Slashdot Mirror
What Apple Can Learn From BlackBerry Not To Do (informationweek.com)
dkatana writes: There is no shortage of news about the fight between Apple and the Justice Department to unlock the iPhone of a suspect in the San Bernardino, Calif., terrorist case. Apple can take a page from the fight BlackBerry had back in 2010 with some governments in the Middle East and Asia. At that time -- afraid to lose a lucrative business -- RIM [gave] in and allowed those governments to access its secure BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) service. The rest is history. If Apple complies with the Justice Department request, according to Craig Federighi, senior VP of software engineering at Apple, "[This software -- which law enforcement has conceded it wants to apply to many iPhones --] would become a weakness that hackers and criminals could use to wreak havoc on the privacy and personal safety of us all."
The reason Blackberry went under has absolutely nothing to do with it opening up the platform to the government. It had everything to do with the instability of their server infrastructure.
I get the fact that you guys don't want Apple to open up its platform to the government, but this story is downright dishonest.
If you want to do away with the government then go live on an oil rig. Until then, the government will always have more power than you would like. That's life.
As a 600 pound gorilla it thought it could dictate where the market should got and got a painful lesson by customers that decided that touch-screen smartphones was what they wanted in their pockets
It's a few man months for Apple because they have the source code and understand it. The FBI would have a very large job to create the modified version of the OS if they didn't have the source code and Apple's help.
I've taught English, and the title sentence makes me want to go to Vegas, shoot heroin, have sex with nasty hookers and then drown in a swimming pool.
My life has been for naught.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Not really.
I worked at BB during all this.
BB got done in because iPhone was hot and shiny, but the feature set was laughable. It didn't even have copy paste! Unfortunately, Apple is good at convincing the first set of users to say the first generation product is great even though it's shit (first Gen iPad was shit too, didn't even have a camera). Then Apple fixes most of the screwups in the next generation model (copy and paste was added to OS 3) and because first gen Apple users said their shit product was actually great (because they bought it as a fashion/lifestyle statement, they pretty much have to) the users that buy for features come out of the woodwork.
It was this second generation of product that was really the issue. BB employees were right to laugh at the first gen iPhone, it was a total piece of crap. Problem is, Apple isn't dumb and they fixed the major issues. BB didn't see that coming, and should have. And instead we release the Storm, because hey, compared with the first gen iPhone, it's just as shitty.
Everything after that was a bad game of catchup until BB 10. By that point users ignored BB and were happy with an inferior product (BB 10 had features you simply couldn't get from other phone OSes and still can't get, and it even ran Android apps). Which is the second wave of other bad phones managing to outpace BB by quickly improving and already having a base set of users.
Honestly, it sucks, because now I'm stuck with a shitty Android phone, and BB has basically torn the BB 10 dev team to shreds. Not to mention that John Chen has decided that security is a bad idea. It's disappointing because at this point I feel I've had to take a step backwards from BB 10 to android because BB is toast. I suppose in 5 years Android might get some of the features BB 10 had.
TL;DR: BB doesn't react fast enough to customer needs, BB isn't willing to put out a shitty initial product and hope users like it, then fix it later.
If the situation is as described in a recent statement attributed to Tim Cook, then this is a completely fake issue. In summary, that quote said it would only take a few man-months to produce the software that the FBI wants. If so, then it is barely conceivable the FBI lacks the resources to have created it already, and it is dead certain that the NSA (and foreign counterparts) already have it.
So why the charade? Evidently to make suckers (AKA you and me) think that there is still some privacy out here where the peasants live.
Also, perhaps because they've decided it's politically expedient to make Apple look bad with this juicy and loaded situation.
Creating the software is only half the battle -- they also need the signing keys so they can get the software onto the device.
Not really.
I worked at BB during all this.
BB got done in because iPhone was hot and shiny, but the feature set was laughable. It didn't even have copy paste!
BB got done in because they thought that an extensive feature set was all people care about, when it turns out people would rather have a device that does a few things really well than a whole bunch of things half-assedly.
Unfortunately, Apple is good at convincing the first set of users to say the first generation product is great even though it's shit (first Gen iPad was shit too, didn't even have a camera). Then Apple fixes most of the screwups in the next generation model (copy and paste was added to OS 3) and because first gen Apple users said their shit product was actually great (because they bought it as a fashion/lifestyle statement, they pretty much have to) the users that buy for features come out of the woodwork.
It was this second generation of product that was really the issue. BB employees were right to laugh at the first gen iPhone, it was a total piece of crap. Problem is, Apple isn't dumb and they fixed the major issues. BB didn't see that coming, and should have.
Thing is, anybody who pays attention (as you rightly state BB should have) would know that this is Apple's M.O. For years, ever since the return of Jobs, whenever Apple would introduce a new product line, the first generation was lacking in one way or another. Each subsequent generation would be iteratively improved and polished to eventually become a pretty good product. Every single Mac line and every iDevice followed this pattern. So no, BB employees were not right to laugh at the first gen iPhone, because if they thought an iPhone 5 years down the road would have exactly the same quality and feature set, and therefore was all they would have to compete against, they were fools.
I get the fact that you guys don't want Apple to open up its platform to the government, but this story is downright dishonest.
One particular dishonesty is that Apple creating a modified iOS "would become a weakness that hackers and criminals could use to wreak havoc"
That is PR spin. The FBI, hackers, criminals, etc do NOT need Apple to create the software. All are perfectly capable of tampering with binaries as people have been doing for decades. The ONLY thing that stops such efforts is that the firmware is expecting the software to be digitally signed. The only thing the FBI really needs from Apple is to sign the FBI's tampered iOS binaries. That's it. Having Apple modify iOS is just a convenience, not a requirement.
However *** IF *** the court forces Apple to comply then Apple should make the modified iOS. This way they can lock this modified iOS to the one device in question. The FBI, hackers and criminals could not tamper with this lock down either. This modified iOS is just as tamperproof as original iOS due to the digital signature. With this lock down the FBI would need a new court order for each new device.
The only scenario that leads to havoc is if Apple does not do the code and lets the FBI tamper with the binaries, then there will be no lock down to a particular device. Once signed by Apple this FBI version of iOS could run on anything. This is why Apple must do the software, *** IF *** the court is going to force them to comply.
This is a great example of a negative / negative decision.
“Some people have a way with words, and other people...oh, uh, not have way.”
Steve Martin
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a difficult battle. - Plato