On the iPhone, you can install Navizon using AppTapp. It's really quite astonishing. You start it, it triangulates you, and then opens the Google Maps app and puts a marker where it thinks you are. Where I live (in Europe), my iPhone always triangulates me within 200 metres of where I'm standing (as in: "oh, it's over there), which is good enough most of the time.
Having used both iPhone Safari and Opera mobile (on a P990i, which itself comes with a crappy browser), the difference is astonishing. Opera mobile is a mobile browser. iPhone Safari is a real browser on a smaller screen.
Apple hasn't done anything really clever technically in a long, long time.
I thought the switch to Intel was pretty damn impressive, with the built-in emulation for PPC apps. Also, what's wrong with the Newton's battery compartment?
Well, I'm not going to answer to all of the points you've raised (some actually make sense), but:
you can't play iTunes on normal mp3 players
I'm guessing you mean you can't play music you've bought on the iTunes music store on MP3 players not made by Apple. This is partially true, but hardly Apple's fault: Apple will gladly sell non-DRMd music, which runs on all MP3 players, but so far, only EMI allows its music to be sold without DRM.
You can buy EMI's music on the iTunes store and play it on all MP3 players supporting AAC, such as Microsoft's Zune.
Not the five people _I know_ who have got the shiny brick to show off. Now who is wrong?
What, you are telling me that five of your friends were stupid enough to install the update after SIM-unlocking the phone and after Apple told them not to?
Best case for Apple: People buy the iPhone and use it with AT&T. Second best case: People buy the iPhone and don't use it with AT&T. Worst case: People don't buy the iPhone.
I think it's pretty obvious that Apple wants people to use AT&T, but if they are not going to use AT&T, Apple is probably happy to sell them an iPhone anyway.
But this whole iPhone thing fascinates me. Why do people pay so much for a device that doesn't perform its main function very well, is too big for a phone but not a very useable PDA because you can't get thirth party software on it, and ties them to a contract with a provider they would often not have chosen otherwise?
I live in Europe, so in addition to that, I have a bunch more issues with the iPhone. For example, it doesn't do MMS, which sucks. They are really pervasive over here, everyone sends them, and pretty much all cell phones sold in the last three to five years can receive them. The iPhone can't. Additionally, no 3G. Where I live, 3G coverage is really good, and most modern phones support it, but the iPhone doesn't. The keyboard doesn't recognize my native words, and it doesn't support Umlaut or accented characters. Finally, you can't use the damn thing publicly over here. Almost every time I take it out to read an SMS or check the time, people start whispering and stare or point at me, or even come over and ask whether they can see it, where I got it, and so on. It's a bit embarassing.
Yet I still got somebody to buy an iPhone for me. I hacked and unlocked it, and I'm really, really happy with it.
During the last decade, I've used a lot of cell phones, among them Nokia 6210, a P800, a Treo 650, and most recently, a P990i. They were usually high-end phones when I bought them, as I use my phone constantly. I use my phone to take notes, read books, communicate. I use the calendar. I write and receive up to 100 text messages a day. And the iPhone is the first phone that really excels at these tasks. Every phone I've used before the iPhone had major issues. The Symbian phones are slow and unusable (entering an appointment takes about 14 taps on the P990i; the UI is sluggish, and has actually become worse since the P800 as they've introduced more animation; it crashes regularly with the insulting message that "the phone has restarted to improve performance"; it sometimes decides to eat through a full battery charge within hours; from time to time, it stops receiving messages until I turn it off and back on; and so on). I like the Palm phones better, but they don't multitask. If I'm reading a web page, get an sms, reply, and go back to the browser, the browser has forgotten its state.
In other words, these cell phones suck.
The iPhone doesn't. It's a pleasure to use. All the stuff I need is easily accessible. It's fast. I will gladly put up with not having 3G, with not being able to send and receive MMS, and with all the other issues I'm having as an Euro user of the iPhone for the simple fact that, unlike all other phones I've owned, it quite simply doesn't suck at the most basic tasks a phone is supposed to do.
Something else: I knew from the day I told my friend to get me the iPhone that I would hack it, and that I would not install any updates from Apple. It's just common sense. Apple can't be happy about SIM unlocks, and they won't do anything to prevent issues with hacked phones, so I never expected to be able to update my unsupported phone. The people who SIM-unlocked their phones, and then installed updates, despite Apple's telling them to not install them, are just dumb.
This is apple willfully inducing flaws into their machine so that it breaks.
People keep repeating that, and evidence for it keeps not existing. In fact, Apple claimed just the opposite; namely, that they did not intentionally disable anything.
People have already installed this software, and now apple is making these -- perfectly functional machines 'spuriously' break.
Uhm, no. Apple told us to not install the update. If we installed it anyway, we were the ones making our iPhones break.
Not sure how it works with the 360, but my PS3 forces firmware updates. Apple doesn't. So you're free to continue your hacked iPhone. In fact, the firmware update probably increased its monetary worth since hacking newer iPhones is harder than hacking your current iPhone.
Just don't SIM-unlock your phone and then expect Apple to support you. Keep it the way it is until hackers find a workaround.
Imho, considering some "lesser" software programs were simply erased rather than the system being bricked, I would say Apple deliberatly targetted modified systems with this update and it was not just unintentional changes that interfered.
I would say it implies the opposite. Apple simply didn't do anything about taking hacked phones into account, at all. The hacks that only changed the iPhone's OS were simply overwritten by the update. The hacks that changed the SIM lock, though, caused issues with the update because they can't simply be overwritten by the update and seem to be incompatible.
Apple has publicly said that they did not intentionally cause the issues, which by the way don't happen with all hacked phones, but with SIM-unlocked phones only. And actually, even those phones aren't bricked at all, they just go into some kind of weird mode where no SIM card is accepted anymore.
Here's the Schiller quote: "This has nothing to do with proactively disabling a phone that is unlocked or hacked. It's unfortunate that some of these programs have caused damage to the iPhone software, but Apple cannot be responsible for... those consequences."
So it seems it's an unintended side-effect of the update which they observed, but decided to not fix. I actually see why they feel no urge to support people who don't use AT&T and thus don't help them make money:-)
For the record, I own a SIM-unlocked phone. The day I unlocked it, I knew that I would probably not be able to install any updates anymore.
1) People change their OS in a way not expected by Apple 2) Apple does not take these changes into account when writing update 3) Apple tells people with changes to not install update in case something goes wrong 4) Users install update anyway 5) Update on changed phone leads to unexpected results such as calls no longer working 6) Apple fixes said results, but old hack is not possible anymore
But the SIM unlock isn't even happening in firmware. Just checksuming the files Apple is about to update won't fix the issue. In fact, Apple probably doesn't do deltas at all anyways, I suspect they just replace the old firmware with the new one.
Anyway, it seems the update doesn't brick (all) modded iPhones.
There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding and/or mean-spirited interpretation of what Apple said. Three points:
This whole thing only applies to SIM-unlocked phones, not to jailbroken phones. Jailbroken phones can easily be restored to factory default; SIM-unlocked phones (as of now) can't reliably be re-locked. In fact, trying to do so might brick your phone.
You do not need to install the update. Apple won't just brick your phone. They won't force the update on your. If you're afraid the update might brick your phone, you can just ignore it and the phone will keep running just fine.
There's no reason to believe Apple intentionally implemented something to brick hacked phones. As I've said above, re-locking your SIM-unlocked phone already might brick your phone. It's quite likely that Apple changed something that could brick SIM-unlocked phones as a side-effect. It's also possible that nothing at all will happen to your phone, and Apple was just preemptively warning people that something might happen.
So calm down with the hatred. As somebody who owns a SIM-unlocked phone (I unlocked it after Apple's warning), I do not expect to get updates or support from Apple, just like I won't install Ubuntu on my MacBook and then go cry to Apple when I can't run an update to Mac OS X inside Ubuntu, or when my wireless card does not work in Ubuntu.
Installing apps is not what might brick your phone after an update. SIM-unlocking is. And when I SIM-unlocked my iPhone, I fully expected to not be able to install any firmware upgrades anymore.
- As far as I remember, Apple didn't sue bloggers, it tried to get them to give up who gave them information about who leaked the info in court - Apple never used the TPM chips - Apple has many Open Source projects - I think the KHTML guys are really happy with WebKit - You can use your iPod with your computer, gtkPod works
So yeah, nice FUD. I'm not saying Apple isn't evil. Just that your examples are all bullshit.
I think a lot of Europeans do that. It's less of an issue in the US, where a lot of people hardly ever leave the country, but in Europe, you can't take two steps without leaving your country. I actually live in Switzerland, and I can reach five or six different countries within less than three hours. Of course, since there's no official iPhone in Switzerland, I had to unlock mine anyways:-)
I think you're missing part of the picture. In fact, firmware upgrades so far just reverted the hacks. Unfortunately, the SIM unlock hack (which I've actually applied to my iPhone) does not just change the firmware, it changes part of the software that exists outside of the firmware. Reverting this may actually delete your IMEI, so it's very close to the hardware. I think it's not unlikely that Apple tested the SIM unlock, installed their own new firmware, and figured out that the iPhone didn't work anymore.
As an owner of a SIM-unlocked iPhone, I do not expect Apple to invest time into fixing this issue. The fact that they told me that I should not install the firmware upgrade is actually more than I expected them to do.
Far be it from me to give Apple business advice, but I personally believe that, had Apple released the iPhone unlocked, world-wide, they would have made a lot more money. Of course, they would not get money from AT&T for the contracts, but what if Apple instead offered some additional for-pay services of its own? Surely it could implement visual voice mail without AT&T usinc call forwarding and its own servers. Optionally pay 5 bucks a month, and you get visual voice mail, and a push mail address.
It's unfortunate they didn't go that way, because I had to unlock my iPhone so I could use it with Swisscom:-)
iPhone updates are done using iTunes. And since the SIM-unlocked iPhones are probably not on the AT&T network anyway, I don't see how Apple could push updates on them even if they wanted to.
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On the iPhone, you can install Navizon using AppTapp. It's really quite astonishing. You start it, it triangulates you, and then opens the Google Maps app and puts a marker where it thinks you are. Where I live (in Europe), my iPhone always triangulates me within 200 metres of where I'm standing (as in: "oh, it's over there), which is good enough most of the time.
Having used both iPhone Safari and Opera mobile (on a P990i, which itself comes with a crappy browser), the difference is astonishing. Opera mobile is a mobile browser. iPhone Safari is a real browser on a smaller screen.
I thought the switch to Intel was pretty damn impressive, with the built-in emulation for PPC apps. Also, what's wrong with the Newton's battery compartment?
Well, I'm not going to answer to all of the points you've raised (some actually make sense), but:
you can't play iTunes on normal mp3 players
I'm guessing you mean you can't play music you've bought on the iTunes music store on MP3 players not made by Apple. This is partially true, but hardly Apple's fault: Apple will gladly sell non-DRMd music, which runs on all MP3 players, but so far, only EMI allows its music to be sold without DRM.
You can buy EMI's music on the iTunes store and play it on all MP3 players supporting AAC, such as Microsoft's Zune.
Well, it means they are okay with installing apps (they've publicly said they don't care), but they're not okay with SIM unlocking.
What, you are telling me that five of your friends were stupid enough to install the update after SIM-unlocking the phone and after Apple told them not to?
Best case for Apple: People buy the iPhone and use it with AT&T.
Second best case: People buy the iPhone and don't use it with AT&T.
Worst case: People don't buy the iPhone.
I think it's pretty obvious that Apple wants people to use AT&T, but if they are not going to use AT&T, Apple is probably happy to sell them an iPhone anyway.
I live in Europe, so in addition to that, I have a bunch more issues with the iPhone. For example, it doesn't do MMS, which sucks. They are really pervasive over here, everyone sends them, and pretty much all cell phones sold in the last three to five years can receive them. The iPhone can't. Additionally, no 3G. Where I live, 3G coverage is really good, and most modern phones support it, but the iPhone doesn't. The keyboard doesn't recognize my native words, and it doesn't support Umlaut or accented characters. Finally, you can't use the damn thing publicly over here. Almost every time I take it out to read an SMS or check the time, people start whispering and stare or point at me, or even come over and ask whether they can see it, where I got it, and so on. It's a bit embarassing.
Yet I still got somebody to buy an iPhone for me. I hacked and unlocked it, and I'm really, really happy with it.
During the last decade, I've used a lot of cell phones, among them Nokia 6210, a P800, a Treo 650, and most recently, a P990i. They were usually high-end phones when I bought them, as I use my phone constantly. I use my phone to take notes, read books, communicate. I use the calendar. I write and receive up to 100 text messages a day. And the iPhone is the first phone that really excels at these tasks. Every phone I've used before the iPhone had major issues. The Symbian phones are slow and unusable (entering an appointment takes about 14 taps on the P990i; the UI is sluggish, and has actually become worse since the P800 as they've introduced more animation; it crashes regularly with the insulting message that "the phone has restarted to improve performance"; it sometimes decides to eat through a full battery charge within hours; from time to time, it stops receiving messages until I turn it off and back on; and so on). I like the Palm phones better, but they don't multitask. If I'm reading a web page, get an sms, reply, and go back to the browser, the browser has forgotten its state.
In other words, these cell phones suck.
The iPhone doesn't. It's a pleasure to use. All the stuff I need is easily accessible. It's fast. I will gladly put up with not having 3G, with not being able to send and receive MMS, and with all the other issues I'm having as an Euro user of the iPhone for the simple fact that, unlike all other phones I've owned, it quite simply doesn't suck at the most basic tasks a phone is supposed to do.
Something else: I knew from the day I told my friend to get me the iPhone that I would hack it, and that I would not install any updates from Apple. It's just common sense. Apple can't be happy about SIM unlocks, and they won't do anything to prevent issues with hacked phones, so I never expected to be able to update my unsupported phone. The people who SIM-unlocked their phones, and then installed updates, despite Apple's telling them to not install them, are just dumb.
People keep repeating that, and evidence for it keeps not existing. In fact, Apple claimed just the opposite; namely, that they did not intentionally disable anything.
Uhm, no. Apple told us to not install the update. If we installed it anyway, we were the ones making our iPhones break.
Not sure how it works with the 360, but my PS3 forces firmware updates. Apple doesn't. So you're free to continue your hacked iPhone. In fact, the firmware update probably increased its monetary worth since hacking newer iPhones is harder than hacking your current iPhone.
Just don't SIM-unlock your phone and then expect Apple to support you. Keep it the way it is until hackers find a workaround.
If I remember correctly, the whole GUI Office started on Macs. I think there was a Word for DOS, but the Mac version was the first "modern" Word.
I would say it implies the opposite. Apple simply didn't do anything about taking hacked phones into account, at all. The hacks that only changed the iPhone's OS were simply overwritten by the update. The hacks that changed the SIM lock, though, caused issues with the update because they can't simply be overwritten by the update and seem to be incompatible.
Apple has publicly said that they did not intentionally cause the issues, which by the way don't happen with all hacked phones, but with SIM-unlocked phones only. And actually, even those phones aren't bricked at all, they just go into some kind of weird mode where no SIM card is accepted anymore.
Here's the Schiller quote: "This has nothing to do with proactively disabling a phone that is unlocked or hacked. It's unfortunate that some of these programs have caused damage to the iPhone software, but Apple cannot be responsible for ... those consequences."
So it seems it's an unintended side-effect of the update which they observed, but decided to not fix. I actually see why they feel no urge to support people who don't use AT&T and thus don't help them make money :-)
For the record, I own a SIM-unlocked phone. The day I unlocked it, I knew that I would probably not be able to install any updates anymore.
What part of what Apple did was illegal?
1) People change their OS in a way not expected by Apple
2) Apple does not take these changes into account when writing update
3) Apple tells people with changes to not install update in case something goes wrong
4) Users install update anyway
5) Update on changed phone leads to unexpected results such as calls no longer working
6) Apple fixes said results, but old hack is not possible anymore
What part is illegal?
But the SIM unlock isn't even happening in firmware. Just checksuming the files Apple is about to update won't fix the issue. In fact, Apple probably doesn't do deltas at all anyways, I suspect they just replace the old firmware with the new one.
Anyway, it seems the update doesn't brick (all) modded iPhones.
I don't see the difference between "You can't install this update" and "Don't install this update because it might harm your hardware."
There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding and/or mean-spirited interpretation of what Apple said. Three points:
So calm down with the hatred. As somebody who owns a SIM-unlocked phone (I unlocked it after Apple's warning), I do not expect to get updates or support from Apple, just like I won't install Ubuntu on my MacBook and then go cry to Apple when I can't run an update to Mac OS X inside Ubuntu, or when my wireless card does not work in Ubuntu.
The fact that you know is not a fact at all. Windows XP Service Pack 2 did this, in fact.
The product key used to install Microsoft Windows may not be valid. For more information about why you have received this error message, and steps you can take to resolve this issue visit www.howtotell.com/xpsp2.
Installing apps is not what might brick your phone after an update. SIM-unlocking is. And when I SIM-unlocked my iPhone, I fully expected to not be able to install any firmware upgrades anymore.
- As far as I remember, Apple didn't sue bloggers, it tried to get them to give up who gave them information about who leaked the info in court
- Apple never used the TPM chips
- Apple has many Open Source projects - I think the KHTML guys are really happy with WebKit
- You can use your iPod with your computer, gtkPod works
So yeah, nice FUD. I'm not saying Apple isn't evil. Just that your examples are all bullshit.
I think a lot of Europeans do that. It's less of an issue in the US, where a lot of people hardly ever leave the country, but in Europe, you can't take two steps without leaving your country. I actually live in Switzerland, and I can reach five or six different countries within less than three hours. Of course, since there's no official iPhone in Switzerland, I had to unlock mine anyways :-)
I think you're missing part of the picture. In fact, firmware upgrades so far just reverted the hacks. Unfortunately, the SIM unlock hack (which I've actually applied to my iPhone) does not just change the firmware, it changes part of the software that exists outside of the firmware. Reverting this may actually delete your IMEI, so it's very close to the hardware. I think it's not unlikely that Apple tested the SIM unlock, installed their own new firmware, and figured out that the iPhone didn't work anymore.
As an owner of a SIM-unlocked iPhone, I do not expect Apple to invest time into fixing this issue. The fact that they told me that I should not install the firmware upgrade is actually more than I expected them to do.
Far be it from me to give Apple business advice, but I personally believe that, had Apple released the iPhone unlocked, world-wide, they would have made a lot more money. Of course, they would not get money from AT&T for the contracts, but what if Apple instead offered some additional for-pay services of its own? Surely it could implement visual voice mail without AT&T usinc call forwarding and its own servers. Optionally pay 5 bucks a month, and you get visual voice mail, and a push mail address.
:-)
It's unfortunate they didn't go that way, because I had to unlock my iPhone so I could use it with Swisscom
So what you are proposing is that Apple detects which phones are unlocked and then refuses to update them? That will go over well, I suspect.
iPhone updates are done using iTunes. And since the SIM-unlocked iPhones are probably not on the AT&T network anyway, I don't see how Apple could push updates on them even if they wanted to.