While it's clear that Apple would do something like this, it does not mean it is fair to customers or legal. I hate to see an true innovator like Apple go to court, but someone needs to answer if changing software actually can void the warranty of a general purpose computer.
In this case the "hack" isn't anything like installing a different OS on a laptop. It's making the iPhone behave like any other phone which takes a SIM.
It's also not clear that manufacturers can sell you a device and still retain control or virtual shared ownership of that device? There are many questions still to be worked out - chief among these is the model inherently unconscionable and unfair?
In the case of a phone the norm is that once it's sold it belongs to the person who bought it. Even if you buy a phone bundled with service it can be unlocked, the service provider might insist on a minimum period of contract or extra money if they have supplied the phone below cost but you don't have to go to them. It is also the norm that if you buy a phone from the manufacturer it does not come locked to any provider. Indeed it's up to you to arrange service, either by buying a SIM or using the one from your old phone. e.g. If you buy a phone from Nokia it certainly won't come locked to Tele Finland...
For the same reason they don't want OSX as multi-hardware, for a more consistent and reliable experience for the users. Their costs would greatly increase if they had to support the iphones for all the different carriers. Either that or they could upset their customers by passing the buck to the respective carriers. If your iphone acts up, do you call Apple or AT&T? I suspect most people will call Apple. The tech rep there has been trained on how iPhones and the AT&T network interact.
The only way this would make sense is if AT&T had built a cellular network for the exclusive use of iPhones. This makes about as much sense as Apple stating that you can only use a certain ISP with their computers...
Apple decided to offer an exclusive phone to a single carrier to get a cut of the cellphone bill profits, pure and simple. Apple didn't need AT&T's brand name to sell a phone... in fact, it is AT&T that needed Apple. They could have sold the phone as an open phone that could work with any carrier anywhere in the world.
Indeed Apple have to do extra work for this locking. Locking a phone to a specific SIM/SIM from a specific network is an entirely optional feature. Typically phone manufactures provide a generic lock feature. If you buy a phone directly (or through a retail channel which deals direct) you get one which is unlocked. If you buy a phone from a phone company then it is likely to be locked (but unlockable). The phone company has most likely paid "full price" for the phone. (Having it provided locked and/or with a custom logo would tend to offset any "volume discount".)
They instead decided to try and do everything they could to lock down the device, and than break any attempts to LEGALLY (DMCA makes an exception for cell phone unlocking) unlock the device.
That the DMCA is even relevent implies that their are network locking mechanisms (at least in the USA) which are considerably more complicated/obfuscated than actually needed. It also appears that Apple has attempted to employ a specific locking feature which isn't intended to be turn-offable. This is likely to make things far more complex for Apple, in that they need to maintain multiple firmware versions for every "partner network".
You buy a chevy. The dealer says you can only use Shell gas. There's no Shell station in your neighborhood, but you find a little funnel you can put on your gas tank lid that lets you put in Mobil gas.
Actually this funnel enables you fill up an any "gas station" on the planet, no matter what the brand, including that from Shell US...
Bad Car analogy:
I buy a brand new Chevy. I go home tear out the Chevy engine and put in a Ford engine. A few month / weeks later there's a recall on some part OR I go in for warranty work. The Chevy dealer is going to refuse the work.
In many places unless the recall was related to the engine they can't simply refuse, ditto if you go in complaining that the roof leaks.
A better "Car analogy" is that Chevy hacked the car in some way that you can only use a certain brand of fuel. What are you to do if you want to use your car somewhere where that brand of fuel is difficult, expensive, even impossible to obtain? N.B. so long as the fuel conforms to a published ISO spec the engine will operate perfectly. If you take the car in for a service with a Chevy dealership and they discover that you have fitted a standard fuel filler they will crush the car. Even if the tank only contains fuel from their "partner". For someone who travels a lot, especially between several countries being able to change the SIM in their phone is a very useful feature. Indeed the more extra functions their phone has the more desirable this feature is, since the alternative of having several phones is only really practical with the most basic of phones.
This is what the boss sees when he looks at Windows Automotive:
Based on WinCE 5.0.
Comes with a full set of familiar - though significantly customized - development tools, APIs and so on.
DirectSound. Direct3D Mobile.
"The Automotive User Interface Toolkit (AUITK) - a GUI framework that makes it easy to create advanced user interfaces at a desktop PC and store them as XML markup.
This separates the user interface from the functional part of the application program." The UI designer does not have to be a programmer.
What does all this tell him about development costs, schedules and staffing?
In the real world probably very little. Given that it's mostly "buzzwords". Missing is such important information as how does this safely interoperate with the driving controls? These "advanced user interfaces" are of little use if they are mutually exclusive with several decades experience of automotive ergonomics.
Windows is approaching one billion users on the Desktop. Windows Vista has about the same market share as OSX and Linux - and got there in six months.
Vista only got that way through "Hobson's Choice" OEM deals.
Aren't we talking about hardware here? Canon, Tom-Tom, etc, do not make money from software, they make money from hardware, which Linux users buy a lot of.
Indeed it actually costs them money to provide software/drivers/etc. If they instead made the interface specifications available, maybe with some basic example software. It wouldn't be long before there would be plenty of software available for all platforms people were actually using.
If the RBL blocked positive phrases about abortion then it wouldn't be a virus/spam scanner, it'd be a censorship script.
A worst situation would be if it okayed anything with such content. Since it would take spammers/malware writers a very short time to use that to help distribute their junk.
Memo to organizations that do that. If your QA -- who are overworked, underpaid, and probably need a vacation -- screws up at the wrong time and you put an important business sector offline for days or weeks, you are looking at a major league class action suit. Don't expect the shrinkwrap EULA to protect you.
Except that this has never actually happened. Unless it does and the effects of such a lawsuit actually hurt the software company concenred this is just so much angry retoric.
Even in the UK it isn't as clear as some people like to think it is, because the phone technically isn't subsidized, meaning that it may not have to be unlocked after the subsidy is repaid - because there is no subsidy.
It's more likely to be the other way around. Without a subsidy there is no good reason for any SIM locking not to be removable immediatly.
Security is actually the quest for the better mousetrap. The problem is, as soon as you have it, you get to face the better mouse and the race is on again.
Thing is that even the initial mice are "smart rodents".
The biggest problem with most IT departments is that end users are treated as customers rather than sources of security risks and unnecessary work. Computer usage is viewed as a right rather than a revokable resource. If they didn't have to kiss asses (especially of those higher up in the food chain) many problems wouldn't occur. There would be less people with admin rights to their boxes,
Probably less software which "needs" admin rights in order to be used.
less unapproved software installed and less general screwing around on the internet. But no. Let people think their work boxes are for doing everything they ought to be saving for home (even porn surfing and gaming).
Another problem with this idea of "computer usaage as a right meme" is that there little discourage "repeat offenders". If someone were to take an axe to their chair they'd get little sympathy, but someone who is just as destructive to their computer may actually get priority in support.
In 1985 I worked out everything that was required to do this and in fact even went so far as to track down Dialog cards so I could interface a PC to a T1 line.
There is NOTHING required that is worthy of a patent. NOTHING at all. This is all a totally obvious idea and relatively easy to implement. In fact it is so obvious that when I started working on the project I never even considered that patents would be available.
This appears to be the root of the problem, patents which should never have been granted. There is also a problem that if patent examiners are not familiar with the field in question they will not know what is "obvious" and they will have difficulty finding out what actually is "obvious". When people write for an audience of peers they rarely state the "obvious". Stating the obvious only happens in material aimed at students or if someone is refuting a widely held opinion. As well as it being possible for a single actual innovation to drastically change what is "obvious".
I never finished that project. I was a single parent working at home and my kids at the time decided I should not be allowed to program.
Which makes you somewhat similar to the classic "lone inventor"...
We're still very far from this. But there is hope - as we speak, in Burma, despite the miliary junta's insistence that "the revolution will not be televised", large quantities images and video are getting out because of the new tools that ordinary people have.
These are also showing up on "traditional media". Even if you have reports prefixed by "The BBC is banned from Burma/Zimbabwe/etc."
It's rather older than that Frankie Goes to Hollywoods "Relax" and "Spycatcher" predate this by 2 decades. An older term is the "Banned in Boston effect"...
If this jerk had simply kept his trap shut and his legal team leashed, I would never have heard of him. But by being an aggressive prick -- he gets worldwide exposure and confirmation that he is an aggressive prick.
There are just too many fools who fail to realise that trying to ban something tends to make it very much more popular. In this case turning what would otherwise be a fairly obscure history book in to a "best seller" is a likely result.
IANAL but in the UK this would almost certainly breach the Computer Misuse Act. Section 3 says that "A person is guilty of an offence if (a) he does any act which causes the unauthorized modification of the contents of any computer". All that's needed is a simple letter to Apple and O2 telling them that you withdraw any previously granted permission for them to modify your firmware in any way. In so doing, you might put yourself in breach of your contract with O2 but I doubt if the right to push sofware onto your handset would be regarded as a fundamental contract term.
Note that Apple cannot sell their phone only in the UK in the first place. Whilst they might be ok with different ITunes sites in different EU Countries, this just isn't allowed when it comes to selling hardware.
I am sure the fine-print means you would forfeit your right to warranty and fitness for purpose if you go modifying your phone at such a basic level, so no, I am doubtful you could argue this is illegal.
Removal of a SIM lock is not a "basic modification". It is turning off an optional feature. It also should only require modification of data, otherwise Apple needs to maintain different code for every provider they wish to be able to lock their phone to.
Because in the field of consumer electronics, software should never, ever be able to destroy the hardware. And because Apple knew full well that people would want to hack the iPhone, and they should have tried to make the system safely hackable, even if they didn't want any users doing it.
Indeed they probably had to apply extra effort to make it unsafe. There are standard ways of both locking GSM phones to networks and unlocking them. The worst that Apple's "upgrade" should be capable to doing is relocking the phone to the default carrier. For the upgrade to be capable of "bricking" phones which have been unlocked (without hardware modification, which shouldn't be necessary in the first place) implies either the update contains malicious code or the code is so badly written no-one in their right mind would want to run it.
However, just because it is legal doesn't obligate Apple (or any manufacturer for that matter) to support a device that has been modified outside the design parameters.
In which case maybe they should not have fitted the device with a standard GSM SIM connector..
In fact, in Europe (I don't know about the US) phones *must* be unlockable (providers often refer to this a 'subsidy code' - it's cheaper to buy it from a third party). It can be around 3-4 UKP to buy a subsidy code (generated from your IMEI) online, it's usually about 10-20 UKP to get it done on the high street and about 50+ UKP to get one from the original provider.
Consider also that a suplier deliberatly damaging an unlocked phone could also find themselves breaking "anti-hacking" laws.
You're absolutely right! It's called the free market. Apple is free to tie their product exclusively to AT&T. They are free to lock out all third party apps. And I'm free to take my business elsewhere. Which I fully intend to do.
In a totally "free market" there would be nothing stopping information on how to untie the phone. Even for someone to build a business model around supplying untied phones.
People don't advance to positions of power in corporate establishments by being risk-acceptant. So long as a GPL sword hangs over the heads of CIOs, they often going to choose the reliable, commercial solution (read "Windows") rather than worry about who owns the rights to every little piece of GPL-licensed software.
It's risk perception rather than actual risk.
Even if Microsoft is found to be an infringer, as in the Eolas case, it has the resources to protect its end-users from any potential risks or losses.)
The real risk with Microsoft isn't about who's code Microsoft is "pirating". It's more that they may claim that their EULA gives them the right to start poking their nose into your business or to even claim that they own your (highly confidential and sensitive) data. Any issues with the GPL only exist if you are making copies of if and supplying them to third parties. Something which only applies to a small subset of businesses. Whereas the issues with proprietary software (including Microsoft's) can easily apply simply to using the software. The likes of EULAs (and their interaction with the legal concept of "corporate people"), CALs, etc can affect any business...
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While it's clear that Apple would do something like this, it does not mean it is fair to customers or legal. I hate to see an true innovator like Apple go to court, but someone needs to answer if changing software actually can void the warranty of a general purpose computer.
In this case the "hack" isn't anything like installing a different OS on a laptop. It's making the iPhone behave like any other phone which takes a SIM.
It's also not clear that manufacturers can sell you a device and still retain control or virtual shared ownership of that device? There are many questions still to be worked out - chief among these is the model inherently unconscionable and unfair?
In the case of a phone the norm is that once it's sold it belongs to the person who bought it. Even if you buy a phone bundled with service it can be unlocked, the service provider might insist on a minimum period of contract or extra money if they have supplied the phone below cost but you don't have to go to them. It is also the norm that if you buy a phone from the manufacturer it does not come locked to any provider. Indeed it's up to you to arrange service, either by buying a SIM or using the one from your old phone. e.g. If you buy a phone from Nokia it certainly won't come locked to Tele Finland...
For the same reason they don't want OSX as multi-hardware, for a more consistent and reliable experience for the users. Their costs would greatly increase if they had to support the iphones for all the different carriers. Either that or they could upset their customers by passing the buck to the respective carriers. If your iphone acts up, do you call Apple or AT&T? I suspect most people will call Apple. The tech rep there has been trained on how iPhones and the AT&T network interact.
The only way this would make sense is if AT&T had built a cellular network for the exclusive use of iPhones. This makes about as much sense as Apple stating that you can only use a certain ISP with their computers...
Apple decided to offer an exclusive phone to a single carrier to get a cut of the cellphone bill profits, pure and simple. Apple didn't need AT&T's brand name to sell a phone... in fact, it is AT&T that needed Apple. They could have sold the phone as an open phone that could work with any carrier anywhere in the world.
Indeed Apple have to do extra work for this locking. Locking a phone to a specific SIM/SIM from a specific network is an entirely optional feature. Typically phone manufactures provide a generic lock feature. If you buy a phone directly (or through a retail channel which deals direct) you get one which is unlocked. If you buy a phone from a phone company then it is likely to be locked (but unlockable). The phone company has most likely paid "full price" for the phone. (Having it provided locked and/or with a custom logo would tend to offset any "volume discount".)
They instead decided to try and do everything they could to lock down the device, and than break any attempts to LEGALLY (DMCA makes an exception for cell phone unlocking) unlock the device.
That the DMCA is even relevent implies that their are network locking mechanisms (at least in the USA) which are considerably more complicated/obfuscated than actually needed. It also appears that Apple has attempted to employ a specific locking feature which isn't intended to be turn-offable. This is likely to make things far more complex for Apple, in that they need to maintain multiple firmware versions for every "partner network".
You buy a chevy. The dealer says you can only use Shell gas. There's no Shell station in your neighborhood, but you find a little funnel you can put on your gas tank lid that lets you put in Mobil gas.
Actually this funnel enables you fill up an any "gas station" on the planet, no matter what the brand, including that from Shell US...
Bad Car analogy:
I buy a brand new Chevy. I go home tear out the Chevy engine and put in a Ford engine. A few month / weeks later there's a recall on some part OR I go in for warranty work. The Chevy dealer is going to refuse the work.
In many places unless the recall was related to the engine they can't simply refuse, ditto if you go in complaining that the roof leaks.
A better "Car analogy" is that Chevy hacked the car in some way that you can only use a certain brand of fuel. What are you to do if you want to use your car somewhere where that brand of fuel is difficult, expensive, even impossible to obtain? N.B. so long as the fuel conforms to a published ISO spec the engine will operate perfectly. If you take the car in for a service with a Chevy dealership and they discover that you have fitted a standard fuel filler they will crush the car. Even if the tank only contains fuel from their "partner".
For someone who travels a lot, especially between several countries being able to change the SIM in their phone is a very useful feature. Indeed the more extra functions their phone has the more desirable this feature is, since the alternative of having several phones is only really practical with the most basic of phones.
Windows ME anyone?
:)
In full "Windows Many Errors"
This is what the boss sees when he looks at Windows Automotive: Based on WinCE 5.0. Comes with a full set of familiar - though significantly customized - development tools, APIs and so on.
DirectSound. Direct3D Mobile.
"The Automotive User Interface Toolkit (AUITK) - a GUI framework that makes it easy to create advanced user interfaces at a desktop PC and store them as XML markup.
This separates the user interface from the functional part of the application program." The UI designer does not have to be a programmer.
What does all this tell him about development costs, schedules and staffing?
In the real world probably very little. Given that it's mostly "buzzwords".
Missing is such important information as how does this safely interoperate with the driving controls? These "advanced user interfaces" are of little use if they are mutually exclusive with several decades experience of automotive ergonomics.
Windows is approaching one billion users on the Desktop. Windows Vista has about the same market share as OSX and Linux - and got there in six months.
Vista only got that way through "Hobson's Choice" OEM deals.
Aren't we talking about hardware here? Canon, Tom-Tom, etc, do not make money from software, they make money from hardware, which Linux users buy a lot of.
Indeed it actually costs them money to provide software/drivers/etc. If they instead made the interface specifications available, maybe with some basic example software. It wouldn't be long before there would be plenty of software available for all platforms people were actually using.
If the RBL blocked positive phrases about abortion then it wouldn't be a virus/spam scanner, it'd be a censorship script.
A worst situation would be if it okayed anything with such content. Since it would take spammers/malware writers a very short time to use that to help distribute their junk.
Memo to organizations that do that. If your QA -- who are overworked, underpaid, and probably need a vacation -- screws up at the wrong time and you put an important business sector offline for days or weeks, you are looking at a major league class action suit. Don't expect the shrinkwrap EULA to protect you.
Except that this has never actually happened. Unless it does and the effects of such a lawsuit actually hurt the software company concenred this is just so much angry retoric.
Even in the UK it isn't as clear as some people like to think it is, because the phone technically isn't subsidized, meaning that it may not have to be unlocked after the subsidy is repaid - because there is no subsidy.
It's more likely to be the other way around. Without a subsidy there is no good reason for any SIM locking not to be removable immediatly.
Security is actually the quest for the better mousetrap. The problem is, as soon as you have it, you get to face the better mouse and the race is on again.
Thing is that even the initial mice are "smart rodents".
The biggest problem with most IT departments is that end users are treated as customers rather than sources of security risks and unnecessary work. Computer usage is viewed as a right rather than a revokable resource. If they didn't have to kiss asses (especially of those higher up in the food chain) many problems wouldn't occur. There would be less people with admin rights to their boxes,
Probably less software which "needs" admin rights in order to be used.
less unapproved software installed and less general screwing around on the internet. But no. Let people think their work boxes are for doing everything they ought to be saving for home (even porn surfing and gaming).
Another problem with this idea of "computer usaage as a right meme" is that there little discourage "repeat offenders". If someone were to take an axe to their chair they'd get little sympathy, but someone who is just as destructive to their computer may actually get priority in support.
In 1985 I worked out everything that was required to do this and in fact even went so far as to track down Dialog cards so I could interface a PC to a T1 line.
There is NOTHING required that is worthy of a patent. NOTHING at all. This is all a totally obvious idea and relatively easy to implement. In fact it is so obvious that when I started working on the project I never even considered that patents would be available.
This appears to be the root of the problem, patents which should never have been granted.
There is also a problem that if patent examiners are not familiar with the field in question they will not know what is "obvious" and they will have difficulty finding out what actually is "obvious". When people write for an audience of peers they rarely state the "obvious". Stating the obvious only happens in material aimed at students or if someone is refuting a widely held opinion. As well as it being possible for a single actual innovation to drastically change what is "obvious".
I never finished that project. I was a single parent working at home and my kids at the time decided I should not be allowed to program.
Which makes you somewhat similar to the classic "lone inventor"...
At the jury summons I showed up to (glutton for punishment, I guess) the lawyers for both sides dismissed everyone with a college degree.
Why should the lawyers have access to this information in the first place?
We're still very far from this. But there is hope - as we speak, in Burma, despite the miliary junta's insistence that "the revolution will not be televised", large quantities images and video are getting out because of the new tools that ordinary people have.
These are also showing up on "traditional media". Even if you have reports prefixed by "The BBC is banned from Burma/Zimbabwe/etc."
It's called the Streisand effect, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect Bet he's got a smaller nose though :-)
It's rather older than that Frankie Goes to Hollywoods "Relax" and "Spycatcher" predate this by 2 decades. An older term is the "Banned in Boston effect"...
If this jerk had simply kept his trap shut and his legal team leashed, I would never have heard of him. But by being an aggressive prick -- he gets worldwide exposure and confirmation that he is an aggressive prick.
There are just too many fools who fail to realise that trying to ban something tends to make it very much more popular. In this case turning what would otherwise be a fairly obscure history book in to a "best seller" is a likely result.
IANAL but in the UK this would almost certainly breach the Computer Misuse Act. Section 3 says that "A person is guilty of an offence if (a) he does any act which causes the unauthorized modification of the contents of any computer". All that's needed is a simple letter to Apple and O2 telling them that you withdraw any previously granted permission for them to modify your firmware in any way. In so doing, you might put yourself in breach of your contract with O2 but I doubt if the right to push sofware onto your handset would be regarded as a fundamental contract term.
Note that Apple cannot sell their phone only in the UK in the first place. Whilst they might be ok with different ITunes sites in different EU Countries, this just isn't allowed when it comes to selling hardware.
I am sure the fine-print means you would forfeit your right to warranty and fitness for purpose if you go modifying your phone at such a basic level, so no, I am doubtful you could argue this is illegal.
Removal of a SIM lock is not a "basic modification". It is turning off an optional feature. It also should only require modification of data, otherwise Apple needs to maintain different code for every provider they wish to be able to lock their phone to.
Because in the field of consumer electronics, software should never, ever be able to destroy the hardware. And because Apple knew full well that people would want to hack the iPhone, and they should have tried to make the system safely hackable, even if they didn't want any users doing it.
Indeed they probably had to apply extra effort to make it unsafe.
There are standard ways of both locking GSM phones to networks and unlocking them. The worst that Apple's "upgrade" should be capable to doing is relocking the phone to the default carrier. For the upgrade to be capable of "bricking" phones which have been unlocked (without hardware modification, which shouldn't be necessary in the first place) implies either the update contains malicious code or the code is so badly written no-one in their right mind would want to run it.
However, just because it is legal doesn't obligate Apple (or any manufacturer for that matter) to support a device that has been modified outside the design parameters.
In which case maybe they should not have fitted the device with a standard GSM SIM connector..
In fact, in Europe (I don't know about the US) phones *must* be unlockable (providers often refer to this a 'subsidy code' - it's cheaper to buy it from a third party). It can be around 3-4 UKP to buy a subsidy code (generated from your IMEI) online, it's usually about 10-20 UKP to get it done on the high street and about 50+ UKP to get one from the original provider.
Consider also that a suplier deliberatly damaging an unlocked phone could also find themselves breaking "anti-hacking" laws.
You're absolutely right! It's called the free market. Apple is free to tie their product exclusively to AT&T. They are free to lock out all third party apps. And I'm free to take my business elsewhere. Which I fully intend to do.
In a totally "free market" there would be nothing stopping information on how to untie the phone. Even for someone to build a business model around supplying untied phones.
People don't advance to positions of power in corporate establishments by being risk-acceptant. So long as a GPL sword hangs over the heads of CIOs, they often going to choose the reliable, commercial solution (read "Windows") rather than worry about who owns the rights to every little piece of GPL-licensed software.
It's risk perception rather than actual risk.
Even if Microsoft is found to be an infringer, as in the Eolas case, it has the resources to protect its end-users from any potential risks or losses.)
The real risk with Microsoft isn't about who's code Microsoft is "pirating". It's more that they may claim that their EULA gives them the right to start poking their nose into your business or to even claim that they own your (highly confidential and sensitive) data.
Any issues with the GPL only exist if you are making copies of if and supplying them to third parties. Something which only applies to a small subset of businesses. Whereas the issues with proprietary software (including Microsoft's) can easily apply simply to using the software. The likes of EULAs (and their interaction with the legal concept of "corporate people"), CALs, etc can affect any business...