10/08/2007, 11:15am, EDT
Monday, October 8th
Article: iPhones not 'bricked' out of spite
Despite accusations to the contrary, Apple did not deliberately attempt to sabotage iPhone hacks in its controversial v1.1.1 firmware update, one writer argues. A Wired commmentator observes that when the original Mac was released in 1984, it had no expansion slots, an oddity in an era of computers aimed at hobbyists. The system was oriented at regular people, and Apple, it is said, wanted to avoid the known problem of lockups and reboots caused by expansion hardware. Although modern hobbyists may not like it, this same philosophy may be driving iPhone development.
"You don't want your phone to be like a PC," Apple CEO Steve Jobs explained to the New York Times in January, following the iPhone's initial announcement. "The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn't work anymore. These are more like iPods than they are like computers."
Blogger Erica Sadun of TUAW contends that Apple may have even attempted to avoid breaking hacks unnecessarily, and simply failed. "It wasn't intentional at all," she says. "If they wanted to brick hacked iPhones, they could have done a much better job of it." The proof is said to be in the existence of problems with unhacked iPhones, which should in theory have remained unaffected. Examining the new firmware shows that it is "very unfinished," Sadun says, and in some areas it appears to be "a complete hack" of its own.
Apple has sometimes insisted that it maintains a neutral stance on hacking, but contradicting this view is the presence of certification, encryption and checksums on virtually everything in v1.1.1., an obvious move to exclude third parties. Jobs himself has said that the company has a "cat-and-mouse" relationship with hackers, noting, "People will try to break in, and it's our job to stop them breaking in."
It is unknown if or when Apple might open up the iPhone to authorized development. Sadun contends that it will happen, but that Apple will only invite select companies to participate, such as game developers. Engineer and blogger Adrian Cockcroft claims that the iPhone is essentially unfinished, and that Apple will launch first-party apps such as iChat before an SDK is ready for others.
Filed under: Apple
, 
, 15
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
Top
subscribe to comments
for this article
Simply waiting on the trickle down...
The iPhone is in infant stage and needs time to grow into a full computing platform, the OS can change dramatically, also the hardware and more problematic the change from ARM to Intel processors.
I also believe that this is the reason why Apple hasn't released 100 extra applications via iTunes yet, the platform needs to settle first.
"....the iPhone isn’t a small PC, but rather a series of at least three independent embedded processors, including a baseband cellular radio subsystem and the ARM processors running the OS X operating system.
"Each of these systems has its own firmware, and that firmware has to be in a known state in order to load software properly. When hackers dig through the system, they can overrun memory buffers until part of the system resets, then feed it replacement code to allow themselves further access into the system. This works very much like a biological virus, which inserts its own DNA code into cells to force them to perform other tasks. Like viruses, these break ins complicate how the host system works in complex ways.
"No computer or device makers can offer to support a PC or mobile device running with tampered firmware. For example, Microsoft doesn’t guarantee that Windows will load properly on a system that does not work as originally designed after unsupported hacks are made to its BIOS."
-tws
This is not the business model Apple wants for the iPhone.
Right, but they don't break the OS (that's what everyone says is so great of OS X, it doesn't crash!).
Apple has the opportunity to control everything from hardware, OS and apps, i don't think we can change there mind on that. The user experience is going to be very good and 95% of the users won't need the extra apps, don't forget that Apple is likely going to sell extra applications and games via iTunes.