Slashdot Mirror
In Defense of Jailbreaking
Keith found a nice manifesto saying "There's a trend that's been disturbing me lately. When the topic of modding or jailbreaking comes up — say, in the wake of the iPad announcement, or Sony's restrictive PS3 update — there is an outcry. Who am I to tell Apple what's best for their devices?"
"Who am I to tell Apple what's best for their devices?"
Who are Apple to tell me what I can and can't run? Precicely why I'll be buying a Lenovo Ideapad U1 (have been waiting for a device "like" the iPad for almost as long as my flying car, FINALLY somebody listened to the idea of simply having a detachable screen).
Certainly a worthy moral argument, but thanks to the WIPO copyright Treaty (which everyone, except for a few of us crazies who were warning about it, completely ignored back when it was being debated), such circumvention of technology (specifically if it's designed to access protect copyrighted content) is nonetheless illegal in many WIPO countries, including the U.S.
From the anti-circumvention section of the DMCA: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
And notice the language there. It doesn't say "no company may do this for profit" or "no one can do this for anyone else" (as many mistakenly believe), it says "No person." That means you sitting at home jailbreaking your own cellphone. Now, maybe you could make the case that an iPhone and its OS is not a "work protected under this title" but I think that would be a hard sell.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
that means it's YOURS now. end of story.
...it becomes YOUR device.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
Who am I to tell Apple what's best for their devices?
The user who paid for the lovemaking device without having to first agree to anything.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Who am I to tell Apple what's best for their devices?"
Assuming that you haven't been shoplifting, they are not their devices. They are your (our) devices.
Having said that, if Apple says that doing such-and-such may wreck the machines, you've been warned.
That money only buys a window into the walled garden experience.
(*) Disclaimer - or i can not buy jailed device in the first place and save myself some trouble.
Is that manufacturers are allowed to right EULA's that violate the basic rights of citizens. I'm all for reading the EULA and for receiving consequences upon it's violation, because that's fair. But what I'm confused on is why companies are allowed to write EULA's that specify exactly what can and cannot be done with it period.
Take away service? Ok,that's fair. You don't know what I put on this device, so I can understand if you don't want to support it.
Discontinue updates? I get that, for the same reason as above.
Void warranty? I get that too, since I could easily be an idiot who broke it and that's not your responsibility.
But the one I don't get is why companies are allowed to write EULA's that basically allow them to retain ownership of a device after it's been "purchased." For all legal purposes, this item belongs to the consumer. If it's stolen, it's returned to the consumer, not Apple. Why then, is Apple allowed to make this claim to ownership?
Again, I'm very much in favor of realizing and accepting consequences under the law...but I really think the law is flawed here. The rules for EULA's needs to be visited and rewritten such that purchases of technology amount to more than borrowing your big brother's gameboy.
Putting aside the whole "You should", "You shouldn't" be able to Jailbreak the thing, I think it's interesting that we finally have a whitelisted platform. For years and years, whenever we have a security discussion on Slashdot, someone inevitablely says
"You can never succeed trying to filter out all the bad stuff. You need a whitelist of the good stuff."
But then someone else always says
"But who creates the whitelist?"
And both get modded +5 insightful. In this case, Apple created the Whitelist that all the security people say we need. And applied it to a whole platform. They apparently do code reviews, and enforce proper usage of the API.
Personally, if I had an iPhone, I'd jailbreak it. But I like the idea that I can give one to my Mom, let her get apps off the app store, and not have to de-gunk the malware every 3 months like I do with her PC.
I have not seen the outcry you're talking about. I think this post is just another angle for people to rail against Apple's policies.
Which is fine, BTW! People are certainly welcome to do so, and to an extent I agree with the outcry. But I object to the implied victimhood here--of a person beset upon by the horde.
Jailbreaking is very likely legal due to the first sale doctrine. But it hasn't been tested mainly because Apple has yet to go after a single customer for jailbreaking a product they own. They won't honor the warranty, but they're not bothering them either. It's the right place for a tech company to be IMO. If I install a new engine management chip in my Civic, Honda won't honor that warranty either.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
A couple of my coworkers were talking recently about Kindles and iPads. I told them about the DRM. Neither of them knew what DRM stood for, so I had to explain. Neither of them had heard of the infamous incident involving Orwell's 1984. Neither of them knew about the history of DRM'd media becoming unplayable within 5 years after people buy it, because the company running the DRM dies or abandons the project.
Once people are educated about the issues, then it's up to them. If they buy a locked-down device, that's their decision. They know what they're getting into. We all buy coffee pots and wristwatches without any expectation that we'll be allowed to load arbitrary software into their CPUs. Everybody just has to draw their own individual line between the devices where they care about lockdown and the devices where they don't.
The crunchgear article has some major logical flaws. The author states, "Lastly, I would like to humbly thank Apple, Sony, Microsoft, and all the others, for creating wonderful devices which I plan to enjoy to the fullest extent." In other words, he's bought these locked-down devices, and now he has to find some way to justify buying them, even though he's unhappy with the EULAs. "A popular objection is that one doesn't have to buy the devices that happen to be wrapped up in restrictive systems or deliberately limited. Vote with your wallet, right? [***] Sure, and even when you jailbreak or mod, you are doing just that. You bought the device most suited to your needs." At the point where I inserted the [***] there is a major gap in his logic. He's paid money to these companies. He has voted with his wallet. He's cast his vote in favor of locked-down devices. He didn't buy the device most suited to his needs. He bought a device that was unsuited to his needs, and then modified it in order to suit his needs. He also ignores the very real practical consequences of modding and jailbreaking. The manufacturer is almost certainly never going to give him warranty service, and some of them may actually intentionally or unintentionally brick his device when it phones home for software updates.
Here are a couple of proposals that I'd consider more realistic. Both of these really do involve voting with your wallet. (1) If there are no options that avoid DRM and lockdowns, don't buy. This is my current attitude about the Kindle and iPod. I'll buy one when there is a non-DRM'd library of books available for it that is roughly the same size as Amazon's current catalog. (2) Buy the lesser of two evils. E.g., I believe Android is significantly less locked down than iPhone, so if I were choosing between the two, I'd buy an Android.
Find free books.
As a developer, you are free to upload any app you write to your phone.
As a developer, there is an annual fee. This fee over the estimated 5-year useful life of a device often exceeds the retail price of the device itself. Do you understand the complaints about XNA and iPhone OS now?
Isn't any repository a whitelist?
In Apple's case, jailbreaking is to open up a closed device. Of course, anyone buying an Apple iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad just because you can jailbreak it and do what you want is pretty stupid - there are millions of other devices out there that are perfectly open. Jailbreaking is a bonus to make a nice device even better. But one should not be under any pretenses that it's sanctioned nor available everywhere (e.g., the second run iPhone 3GS require re-jailbreaking every time you reboot it).
In Sony's case, they're removing an advertised feature. In which case, "jailbreaking" is to get back what Sony sold me.
Apple never sold me anything on the basis that it can be jailbroken - the features and restrictions thereof have been known at the time of purchase. I still use them because they're pretty nice devices, and all are jailbroken because I might as well do it and enjoy the nice bonus.
Sony sold me a PS3 on the belief it has a certain set of features, namely, OtherOS. Now they're taking away that feature, so I am entitled to do whatever it takes to get back the same featureset that Sony offered when it sold it to me.
In one case, jailbreaking gets you more stuff. In the other, jailbreaking is to get back stuff you bought. Hell, Apple's rolled out more features for my iPhone than came with it when I bought it. Sony's pretty much ensured launch unit PS3s still command original selling prices on the used market by removing stuff every hardware revision. Heck, even the Xbox360 gained features on newer revisions (HDMI output...).
And yes, while I believe you can do anything you want with hardware, I also don't buy hardware just because someone's already hacked it, but whether or not that device without hacking would be useful to me. If I have two similar devices then the availability of a hack might sway me one way or another, but it's never a checklist item.
I'll never get this obsession with buying Apple products - supposedly it's because they "just work", but when you have to void the warranty to get it to do what you want it to do, you're obviously admitting that it doesn't "just work". Why buy it when you can get something that is designed to be open and hackable?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for hacking and modding and sticking it to the man, but since when is forking over your hard earned cash (to the man, no less) for a device that is hack-hostile "sticking it to the man"? Why not instead encourage companies that are encouraging you to be more than a consumer?
Nathan's blog
Ya gotta love the sensitivity of the slashdot children when you criticize anything about their firefox blankey.
..when you go out of your way to criticize firefox on a topic that has nothing to do with firefox. Yeah, I know, like petulant little children, all modding that off topic flamebaiting as off topic, the nerve! They're almost as bad as [insert group here] when I go into one of their [rallies/forums/other place of gathering or discussion] and talk trash on [insert unrelated subject that happens to be viewed favorably by a good number of said partisans].
Nokia N900 built on Maemo (Debian Linux)..... Ahh shit, thats 7 words. As soon as I've got a couple more apps ported to it, my Jailbroken iphone goes to the wayside!
Let's end the Apple myth. I see all these planted and biased reviews, and I can't take it. They're just garbage and they're feeding the Apple image, which frankly isn't true. I recently used an IPhone, AND an Android phone. Both phones for a month (not 2 days like most reviewers). Let me precede that both are pretty darn good. But the IPhone isn't better. Here are my findings as to what is better about each over the other:
IPhone
1. Appearance of "smoothness." Notice I said "appearance." They're both just as quick, it's just that the IPhone has better visual animations in the interim to distract you to make you think that's its immediate. It's really not as quick as you think between actions.
2. Touch screen works the way you think. This feature isn't better, only different. Once you get used to either phone, it doesn't matter. With the IPhone, when you press something, adjusts to where you really think you're pointing, whereas in Android, it's where your finger actually rests and makes contact with the capacitive screen.
Android
1. Probably the most amazing and useful feature ever in a phone--auto synchronization between Gmail, Google calendar, contacts, and photos. Yes blah blah Mobile Me. Well Google is free--Apple is $100/yr. And please, the functionality and features of Gmail and Google calendar absolutely crap on the lame excuse of the Apple offerings. Don't even try to argue this one.
2. Free turn-by-turn GPS. Killer feature here. Saves you like $15/mo for navigation. That's big. And I could never justify 15/mo when I could navigate myself with Mapquest. Well now that I use it, it's amazing, and I still can't justify the 15/mo for it, but I can justify getting an Android phone over Apple for it.
3. Free tethering. This feature is huge. You're paying for a data plan either way, but at least with Android you don't need to shell out another 60 per month for a wireless cell service just because Apple says "Because I say so."
4. Higher resolution. Makes text to much more readable and the difference in image quality is like night and day between the two.
5. The ability to use it as a mass storage device, with a removable Micro SD card. Droid has 16gb worth to store.
6. User-replaceable battery. No $60 rip-off price and driving to an Apple store to get a new battery installed. And tell me this, one day your IPhone will freeze. Not if, but when (all software does). Do you want to be out a few days just to gain use of your phone when it won't restart via software? When with Android, all you have to do is pull the battery out? This one is a scary demerit for Apple.
7. I can install what I want. I'm not told I can't use tethering. Killer features then the IPhone doesn't have: tethering and VoIP (and I mean on a cell network, NOT over wifi--wifi is useless if you're out of your house, and NO I'm not going to travel to Starbucks to use VoIP, no matter how plentiful they are).
8. Finally, the last game changer and killer feature Android has over the competition: voice to text translation, in all fields (especially text messages). I've never seen a voice-to-text program since the early 90s that actually worked well. I can't believe it, but Google's does. I barely even use the keyboard when sending texts anymore.
And to address all the "b-b-but !", no, Jailbreaking is NOT a solution. It just isn't. The average person doesn't know how to do it, the average person technically inclined who actually has a job can't be bothered, and I'm not voiding my warranty or preventing myself from getting updates for it.
As you can see, the baseline of each phone is pretty equal. But the only features that the IPhone excels at are weak. Androids superior features are pretty much game changers. I only hope that at least some people read this to know how the products REALLY compare.
Go ahead now, mod me down into oblivion.