people know about that before it's too late and then act mystified when people complain about 5 figure phone bills.
Besides, I thought the whole point of the App Store dane brammage was to make sure iPhone users never end up with a rogue app.
It was ever thus, telecoms operators have always tried to maintain a tight grip on what devices can connect to their networks. And I think they are right to do so, allowing unrestricted software access to their network infrastructure might well be disastrous. Most computers have to connect via a modem, but the iPhone is the modem, so allowing software to access the hardware directly would remove this layer of abstraction and security.
We have rules about the capabilities of devices that can run on our roads, this is not much different.
OK, he's wrong and you're wrong.
Oversubscription is a great and fine thing and keeps costs low and therefore costs to the customers low. Most of the time, providing enough service that everyone could use everything all at once (electricity, phones, water, etc) would mean building out a ridiculous level, and create fantastic waste 99.999% of the time.
Every business oversubscribes in some way. You allow your tenant to throw parties, but don't expand the roof to cover the infinitely number of guests he might invite: so you're an evil coca cola stealing bastard?
The problem is not over subscription -- it's the fact that it's hidden/lied about. The fact that an apartment can only hold a finite number of guests and yet there's no statement in your lease restricting the number of guests your tenant can invite to a party isn't really a problem. The lease doesn't tell him he can invite an unlimited number of people. It doesn't tell him he can invite 1000/hour all the time and so can all his guests.
The phone companies tell us we can have unlimited bandwidth or a high amount. Then they can't provide it. That's breach of contract and fraud.
Your last lines are getting close to the heart of the matter: "shitcan the CEOs taking these ridiculous sums of money and grow your infrastructure to meet YOUR promises as well as the economic DEMAND."
But you're missing the point. They're committing fraud and breaking contracts. They should not lose their jobs -- that hardly matters. The companies should be sued and prosecuted for the civil and criminal aspects of this. The officers of the company should be held responsible. They should be both destitute and jailed.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not our telephone system, but in our political/judicial system that we are kept underlings. And in ourselves, that we are unable to force a government "of the people, by the people, for the people" to stop representing only RICH people.
Congratulations your right on the money. My last phone from Telus disabled file transfers over USB meaning that pictures taken on the phone had to be emailed to me for a fee rather than just transferred for free. Thankfully Bitpim fixed that for me with the Motorola equivalent of a registry change. This isn't at all about reducing use of resources, it's about maximizing the use of resources that the phone company can bill you for.
...if the reason Apple wants to patent this is to sit it on the shelf with the threat of a lawsuit to anyone who cripples cell phones in the future? Think about it: Apple can cripple phones because only they can.
As a result, Verizon, AT&T, et al. all now have to have their phones open and able to allow the consumer to do absolutely anything and everything they could ever want to do with their phones. Now, would Apple continue to have the only restricted phone on the market? I doubt it. They'd lose too much money competing against all the unlocked phones they created.
Hurry up and do it, Apple. I want a new browser on my LG env2.
I run Ubuntu skinned to look like a Mac on a PC. Go figure.
On one hand, the patent enables the horrible constraints that the telcos seem to feel they have to exercise to prevent feature use.
On the other hand, the telcos might not want to implement it because they'd have to pay royalities to Apple.
Oh, wait....
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I couldn't agree more. The problem with all these huge companies is that greed permeates from the top executives down to the business practices they implement. Stop paying execs millions of dollars and reinvest that money in the company and suddenly a smaller, reasonable service charge to the customer can make the company profitable. And guess what, the first company to do that wins, because everyone will move to use that service.
There's an app for that.
Reply to That ||
At 20 million per executive per year plus the golden parachutes, it does add up.
This is bogus. When you buy an iPhone you generally pay full price. It's not subsidized so the carrier has no $(*&^ing business crippling the phone, and Apple has no business crippling it on behalf of the carrier. It's disgusting that Apple is using tethering as one of the major selling points of the iPhone (which is odd, since I can tether my ancient Samsung "Sync" without any problem - AND get more bandwidth through it!) and they cripple it with the OS 3.1 update. That is a bait-and-switch regardless of where you live.
Maybe in reaction to this Google can make Android even less restrictive. If they do that and really support their developers, and don't place all kinds of "duplication of native functionality" or "competes with Crapple" or "app is available elsewhere" restrictions that Apple and Palm have, they'll take over the market Apple is currently occupying. It'd be neat if they do that and then shut down Apple's access to google maps.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
There is no reason for either of those features to be disabled -- they use the same services that my phone already receives! The only reason I can think of for this sort of crippling is an attempt to squeeze more money out of me and force me to pay for additional services or accessories for my phone; too bad, because I would rather go without those features than support that strategy.
Palm trees and 8
Right, and the PATRIOT act will only be used to protect us from terr'ists (sorry, pdf).
More accurately, if Verizon is any judge, it will be used to block access to, or remove features that would otherwise allow users access to cheaper markets. Much like Verizon's disabling of bluetooth OBEX profiles to prevent you from sending your own ringtones to your phone, and instead pushing toward they're exorbitantly overpriced ones, where 30 seconds or less of "music" costs as much as an entire album by the same artist at a used CD store.
Question everything
Wow - didn't take long for the apologists to come out of the woodwork. Here's what I'd like to see instead: A balanced comment
It's hard to get much more meta than, here's the type of comment I'd like to see someone post on Slashdot about the article about the patent about the capability to limit services in upcoming devices. Wow, just wow.
Anyway, your core point appears to confuse service providers with utilities and overall confuse a response that takes physical infrastructure into account for a defense of corporatism. It's also a rather silly point in that you seem to feel that users have some inherent right to use any feature of any device they like on cell networks.
On the Internet, you'd have a fair point because the Internet is purely a connectivity medium where providers simply offer a way for your local infrastructure to talk to that of other parties. On cell networks you are being offered a very specific set of services which use their communications infrastructure. Providers that don't wish to provide specific features really have no requirement to do so, nor should they. If you want to use the network however you like, you can use VOIP and play with whatever features you wish.
Apple, this is chmod. chmod, this is Apple. Apple, chmod's nickname in this context is "prior art"
Obvious to those skilled in the trade, not novel and therefore not patentable - at least not by law. Of course the USPTO will rubber stamp it.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
...if consumers did not implicitly agree to buying these crippled phones from the providers, these practices would not remain in vogue.
I only bought an Android phone when I know I could get a rooted one with no guff and no crippled features. It still has a dumb country-specific limitation on the market place precluding paid apps for my area, but such things as tethering and VoIP apps seem be working fine with no restrictions on which networks I switch my data traffic.
There is not excuse for the tethering restrictions, and in Europe most providers can offer unlimited data at small premiums. Why should it be different for US providers? They should simply price their data plans to match service provisioning cost.
Cellphone carriers everywhere are notoriously greedy, but US providers are the worst and most expensive - and do not act in the interest of their users, whom they instead nickel and dime to death with outrageous service charges and all manners of designs for captive restraints.
That Apple chooses to embrace this culture of consumer-hostile greed rather than fight against it shows us clearly what kind of corporation they are.
Sure it adds up, but to nothing even remotely approaching a few percent of what an infrastructure upgrade costs.
Recently I went into Verizon for a new phone. I told the guy I was interested in a "smart phone" but was not interested in paying for the "data plan". He explained that "if I bought any of their 'smart phones' I would automatically be charged the extra $30/month" for the 'data plan'. I explained to the guy that I did not need the data plan, particularly seeing how the phone I wanted had wireless. Along with many features that would have ZERO effect on Verizon's network. My argument went nowhere fast.
How does this article tie into my experience? Simple, all cell phone providers are SCAM ARTISTS!
I'll try anything once. Twice if it tastes good
damn Apple for making a secure phone. NOte - if you read the patent its clear its for Apple's signing of the carriers config file that prevents hackers form using fake files to access network resources they didn't pay for that would steal bandwidth and functionality from others. ie tethering This is apart of the 3.1 OS and hasen't killed an one yet
The slashdot groupthink would complain that they are reaping huge profits and overcharging customers for service that is sub-par.
That's not happening now (the reaping and the complaining)?
the point is Apple's method does not cripple the firmware the phone is completely open and fully functional except for the carrier that places limits. Take the phone to a better carrier Bam you have everything working.
You don't seem to understand the flawed business model that communications providers have been running with since the beginning. They never had enough capacity for their customers. They could, but they need to pay their CEO's $20M bonuses instead of grow their infrastructure.
Wow, only $20M to put in a $1.7Bn infrastructure upgrade, with $2.3Bn extra costs to implement it with strong integration to the current infrastructure and while prematurely terminating part of the current infrastructure before value's been realized on it? You must be the best business process accountant ever!
Wow nothing. You have to try really fucking hard to make it appear that these companies are spending properly. It's blatantly clear to anyone using these communications network that something is fundamentally wrong, and to make the comment you did leads me to believe you're simply a corporatist with a hidden agenda.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=CMCSA
I don't know how much you really know about finances, but I fucking dare you to tell me that these numbers show they can't afford to grow their infrastructure to meet the demand for it.
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
all this really. That Apple wants to do this is not out of character as others are pointing out. Nor is this type of thing out of context for things like telecos, and other traditional purveyors of things such as music, movies etc. They are used to a take our stuff the way it is, like it or lump it. Now these companies have gone into areas where the savvy consumer doesn't have to, like it or lump it. On the computing side of the game, the hard core "I want it the way I want it" is served by Linux. Apple sells it as "have it our way", while Windows both to their folly and benefit has tried to walk both sides of the street with mixed results. They are all running into difficulty with their philosophies with all this new tech... Apple doesn't want you doing certain things... well, tough darts, jail breaking exists and they don't like it. I need not go into the RIAA philosophy of such things and the rocks they have smashed up on... MS, well, sure they have DRM, but there's a hack for that! Linux, well, those traditional industries call Linux communist for a reason (in their minds)... In their minds, convergence was never supposed to be like this... Let them patent it, who gives a flying f*ck... Like all attempts to try to curtail people from using tech for their own purposes, this is fail
telecoms operators have always tried to maintain a tight grip on what devices can connect to their networks.
No. US telecoms operators have always tried to maintain a tight grip on what can be connected to their networks. This is not the case elsewhere in the world (although it is notable that with the advent of the iPhone, operators elsewhere in the world are starting to embrace anti-consumer ideas such as device-exclusivity contracts and refusal to unlock off-contract devices - one can only hope that the regulators get their finger out and put a stop to this).
And I think they are right to do so, allowing unrestricted software access to their network infrastructure might well be disastrous. Most computers have to connect via a modem, but the iPhone is the modem, so allowing software to access the hardware directly would remove this layer of abstraction and security.
You clearly don't understand how mobile phones are architected. A smartphone is basically a palmtop computer and a GSM/WCDMA modem in the same box. The computer part of it is _not_ (logically) the same device as the radiomodem, any more than a computer with a built in modem is. The "computer" side of a smartphone generally talks to the radio side through an interface that basically behaves like a serial port - i.e. it is controlled by standard AT commands.
Allowing a smartphone to run arbitrary software is no more a security risk than allowing a computer with a 3G dongle to run arbitrary software because the logical separation between the computer and the radio is still there.
We have rules about the capabilities of devices that can run on our roads, this is not much different.
Last time I checked, there were no laws that claim your car is unfit to be used on the road if you're using a third party stereo, or if you're using BP petrol instead of Shell. But these sorts of things are essentially what a lot of the restrictions are all about. Placing restrictions on what the _radio_ part of the phone is allowed to do is fair enough, but placing restrictions on what the user can do with the computer part of a device isn't acceptable to a lot of people.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Allowing any and all devices to run willy nilly on the network would be certain death, even for the best-laid network.
That's the same thing AT&T said to Carterphone back in the day. The more things change...
I hate to rain on the tinfoil hat brigade parade but this is for "provisioning" iPhones to corporate or government users. This allows the admin setting up iPhones to place restrictions on what applications and network services can run. It has nothing to do with carriers or Apple taking away features from your personal iPhones.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
This may be closer to the truth then you think. Verizion has a long history of not allowing certain functions on phones. This is why nobody wants a used Verizon phone because so much is disabled. This would allow Apple to still make one iPhone with one OS and one firmware but allow Verizion to place its own mandated limits on the ones used on its networks. Thus allowing Verizon to be known as the evil network and AT&T the freedom loving patriot ( quite a switch)
They can take the rest from the 500 billion in taxpayer dollars they have been granted over the years that were supposed to go towards infrastructure.
Though really, excessive executive compensation could probably pay 10% of the upgrade costs each year. That is certainly a significant figure.
One might be concerned about executive pay, or about infrastructure investment, but this story isn't really about either of those. It's about control.
Save executive pay to invest in infrastructure? Who cares? Available bandwidth isn't why I can't load user created ringtones onto my phone.
Both Apple and cellular carriers have a history of wresting away user control. I'm not inclined to believe this patent isn't just a continuation of this policy.
-- "Oh. This guy again."
This is very much self-defensive. If Apple owns the patent on this, it dissuades carriers from crippling the phone. If they try, Apple makes a premium on top of whatever they're making from selling to them.
Apple implemented this in OS 3.1 and the earth still rotates around its axis.
Fully agreed. The resource use is just a tiny part of the picture though Apple and the cell providers would like us to believe that it is the whole issue. I would also like to know why the cell providers advertise so aggressively if their networks really can't handle any more load. Surely more people using resources will precipitate the crash they keep quacking about to the FCC?!?
I didn't make that argument; I made the argument that $20M executive pays add up to a tiny fraction of the money they need to execute those sorts of projects. If your business turns a $1M profit a year, you'll salary yourself somewhere below $1M; if it turns a $1000M profit a year, why the hell not throw $100M at the executives and throw $900M at the projects? 5 executives, $20M each, sure. Now we're talking about market-dominance telcos that turn well more than a billion a year before projects ("Operating Costs" "Expansion Costs" etc), that $20M is like ... pocket change. It's NOT the spending problem.
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. . . everyone seems to misunderstand the patent system. Now, I'm no patent lawyer, but I have at least some basic understanding.
I believe that Apple doesn't have a grand, generic patent on any possible scheme to cripple cellphones. It's close to impossible to get a universal patent covering an abstract idea, unless the nature of the idea is such that there is only one possible way to accomplish it (which is very rare). Patent's are required to included a list of claims, which is a fairly specific, technical listing of how the 'invention' is implemented. If you can come up with a way to accomplish the same goal using different techniques, then I believe you don't infringe the patent. In fact, I think you need only differ by one claim, and the rest of the patent could be the same, and it would still be considered non-infringing (again, I am not a patent lawyer, but that seems to be what all the patent lawyers I've seen write articles about these sort of patents indicate).
When discussing patents, the first thing anyone should do is *read the patent*, which, this being /., no one does, apparently.
They have a patent on a particular scheme. One that involves a signed blacklist file which specifies resources/apps which *are not* allowed, while, one presumes, everything else is allowed.
So, one way to avoid the Apple patent, it would appear, is to switch to a whitelist model where everything is disallowed unless specifically allowed by the provisioning profile. That actually sounds much more like the way the control freaks at the mobile carriers would probably prefer to screw their customers, so if they wanted to do that, I don't *think* this patent would stop them. I'm sure someone could come up with other schemes, even, which would not infringe the particular scheme Apple is using.
You don't seem to understand the flawed business model that communications providers have been running with since the beginning. They never had enough capacity for their customers. They could, but they need to pay their CEO's $20M bonuses instead of grow their infrastructure. So as it stands today, there just isn't enough network for us, which is why when there are city/county/state-wide emergencies many calls do not go through.
That's not a flawed business model. You can meet 90% of your customer's needs for X dollars, and 99% of your customer's needs for 10X dollars, and 99.9% of your customer's needs for 100X dollars, and 99.99% of your customer's needs for 1000X dollars... see the problem? Increasing capacity to a point where you can fully satisfy state-wide emergencies is incredibly expensive, and leaves half of the network unused at regular times. That is a flawed business model, which is why it's not done by any infrastructure provider - there are brownouts in summer heat waves, there are water shortages in droughts, there are network shortages in emergencies, etc. This is the trade-off we make in exchange for not having $5000/month cell phone bills.
I suppose all that is fine if you intend on stagnating until something far superior and necessary blows you right out of the competition. It's almost 2010. We're trying to globalize Earth, and part of that is building a communications network that allows for ALL 6.5 billion people to communicate at once. I think it's time these corporatist fuckwads stop thinking about their pocketbooks and start complying with real world demands or face obsolescence. The stockholders can still make money while the company grows.
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
I have another suggestion. Maybe these cellular companies need to stop being a bunch of ass fucks. I know, I know, I'm expecting too much. But a man can dream, right?
I just have to Patent Patents, then the world will be mine!
That is unless someone figures out that you can Patent Patent Patents, then I am screwed!
You are making me feel a little sick. Seriously, repeat what you are saying and apply that to the Internet. You can make the same argument.
It's supply and demand. Your customers are demanding more bandwidth because these devices are being used differently. This is where this market is going....it is no longer just texts and phone calls. Instead of screwing your customers over, maybe you should be upgrading your networks as fast as possible.
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This story is tagged "defectivebydesign", but what Apple wants to do is anything but.
Operators have a hard limit on the amount of service they can actually provision. Allowing any and all devices to run willy nilly on the network would be certain death, even for the best-laid network. By throttling certain services, turning off certain capabilities, and allowing remote provisioning management, Apple is making sure that the device they are providing to users will work and continue to work on the network.
This is a very important feature not only for the NOs, but also for businesses who would provide these phones to their field teams. Though, to be honest, restriction of features doesn't seem very patentable, at least there are other implementations that already exist. WinMo has had this since WM6.1, for example.
Conveniently, this will also allow carriers to restrict users instead of expanding their infrastructure where possible.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
It depends on your perspective. It is going to one person, and to one person, that is not pocket change.
Obviously, applying it to upgrade infrastructure on a global scale, and it seems like a small amount. But the point is still valid. These companies are sitting on their profits instead of really pushing to upgrade their infrastructures in meaningful ways. This culture we have where it is ok to pay some useless twat millions of dollars to play golf with congressmen needs to change. Maybe if these companies would pay their CEOs less, hire more people to upgrade the infrastructure (and the purchases involved with that), our economy and the global economy would be in a lot better shape.
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They're profit sharing. The thing is, they get a huge amount of money and sink a lot of it into projects and what's left (banked) is profit. If they decided, hey, let's not create a totally new post-3G network this year ... they'd have many billions left over and lose 45% of that in taxes, so they burn it off in projects and keep 100% of it (in newly developed infrastructure). However these efforts cost money and take time.
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Correction: WinMo has had this since Smartphone 2002
No, that's different from what I'm talking about.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/en-us/business/solutions/enterprise/mdm-security-features.mspx
>> Apple wants to do is anything but.
Pass me some of what you are smoking.
On second thought - no, just keep it to yourself.
The personnel isn't the bottleneck in upgrading the infrastructure. You can hire about $18,000,000 ... 180 new $100k/year salaried employees to implement a new infrastructure. It's vastly cheaper to pay a contractor to do the work, since you'll pay $200k for 1/4 of the time (==half the labor) and you're not hiring temps who do shitty work, plus you probably don't exactly need 180 people to do this (the personnel load increases and decreases to match the job).
The problem is getting all the legal, the permits, then the hardware, then the equipment (leased) to install the hardware, the air conditioning units, the racking units, the buildings, the lines run (power lines, we need an extra 3 phases in this building to run that many racks of shit...), etc, all costs a lot more than the personnel load you need to continuously support it.
Basically once the hardware's in place, we've freed up say $5 billion minus some $30 million ($0.03 million) to maintain it-- which probably goes to an external contractor for some parts where we don't want to maintain the tools and don't want to deal with either flexible hiring (hire you, use you, fire you) or having an employee around that's useless for 9 months out of the year but still is here just in case there's a problem. Then it's on to the next multi-billion-dollar project...
Also, CEOs invest their money and allow banks to invest their money (know what a savings account actually does?). The people with hundreds of millions of dollars just laying around are, as a matter of fact, driving the global economy as long as that money's laying in some sort of paper investment and not stuffed in a briefcase somewhere. They're the people that allow small businesses to actually exist, and grow, and become large businesses; the money you stick in the bank eventually lands in some $300,000 small business loan that starts a local restaurant (or maybe one on the other side of the world).
And as a final point, I'd like to see you run IBM. Be mindful that if you fuck something up, thousands of people will lose their jobs (yeah, there's multi-thousand body staffed offices all over, from headquarters to business centers to the Tokyo Research Lab), the company will lose tons of money (slowing the cash flow of the global economy), and inflation may occur (making poor people poorer and rich people slightly annoyed if anything). Oh, and it's not easy... even golf isn't easy.
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Wow - didn't take long for the apologists to come out of the woodwork. Here's what I'd like to see instead: A balanced comment
It's hard to get much more meta than, here's the type of comment I'd like to see someone post on Slashdot about the article about the patent about the capability to limit services in upcoming devices. Wow, just wow.
Now that you point it out, I'm quite proud of my uber-metaness. I see your wows and raise you a "wow - thanks, dude".
Anyway, your core point appears to confuse service providers with utilities and overall confuse a response that takes physical infrastructure into account for a defense of corporatism. It's also a rather silly point in that you seem to feel that users have some inherent right to use any feature of any device they like on cell networks.
*snip*
Your argument goes out the window since the 'crippling' of devices quite often includes features of the device that have nothing at all to do with the physical infrastructure of the network and the impact cellular devices might have on them.
GPS would be a good example. If the device is passively determining it's GPS coordinates anyway, how exactly does installing software of one's own choosing that uses that data to display locally installed maps impact the network? It doesn't - it impacts the ability of the provider to sell you their own expensive geolocation solution, whether you want it or not.
How does installing personal data such as photos or music files on the device impact the network? It doesn't - it impacts the ability of the provider to force you to use their "upload photos to your phone" service or their "music store".
Same with ringtones - recording myself playing a guitar and installing on my device doesn't impact the network - but it impacts the providers ability to sell me expensive ringtones.
What about Wi-Fi? Using my device to connect to my home wi-fi network to do messaging, data upload/download or use any number of software services in the cloud doesn't impact their network at all. It does impact the ability of the provider to limit such activities to their network for which they levy a hefty monthly charge.
Prove to me that the crippling of capabilities is limited to features that demonstrably impact the integrity of the network, and I will gladly grant you your point. The problem is, there are too many examples of capabilities which are disabled that have no such impact, so your point is diminished to the point of insignificance.
Here's what really happens: Devices are designed and manufactured with features and capabilities that people find desirable. These features and capabilities are breathlessly hyped in reviews and adverts for the upcoming device. This gets people interested in the new features and capabilities the device has to offer that their current one lacks. Then, the actual device that ends up in the hands of people has those very features and capabilities disable by the provider unless you subscribe to the monthly service, even though this isn't necessary as the capabilities of said device are independent of the provider's network (or don't have an impact beyond affecting a source of revenue).
So I stand by my original point - I want to see less apologism and more balanced consideration of the issues. And a pink pony that can fly.
Only one word springs to mind here: Why? I had a sim card that didn't support MMS. Did it cripple my phone with MMS capabilities, by imposing restrictions? No, it just didn't work because the service wasn't supported as a feature. What's wrong with that system?
Interesting. I also use T-Mobile, and MP3 ringtones work just fine on my phone, transferred via bluetooth from my laptop, no less! (cheap Nokia of some sort, came free with service).
Stop! Dremel time!
It's as if your local petrol/gas station were to offer you "unlimited mileage" fuel contracts for a set monthly fee. This fee would be proportional to your vehicles consumption rate (mpg). However, they only receive a set amount of fuel from the refinery each month, but they oversell these "unlimited" fuel contracts based on average consumption, not reserving enough for each person to drive much farther than their calculated average. They then start watering down the fuel when their supply is low (causing serious performance issues with everyone's vehicles), or alternatively, they later tell you that what they meant by "unlimited" was actually only 1000 miles a month, after which you get no fuel, or have to pay 10 times the normal cost per litre/gallon.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Sounds like they're working on trying to give AT&T a way to shut down iPhones that either loaded the tethering hack for 3.0, or are jailbroken for tethering.
it's called the iPhone.
You can meet 90% of your customer's needs for X dollars, and 99% of your customer's needs for 10X dollars, and 99.9% of your customer's needs for 100X dollars, and 99.99% of your customer's needs for 1000X dollars... see the problem?
The problem is your nonsensical view of the situation. It's not a matter of serving 99% of the people vs 99.9% - that's a straw man. No, it's about companies that take billions in profits yet spend millions on improving infrastructure. Then they whine about how their under-funded infrastructure is overloaded, so they jack up rates and/or implement caps after advertising unlimited access.
$yM x number of "senior" executives = $$$$$. I know telecom isn't nearly as bad as the financial sector but there are still a lot of people making more per year then the average citizen will make in a lifetime.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Do No Evil - unless your Apple
Do No Evil - unless you're Apple
The parent was ahh ... some kind of Garden of Eden joke.
Though really, excessive executive compensation could probably pay 10% of the upgrade costs each year. That is certainly a significant figure.
*citation needed.
*Still* negative function...
Though, to be honest, restriction of features doesn't seem very patentable, at least there are other implementations that already exist
So my new method of generating electricity via cold fusion is not patentable because there are already other implementations of power generation?
Ford has like 8 senior executives. If you divide their entire pay by all the Ford employees, it's like 21 cent salary raise per year for everyone.
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Guessing at 200 million in executive compensation (including subsidiaries) and 2 billion in upgrades, that's 10%. It's a rough but reasonable guess.
Two thoughts:
1) This is a great explanation of why bandwidth-constrained networks have limits and why a wireless/cable/DSL network can never really offer unlimited service.
2) I'm not sure if FiOS operates under such escalating cost structure. My understanding is that the capacity of the cable is ridiculous, and that it's only on the ends that you have to upgrade.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
One could speculate that mobile carriers are scared to death of VOIP becoming possible on jailbroken iphones, such that they would want to be able to disable such features on phones on their networks. I suspect that this would be the ultimate reason why Apple would like the power to remotely cripple apps. It is evil behavior, no doubt. But I doubt Apple would care if it weren't for the mobile companies wanting to maintain their absurd uneven charges for different types of bits. The best way to stop such evil behavior is via government regulation. There will never be enough mobile carriers to allow true competition.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Wouldn't this be a patent granting them the legal ability to do what the Carterfone decision forbade AT&T?
You don't seem to understand the flawed business model that communications providers have been running with since the beginning. They never had enough capacity for their customers. They could, but they need to pay their CEO's $20M bonuses instead of grow their infrastructure.
Wow, only $20M to put in a $1.7Bn infrastructure upgrade, with $2.3Bn extra costs to implement it with strong integration to the current infrastructure and while prematurely terminating part of the current infrastructure before value's been realized on it? You must be the best business process accountant ever!
He probably got a government bailout
From my understanding, a BlackBerry linked to a BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) can have "policies" pushed down to them like restrictions on program installation, camera usage, etc. If that's the case, then this patent would be invalid.
$18M
Where can I get me some 'o these "Megadollars"?
I can't hepl but notice, the more Jobs is in control of Apple the better it does. Most things people hate about Apple happen when Stvev Jobs wasn't running things tightly.
When he returned to Apple he turned them around. Used BSD, created cool cutting edge devices, Apple became more open.
Now that he is ill and not managing every detail like he used to , all the middle managers seem to be coming our and making everything mediocre.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Ford's top 6 executives made collectively over $64M last year and they have 300k employees = $213 per employee, but that is beside the point. I never mentioned Ford, I talked about the telecom sector. The top executives at AT&T listed here made $186M, slash that to a couple million and you can pay for your $B infrastructure project in 5-6 years. Do you really think the company would be any less well run if the top brass only made a few million a year instead of upwards of $80M?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Perhaps these sorts of actions will finally bring about the downfall of the abominations that are "smartphones", and we'll see a return to the sensible and logical separation of CellPhone and PDA. And that way you'll be able to get a PDA back at it's reasonable price point, rather than the 3x-4x pricing that has become the result of the rush to smartphones.
Look at the price of a cellphone with someone like TracFone. There's the logical price a cellphone should be, the calling rates being the only thing we should be seeing the carriers competing on.
What would be a reasonable price point? Can you get a PDA with a touch interface for 99 bucks? Would the PDA be able to get email over the air? If so, isn't that just a smartphone sans voice calls? I had numerous cell "phones" like you describe. No thank you. I hated their UIs. It was a pain trying to enter in contacts or to text.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Apple - It Just Doesn't Work!
Apple have pioneered the new feature of Just Doesn't Work! True, many other companies have provided phones and computers with features that were crippled or otherwise didn't work, but Apple were the first ones to popularise it. They were the first ones to integrate it so it didn't work properly, and provide a seemless user experience of not working. Other phones, you have to really try to break them, but Apple have perfected it - so that crippling your phone Just Works, so that it Just Doesn't Work. That's right, it Doesn't Work Just Works.
Indeed. Personally I prefer to "think different" by not having an Ipod/phone/whatever.
And who would settle for a device that just works? Although, considering this latest news about crippling phones, I guess they think people should think themselves lucky if works at least.
50% insightful
40% Troll
10% Flamebait
What a wank. Half the people posting think it's insightful but they're being shouted down by Apple fanbois who come back a day later when no one else is reading and mod it down. Slashdot moderation at it's finest.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
can't a number of pay TV companies remotely control what features/material your set-top box has or has not? Or phone companies that add features or content via SIMs etc?
There was an unknown error in the submission.
THIS anecdotal, ranting bile from someone with an admitted blind hatred of the company is modded INSIGHTFUL? Slashdot, you're ridiculous. This is almost as bad as the Fark politics tab.
"Blind" hatred? I gave plenty of good reasons - informed hatred more like.
Guess what? Everyone on the Internet doesn't need to agree with you on everything. ...and don't hide behind AC with your bil you gimboid fanboi chimp. At least I'm willing to put my name/handle on what I'm saying.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I've got a Motorola cell phone with Bluetooth via Tracfone that can't be tethered. Apple didn't invent pre-crippled cellphones.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Well, if you wait long enough, technology may provide you with a pink pony that can fly. ... well ... keep waiting.
The rest
With perfect timing Apple renews my decision not to buy Apple.
Everything Apple does is Evil, obviously, because Martian hybrids are trying to have sex with you. Evil? This is about a company protecting itself when a phone is lost or stolen, and it's also about YOU being able to disable your iPhone for the f*cking thieves who stole your phone and could be phoning your girlfriend and finding out all your personal information. Screw 'em, let them have a brick with GPS. People obviously haven't been doing any critical thinking here. Can software that bricks an iPhone be used for evil? Of course. But the function has to exist. Nothing Evil here, folks.
Oh, let's see: "it may be necessary to remove functionality of an app?" Well, what about if a bit of spyware gets put into an app? I'd like Apple to disable it, reimburse me, and toss the programmer off the store. And sue him. And brick his iPhone, too.
Really, there are a number of people on these forums who are so sure that whatever Apple does is evil that they have to say any number of silly things.
I guess, then, that you hate what Intel is doing to stop, via hardware measures, any kind of code overflow attack. Should a hacker have the "right" to crash your media player so he can do a remote code execution attack?
Oh, I agtree with you there. We should have that kind of system in the U.S. But the fact is, we don't. And oddly enough, the fact that most new and innovative phones come out with exclusivity deals for a period of time in the U.S., at least, is not really Apple's doing. It COULD have insisted on that, but then its prices would have had to stay up in the hundreds of dollars. It wouldn't have been a year later that a $200 model would come out, nor another year later a $99 model wouldn't have come out. They'd still be selling a $399-$599 range of models, with sales many hundreds of thousands, or millions, less.
I'd love it if the US industry functioned like the Internet, with all the carriers required to hand over signals from other providers for free, and all of them cooperating on common standards. We have too many gauges on our wireless railroad. But that's the function of the FCC, not of one consumer handset company, no matter how popular it's becoming. In fact, the iPhone has spurred some congressional action about limiting these exclusivity deals.
Verizon is an interesting case. They have a very good wireless network, the vestiges of the most punkass wired phone network in the U.S., but they've adopted a deadend standard. Maybe the FCC can pressure the industry to become interoperable in a given time, but it's totally beyond one equipment manufacturer's capability.
I guess, then, that you hate what Intel is doing to stop, via hardware measures, any kind of code overflow attack. Should a hacker have the "right" to crash your media player so he can do a remote code execution attack?
Huh? How does that commend have *anything* to do with my post?
But anyway, I'll bite - a remote execution attacker does not have any "right" to execute code on my computer. In fact, doing so is a crime, as laid out by the Computer Misuse Act. Conversely, my phone is owned by me - I paid for it, I get to do what I like with it.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Well yeah, because fuck that, I'm moving to a bank where they'll pay me $80M to run their shit. Running a small business with 1000 employees will net me $2M/year, and it's basically a cakewalk. Running a huge telco, standard oil (Exxon-Mobil), or Ford's giant mess is ... hard. Very hard. It's tough building up a small business; but when you get up there, everyone's mean and aggressive and trying to screw you. Tiny little mistakes cost billions of dollars; the slightest shift in public opinion can either hand us a $40Bn infrastructure upgrade (stock goes up 3 points, issue more stock! Do a buy-back when the market's unfavorable again...) or push those plans back 30 years... damn.
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