Saturday
Sep292007
What if...
Saturday, September 29, 2007 at 8:06AM
What if you bought a computer that you couldn't install any of your own applications on? (Stupid, I know, but what if?)
What if that computer required you to sign up for two years Internet service with one particular company, and prohibited using any other ISP? (Not that the ISP subsidized the price or anything - the computer wasn't cheap.)
What if some bright guys came along and figured out how to install your own applications on the computer? And then showed you how to choose your own ISP? You'd do it, right? I mean, why not, it's your computer. But wait.
What if the company that made the computer sent down an update that checked to see if you had installed your own applications and deleted them if so?
What if that same update checked to see if you were using the required ISP, and if you weren't turned the computer into a useless, unfixable, piece of glass and plastic?
Would you ever buy a computer from that company again?
Would you ever trust a company like that again?
Addendum: Some Apple and cell phone customers seem to be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, so let me put it another way.
Let's say you're selling me a cow. You tell me that that cow is being sold for the express purpose of making milk. I agree, and buy the cow.
Later I decide that I'd prefer to make cheese. You say that's a violation of our agreement and kill my cow.
When I paid for the cow it became my property, to do with as I please. If you don't like how I'm using it you may choose not to do any further business with me but you don't get to kill my cow.
And, by the way, warning me you'd kill my cow if I keep making cheese doesn't make it all right.
The lawyers will point out that contractually I agreed to your terms. True. But I don't think the contract said anything about killing the cow did it?
Apple's sole redress is to halt all support of my phone. If we let Apple destroy our property for not following the rules we're telling the music industry it's ok to destroy a hard drive containing illegal songs, the cable company to fry our TVs for stealing cable. That is vigilante justice and a direct threat to the rule of law.
tagged Apple, Gear, Technology, iPhone in Blog
Apple, Gear, Technology, iPhone in Blog
Reader Comments (193)
I agree Larry. Although I am disappointed with Apple and the way they are doing business regarding this piece of hardware, they did say that they would feed your cow as long as you just made milk. If you still want free food then you agree to their terms. And if they catch you making cheese, then there food will kill the cow.
I don't think the question that you should raise in this post is "Is what Apple is doing to my cow legal?" I think the question in hand is "Do I still want this cow as badly as I wanted it 3 months ago, when I didn't see the terms in action.
[...] What if… What if you bought a computer that you couldn’t install any of your own applications on? (Stupid, I know, but what if?) (tags: iphone apple att) [...]
[...] You don’t get to kill my cow. (via Instapundit) [...]
Push aside the whole "unlocking" issue aside, but apple has broken the whole "third party" application for iPhone deal… …things like iToner which people ponied up money so they could make their iPhone more useable or enjoyable no longer work… …see Ambrosia statement…
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=115442
The iPhone is wonderous but preventing customers to use it the way they want to use it is plain stupid, and I hope a competitor makes apple pay dearly for their terribly intransigent stance…
I bought it so I could have PDA + phone… …but shoehorning me in to eliminate my own apps (like ebook reader, iToner, etc.…) has made me question my allegiance to Mac platform and I may switch back completely to Linux based solutions now…
With Vista tanking as such, way to go, Apple, in alienating your customer base that plucks down big money for Apple product…
All cell phone companies suck! You just have to pick the one that has the best plan and coverage for you.
We all knew that the iPhone was going to be exclusive to AT&T/Cingular before we bought the phone. If you did not want to use AT&T, then you should have bought a different phone from a different provider. No one forced you to buy the phone.
I bought an iPhone because I wanted the features that it provided (many devices rolled in to one). I was an AT&T customer and had been for several years. If the phone would have come out for use on Verzion, I would have passed on buying it.
I did not hack my iPhone due to the warnings that Apple provided. It was your choice to hack your phone, not Apple's.
One of the biggest problems with living in this great country of ours is that people no longer take responsibility for their actions. It is always someone else's fault for their problems.
"I can't go to college because I can't afford it!" - get a job and pay for it.
"I murdered that person because of the voices in my head" - no you murdered them because you are a sick piece of poo.
"My life sucks because I have 9 children, live on welfare, am addicted to drugs, have no education, and can't get a job!" - pick yourself up, get a job, teach your children personal responsibility.
"My iPhone doesn't work because I hacked it, and then Apple broke it!" - no, you hacked the phone at your own risk, even though the company told you that updates may break the phone.
Sorry for my rant.
Higgins
P.S. - Leo, I am a huge fan and have listened to many of your podcasts for years. I was also sickened with the way TechTV was destroyed. Thanks for putting out the educational entertainment and please don't ever retire.
would you like some cheese with your whine?
i don't remember apple claiming that their first phone was going to be open sourced so anyone can do anything they want with it. give me a break. if leo had his way we'd all have g5 macbook pros and linux iphones.
Just want to make something clear — I DID NOT "HACK" MY iPHONE. I simply put some third party applications on to make the device more usable for me…
@Mark,
Not to split hairs, but actually the government owns the road and the FCC regulates it; AT&T just leases it. The FCC may tell AT&T they can make the rules they have made, but that's just the problem: they shouldn't be allowed to make those rules. The people are supposed to own the government, so they should tell it to force the FCC to stop allowing its tenants to make such rules. This is a "broader issue" matter. Governments all over the world specifically prevent rules like those AT&T (and all cell providers) get away with in North America.
@AndyP,
You really are splitting hairs. An analogy is called an analogy because it's not a perfect representation. If it was perfect, it would be the actual thing itself. I mean, really, "not allowed on your property"? Who says it's parked on your property when they destroy it?
The point is, it seems very unlikely that the bricking of the phones is accidental. I have a mental image of Jobs ranting & raving (after all, it's well known that he's extremely calm & collected and never rants & raves, isn't it?) about people hacking 'his' phone and vowing to "get them for their impudence".
Do I have any hard evidence: no. But I do have one piece of circumstantial evidence that's very, very powerful: that is, there was absolutely no need to brick the phones at all. The update could simply have checked whether any 'unauthorized' mods had been made and offered the owner (emphasis on owner) 2 choices:
1) completely revert the phone back to factory default settings. After all, any $50 router can do that;
2) cancel the upgrade.
In fact, I strongly suspect that the upgrade does exactly the opposite; it goes looking for mods and deliberately bricks the phone in order to teach the owner a lesson. That's juvenile.
In the broader picture, the corporations should not be allowed to get away with the things they do get away with. In reality, what they do is against the 'common good', a point that's often used when deciding court cases. The DOJ case against Microsoft was really all about 'common good'.
Leo may have signed a contract, but that doesn't mean the contract should be allowed to stand. The problem is that the big corporations are allowed to set up contracts that should be illegal (and are illegal in most of the world).
In many ways Leo, and everyone who modded their iPhones, is simply demonstrating that there is a public need to have the rules changed.
@Naum,
Exactly.
I'm a huge Mac person and I totally disagree with Apple's action here, but I don't trust any other company to be any different. That is the real problem. We should all be demanding a change in the culture. When Sprint wanted to charge me to put a wallpaper on my phone and kept blocking me from creating my own and transferring them to the phone, I thought the same thing. What if Apple, Microsoft or Dell did that with computers? Apparently, we will all keep letting these companies get away with this stuff.
@naum: The method used to install third-party apps on the iPhone is the very definition of a hack, whether or not you like the word.
To everyone else bitching about how evil Apple is: the update to 1.1.1 was completely voluntary. No one forced you to update if you didn't want to. Both Apple and the Dev team issued warnings to people with unlocked phones that they would get bricked and Apple said that jailbreak apps would break. Anyone who still updated after all that should seriously examine their reading comprehension skills if they were surprised by what happened.
I don’t think Apple is under any obligation to acquiesce to the needs of those that have in any way hacked their iPhone. Except that from a public relations standpoint, it would be a very good idea not to intentionally brick iPhones. This entire “problem� started way back when Apple decided to go with a sales/support model that locked the iPhone to AT&T. I have always thought that that was a big mistake. Steve and Apple are now at the mercy of the deal they made (with the devil?). They can’t make decisions based solely on what is best for Apple and Apple’s customers. AT&T has them by the you-know-what’s. I think they would have made just as much money by selling a totally unlocked iPhone. I think they would have sold a ton more phones and that would have made up for the difference in what they would have lost by not getting the “kickbacks� they are getting from AT&T. I may be naive in that you may not be able sell/service cell phones without having a locked-in model. I just think that with the probable requirements under that AT&T contract, they did the best they could by 1) not forcing the upgrade, and by 2) warning people ahead of time. After all, they could have done something like block people from using iTunes until they upgraded.Any way you slice it, this is a public relations problem for Apple and I wonder if Steve would have made this same deal had he seen all these problems ahead of time.
Well Leo, as much as I love your podcasts (and I really do), you're just plain wrong. If you hacked Windows or OSX and an update fried your OS you would have no one to blame but yourself. If you modded your laptop's firmware and an update made it impossible to boot your system you would have no one to blame but yourself.
Third party apps and unlocking are both hacks, pure and simple. You are making the phone do things that it is currently not designed to do. I think Alex Lindsay nailed it on the most recent MBW: Apple is closing the hole that allows the hacks in the iPhone, which is their prerogative, and that is bricking hacked phones. Oh well.
My phone isn't hacked because $300 is a lot of scratch and I don't want to risk causing ANY problems on the thing. Apple will likely make third-party apps available at some point in the future and I can wait until then. You and others decided that you could afford to futz with your phones. Cool. But when you take chances sometimes you lose.
The idea that Apple is now some kind of villain because they didn't sell this as an unlocked phone is insane. To my knowledge, there are NO phones sold in the US in an unlocked state. This is how the US cell-phone market works. To ask Apple to play by rules that no other company does is totally unreasonable.
And Leo, I am a little disappointed in you to label anyone who disagrees with you as suffering from a psychological condition brought on by extreme physical and mental abuse. You're better than that.
As a mac lover & user for over 15 years I am schocked & disapointed at the decision made by Jobs & company visa vi the distruction of other peoples property because of what the owner of that property has or has not done to their property. Destroying someones Iphone because they hacked it is maliscious & petty and should be judged a criminal act. I am not an iphone puser and i am apauled. Its as though I bought a new Imac and decided to ues MS Office and not Use Apple Works & then when I downloaded a system upgrade, my mac was fried for using Office. Shame on Jobs he has lost the hopes and cheers of this MacMan. In fact someone should sue Jobs for distruction of property & if I had an IPhone I would join in the suit. One more thing - If I notify you that I will destroy your property & then do it am I still guilty. Of course I am.
You tell them... I am still pissed off at my iBrick. And the worst part is that I didn't unlock!
If Apple never made such a big deal about the iPhone running OSX, nobody would care as much, but they did and people equated OSX with 3rd party apps.
I have a DirecTV TiVo receiver and a DirecTV DVR. Neither of these will work with any other service. They are hackable, but, as Augie says of his TiVo, any forthcoming update, could brick them, and I'd be SOL. In that case, it's my fault, not DirecTV's. Just because you can hack your iPhone does not mean you should. You took the risk, and you knew it when you did it. Apple even warned you ahead of time. They're not at fault here. Besides, Leo, don't you still have an unmodded iPhone because you feared this could happne?
Also, you're doing a really good John C Dvorak impression here, Leo.
Very valid point Leo.
No it is not. I installed iToner like any other OS X application (like iTunes) and with a simple drag & drop, I update my iPhone. Tell me how that is akin to "hacking"?
>>@naum: The method used to install third-party apps on the iPhone is the very definition of a hack, whether or not you like the word.
Here's something to keep in mind, while I'm not up on the situation with the iPhone, in many cases we don't actually own much of anything anymore. Even the music on your audio CD carries a 'you open it you agree to whatever we do to you' license. I am presented with multiple EULA blocks over the course of a month, they all contain the same legal gibberish. You didn't buy a cow Leo, you purchased the use of Cow 1.0 for the express purpose of milk production, within the bounds of your county. Using the cow to produce cheese or in fact moving said cow outside of your county will void your license and enable Cow DNA Licensing Inc. to take whatever actions that it deems necessary up to and including entering your domicile without warning to recover said cow or triggering the cow's remote shutdown system.
Click here to Proceed. [OK]
Just a question. My knowledge of AT & T suggests that if you signed a contract with them they will get their money or else. That being the case how much do they really care about the Iphones being hacked? A lot, a little or not at all?
I'm not sure that some of AT & T managers would notice but some one may figure out this is not the kind of publicity they want either.
@naum
Even a simple hack with a nice GUI is still a hack.
iTonr is inherently designed to do something with the iphone that the iphone does not support.