I have nothing to say about the iPhone that hasn’t been said already. Apple made it very clear what they were offering: a carrier-locked, closed-development mobile computing device where every aspect of the user experience would be controlled by Apple. I’m told it can also make phone calls. If that’s what you want, then buy it. If not, then don’t. If you want an iPhone without the phone, buy an iPod Touch, but it doesn’t run third-party applications either. (So much for the “network security” argument, but never mind that.)
Buy it for what it is, or don’t buy it at all. Your choices don’t get any more granular than that. Apple has been unwaveringly clear that the iPhone is theirs. Not yours, not Ambrosia’s, not J. Random Hacker’s. You may own the hardware, but you only have a limited license to use the software, and an ongoing contract to use the network. If you don’t like those terms, your only recourse is to shop somewhere else to begin with.
I have a friend who purchased an iPhone on day 1. She will never hack it to add unauthorized applications or get it to work with another carrier. She uses it every day, raves about it, and says it has changed her life. She doesn’t even resent the $200 price drop. Her only regret is that she couldn’t buy it sooner.
Apple is betting that there are a lot of people like her, and not a lot of people like… well, like me. Or, if you hacked your iPhone, like you either.
Once upon a time, I bought an iPod Video 5G. It did what I wanted. It was based on documented video standards, so I could make my own videos. I still use it every day (connected to an iGroove in my home office). But it’s been a bit of a hassle to continue using it after leaving the Apple universe and switching to Linux on my primary workstation. Smart people have reverse-engineered the undocumented iPod database and allowed it to work (syncing music with Amarok or videos with gtkPod), but I view these as temporary hacks to get me through this transition period, after upgrading my desktop but before upgrading my music device. (That reverse-engineering is an ongoing effort, by the way. I don’t know or care if Apple was intentionally malicious or if it was just collateral damage, the end result is the same: time and effort spent chasing Apple’s tail.) When this iPod dies, I won’t buy another; I’ll buy something that works out-of-the-box with my Linux workstation. Live by the penguin, die by the penguin. Apple doesn’t want my business, so why reward them?
I don’t understand this continuing obsession with buying things that you need to break before they do what you want. It’s not just the iPhone; people did the exact same thing with the AppleTV too. Primarily to add support for other video codecs, like DivX and XviD. Why? (No seriously, why? I bought a Philips DVP 5960 for $60. It’s a DivX-certified DVD player with a USB port. Out of the box, it’ll play a DVD-R full — or a thumb drive full — of AVI files.) I thought the big draw for Apple hardware was that “It Just Works.” By breaking it, you must know you’re giving up the “Just Works” factor, so what’s left? Rounded corners?
My current theory is that it’s some twisted form of wish fulfillment. “I wish this company understood the value of openness, but they don’t, so I’m going to keep buying their closed, crippled shit until they get it.” Yeah, let me know how that works out for you. And while you were waiting breathlessly for them to “get it,” Apple locked out third-party videos. And third-party hardware. And third-party ringtones, applications, and carriers. ProsperityOpenness is just around the corner!
John Gruber makes this point, perhaps more constructively:
There’s only one way to pressure Apple into opening up iPhone development, and it isn’t by developing underground iPhone apps. It’s by not buying iPhones. Money talks, and right now, there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of people willing to give Apple money in exchange for a completely closed iPhone.
Agreed that you shouldn’t buy something if you need to break/hack it to get it to do what you want. But that applies to lot’s of things. It’s actually the main reason I don’t use Linux as my primary OS - I just find myself spending too much time trying to get things to work the way that I want. Being open and being useful are two different things.
Comment by David Avraamides — Thursday, October 4, 2007 @ 4:49 pm
Interesting post. I won’t be buying the iPhone for the same reasons mentioned. On a completely different point, I would like to see Apple start to put most of ther energy into products that have a lower impact on the environment. This would fit the Apple brand precisely, (or would fit what the Apple brand used to be about) perhaps. Their token recycling program is a drop in the ocean compared to what the brains there could be developing. It’s time to start thinking about buying one product in a lifetime and paying for software upgrades, not many products. Each brick of hard plastic, glass and circuitry that people are seduced by, is next years landfill. In the meantime, I make do with a very old Sony Ericsson phone, and ignore offers for a new one. We have to start making personal decisions not to be affected by advertising that promotes consumption. We have to start ignoring methods used by these companies that promote buying more products, for no reason at all. Come on Apple, think lo-tech and upgradeable, think buy once and for goodness sake, (and the earth’s), start Thinking Different again.
Comment by Gary Cook — Thursday, October 4, 2007 @ 4:59 pm
@David: I agree, to a point. When I bought my Linux workstation, it was really a Windows workstation. I had to do a *lot* of research to ensure that all the hardware would be Linux-compatible (and it is). There were some second-tier vendors selling pre-installed systems, but Dell hadn’t entered the Linux desktop market yet. (Also, I got a huge discount on my IBM/Lenovo workstation because I was an IBM employee at the time. This discount justified my extra research time, but it was still a PITA.)
My next computer purchase will be from a company that has pre-certified it to run my OS of choice. No wonky hardware, no binary drivers, no Windows tax.
Comment by Mark — Thursday, October 4, 2007 @ 5:01 pm
I plan to buy an iPhone and make my own, custom apps for it (regardless of if there’s an official SDK or not). There are hundreds of phones I could buy with supported SDKs. There are about three of them that I’d consider actually programming on. There are about zero of them that I’d consider actually owning, for placing calls to people on, and so forth.
The iPhone may not be perfect, and Apple may be knee-deep in acting like assholes to their customers right now. I remain hopeful that they will snap out of it, but I’m prepared to tough it out even if they don’t get it. And I’ll vote with my money *and* my opinion, sent to Apple via feedback forms and filed as Radar bugs - because, if as you say, and as everyone says, there will be a bunch of people like your iPhone-owning friend (hint: there are) buying iPhones, then what’s already a vocal minority of people able to care about posts like these will become rounding errors in the statistics if we were limited to “just not buying” their products.
Comment by Jesper — Thursday, October 4, 2007 @ 5:02 pm
I bought an iPhone on day 1. It did everything i need and did it better than any competing product.
I hacked it because is wanted _extra_ functionality, beyond what I paid for. Out of all that functionality there isn’t anything that I find so useful as to justify not getting rid of it if apple releases an update that has anything that I care about in it.
I don’t buy songs from iTunes because I won’t purchase anything with DRM, and I’m not going in to a starbucks anytime soon. The “fixes” list was pathetic in the new firmware, so I’m leaving mine as is. If apple releases another firmware upgrade with something actually useful in it I’ll junk all the hacked apps I have on there and go back to just the standard set.
Comment by Anonymous — Thursday, October 4, 2007 @ 5:06 pm
And just to clarify, I agree with almost everything in your post. I just don’t think everyone base their purchasing decisions purely on logic, or that everyone who is eager to develop on an iPhone or use iPhone apps really are misinformed just because Apple’s trying to slap them in the face repeatedly unless they enter through WebKit, or that everyone thinking Apple will change are naïve.
Comment by Jesper — Thursday, October 4, 2007 @ 5:07 pm
Hi Mark, someone tickled my Web server from an old (2/2003) comment I made here on your site (about “Power Laws” in the blogosphere) back then, so I came back and checked the front page.
I think there’s an irony to Gruber’s post in that all the data I’ve seen points to AppleTV not being very successful in the marketplace - i.e. people are doing exactly what he suggests, they aren’t buying it. The trouble with Apple is that they don’t often take that as feedback, they just dump the product if it’s not selling well.
My own perspective on the AppleTV is that it’s crippled due to lack of 1080i, and in that space the notion of narrowcasting your format support down to Apple mothership approved H.264 is the kiss of death. You mention having a $60 player for DivX but who wants a rack with multiple boxes in it that all sort of do similar functions? One of the big frustrations in the Network Media device space is how there is no panacea; that box supports DivX 6 HD but this one doesn’t (yet it supports something the first one doesn’t, and so on), this one supports H.264 but that one doesn’t, and so on and so forth. And the UI on these things is usually horrible, of course.
As a result, you have a box from Apple that promises to address some of these issues (UI) but is crippled due to lack of format support. So it’s not really all that surprising, given that the “guts” are OS X Inside[tm], that people want to hack it to enhance its utility for their own purposes. Meanwhile, I keep searching for that panacea box (I’m currently enamored of the DVICO TViX HD M-4100, but it’s not the panacea either so I haven’t purchased one yet).
Comment by Riot Nrrrd™ — Thursday, October 4, 2007 @ 5:23 pm
You are mostly trying to convince the wrong people. Very technically savvy people comprise an insignificant portion of the population: They have to economic power. Try explaining the value of open systems to the average person. If they even manage to comprehend what you are saying they will vehemently deny that they would ever need or use such a thing. “It already does everything I want”. Just like a cd player did everything they wanted before the Ipod and VCR did everything they wanted before DVRs. For these people everything is technologically optimum at ‘present’. They can neither seem to make the mental excursion to imagine the benefits of superior technology nor be expected to make strategic purchasing decisions, especially for deferred rewards.
“For those that understand, no explanation is needed. For those that do not understand, no explanation is possible.”
Comment by Jared — Thursday, October 4, 2007 @ 5:50 pm
@Riot Nrrrd:
I would hold off on the TVIX-4100. A newer model that uses a more recent Sigma Designs chip designed to handle H.264 and VC-9 content is anticipated.
My understanding is that TVIX is based on GPL software in their devices so hopefully the quality of these media players will improve rapidly, (once they are ‘encouraged’ to actually comply with the GPL).
Comment by Jared — Thursday, October 4, 2007 @ 5:55 pm
Jared: The TViX 4100 has a Sigma Design EM8623 in it that plays some (but not all - MKV containers seem to be an issue) H.264 content, I think. Maybe you have heard about something even further out?
I do agree with you about “convincing the wrong people” - I suspect the number of “box openers” is down in the noise compared to the total number of purchasers of these closed-ecosystem devices. I was at least trying to offer Mark some rationale behind why tinkering has its enticements, beyond simply “tinkering” (that AwkwardTV Wiki page Mark linked to struck me as just that - “tinkerers”). I tend to break most any hardware I touch, so I am not a tinkerer myself - but in the case of AppleTV I can see why someone would want to.
And in the case of the iPhone, I travel overseas often enough that the notion of a locked phone that I can’t slip a local pre-paid SIM card into once over there is simply unthinkable (not to mention all the other things it’s missing, far too well documented elsewhere), so no iPhone for me yet. But, again, I can see why people would want to tinker with it to get that elusive “deal breaker” piece of functionality out of it.
Comment by Riot Nrrrd™ — Thursday, October 4, 2007 @ 6:15 pm
> Try explaining the value of open systems to the average person.
I’m pretty sure “average people” have thought about buying an iPhone and were disappointed to learn that it wouldn’t work on their non-AT+T carrier.
Some kinds of freedom are hard to explain; this one isn’t.
Comment by Mark — Thursday, October 4, 2007 @ 6:58 pm
Apple is just as closed and propriety as Microsoft. They just aren’t as successful and are more of a hardware company.
Comment by Sam Greenfield — Thursday, October 4, 2007 @ 8:22 pm
Mac OS X (on computers) is significantly more open (in terms of usefulness, and in terms of being based on open source software) than Microsoft Windows, but that actually makes it more of a threat to the FOSS world because it is “open enough” for many people. If more of the talented people who make Mac software would switch to Linux, it would be a great benefit to Linux (and *BSD, and Solaris, etc) users.
@Jared, Mark already kind of said what I was going to say, but I want to add that the iPhone 1.1.1 update has made it much easier to explain to ordinary people the ramifications of Apple’s closed model. Have you read the NYT or BBC coverage of it? I think a lot of people on the street are aware the iPhone got re-locked-down recently, and that it sucks.
As an iPhone hater from day one, and another satisfied ‘06 mac-to-linux switcher, I was delighted to read about what 1.1.1 did :)
Comment by Anonymous — Thursday, October 4, 2007 @ 8:54 pm
I’m afraid you’d be surprised. I have a very difficult time explaining to people the concept of phone-locking. They think it is a technical issue. They just assume it is some technical incompatability like GSM vs. CDMA. Some people literally think I am lying, because locking phones in that way would be, like, evil.
Comment by Jared — Thursday, October 4, 2007 @ 9:37 pm
Riot Nrrrd:
Yeah, the EM8624. The chip is been available for a while, devices are anticipated “soon”. Try searching at avsforum.
I heard that support on EM8623 is pretty spotty. (Of course supports ‘H.264′ is pretty much meaningless since their is a world of difference between the base profile and the ‘high’ profiles).
Comment by Jared — Thursday, October 4, 2007 @ 9:46 pm
> Some people literally think I am lying, because locking phones in that way would be, like, evil.
I have the same problem explaining politics these days. (”AT+T. Your world delivered. To the NSA. No, really.”) Then again, shortly after I started at Google, I had two different conversations with “average people”, one a hairdresser, one a used-car salesman. Upon hearing that I worked for Google, they both asked me the same thing: “Google, huh? You weren’t one of those companies handing data over to the government, were you?” I assured them, no, that was AT+T. “Average people” may surprise you.
Also, I’m pretty sure the low expectations of the cellular industry is a uniquely U.S. thing. The rest of the world has laws and stuff that force carriers to unlock handsets after a relatively short amount of time.
Comment by Mark — Thursday, October 4, 2007 @ 10:24 pm
I agree that one should buy the iPhone for what it is, a closed, proprietary system, albeit one that does many things very well. At the same time, though, I feel Apple is making a mistake by not providing some way for third parties to develop iPhone apps. That doesn’t mean that there can’t be some control over the process, of course (e.g. the iPhone could only accept apps available through iTunes–something me and a gentleman discussed in a comment thread over at my site). I don’t own an iPhone and I wouldn’t hack it if I did, but I’d like to see Apple allow for more innovation by giving third parties some legitimate, supported channel for iPhone app development.
Oh, and nice Herbert Hoover reference (”Prosperity is just around the corner”). ;)
Comment by DTNick — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 3:24 am
The reason everyone still does it is because it’s the closest thing. That’s not hard to see. It’s common human behavior. If you walk into a sandwich shop and all you want is Turkey & Ham, but they don’t have Ham, you don’t order Tuna. You just get Turkey and gripe about how much better it would be if it had Ham on it. Simple.
The iPhone would be a 10 with 3rd party applications. So without them maybe it’s a 9. But the nearest thing is what a 5? That makes the 9 look mighty nice. But people will also still entertain what’d it be like to have the 10. Some people will even hold out for it.
Me? I’ll enjoy the 9 until a 10 shows up. If it never does, then fine. A 9’s just fine by me. It’s a fucking phone after all. (this is DITM so I can use that word right?).
Comment by Joshua — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 3:25 am
It’ll be interesting to see how that unlocking thing plays out here in Europe in November when the iPhone launches. Presumably we’re getting v1.1.1 from the start with the same kind of silly restrictions that AT&T have that simply won’t play well with European customers.
I think many of the technical iPhone users just simply can’t believe Apple could be that bone headed as to disallow 3rd party applications on a platform clearly well capable of 3rd party development. Nobody likes untapped potential and the iPhone has lots of potential whereas other platforms simply don’t. It’s that belief that it deserves to be more open that is evident in the frustrations recently shown.
At worst you can thank Apple for pushing things forward again in phones so maybe the competition will raise their game.
Comment by Shaun — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 3:37 am
I’m tired of hearing people whine about the iPhone being locked. Do they all have T-Mobile?
Comment by Mark — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 4:02 am
I just can’t see one single third-party “hacked” app that makes it worthwhile to get off the Apple train, and remain in 1.0.2 land. Surely Apple are going to be the ones delivering new and useful features far beyond what any third-party hackers can do. It’s not really a question of whether the iPhone is open or not, but rather what the benefits to the end user are. I can understand the frustrations of developers who were hoping that the iPhone would be new platform for them to get creative on, but from a consumer point of view: am I going to risk a bricked iPhone (or, just do without Apple’s updates and new features) for a native Twitter app?
Sure, 1.1.1 only delivered some minor bug fixes, features and an iTunes Wifi Music Store that not everyone will love, but remember the iPhone has been set up with subscription accounting: Apple are planning to roll out *many* more new features over the next year or two for it. In fact, the versioning they chose is quite telling: we now know that new features (even new buttons on the home screen) are x.x.1 — so what kind of things away for 1.2, 1.3, etc. updates?
I can’t fathom why they would partner with particular carriers: an iPhone open to any network would surely just cream the market. But they have, for whatever market reasons. I trust they didn’t have a boardroom meeting titled, “How can we screw our customers with our latest product release?” And for all the tears in a bucket, the company is on track to sell iPhones with no shortage of people willing to lineup overnight. To the developers who feel personally betrayed by this I say: bummer dude.
Comment by rdas7 — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 4:09 am
There’s a big difference in being open and not being closed. Not being closed is essentially seeing the truth, that it’s impossible for someone to lock down a device and be the only person adding to it and to innovate. Let’s look at the iPod over the past 6 years. What innovations have their been to the software? Nike+… iPod Touch/iPhone Software & iTunes WiFi Music Store… that’s roughly it. Most of the innovation with the iPod came on the desktop with applications that worked with it.
My biggest issue with the whole iPod Touch and iPhone being closed idea is one of why use OS X? There are two obvious plays for Apple: Keep it locked or open it up. The former makes me question the use of OS X but the latter explains why they chose it. What is the point of OS X on the iPhone and iPod Touch when it’s so locked down and limited. They gain some stuff that they don’t have to write again but for the most part they’re not letting their most valuable asset shine.
Comment by Martin Pilkington — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 4:55 am
I see your point, but the general sentiment kinda makes me uneasy. It reminds me of the “America: Love it or leave it” argument so often thrown out by more-patriotic-than-thou types when a fellow American criticizes some American policy or other.
Developers and iPhone users who want to hack the iPhone obviously love the iPhone. They don’t want to break it — they want to expand its capabilities, to make it better. They don’t want to hack it all, in fact — they want Apple to release a proper iPhone SDK so third-party developers can bring their apps to the iPhone in a reliable way. And anyone is well within their rights to lobby Apple through various channels (excluding, of course, frivolous million-dollar lawsuits) to make changes to the iPhone that they think will be beneficial to other iPhone users. The benefits of the changes they’re lobbying for might be subject to debate, but that does not negate their right to have their opinions heard.
Certainly, Apple doesn’t have to listen. (Nor do you, for that matter.) Perhaps, as Gruber implies, Apple will only listen if it the lack of an iPhone SDK starts to affect iPhone sales (which I’m sure it won’t). But I hope that’s not all they’re paying attention to. Perhaps all these squeaky wheels will get the grease their asking for. One can hope.
An obvious parallel comes to mind: all those long-time Mac users (myself included) who hate the look of the new Dock in Leopard and are hoping Apple will change it. Should those people go use Windows or Linux just because they’d like Apple to change one aspect of an otherwise amazing product?
Comment by Pascal — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 5:11 am
You guys are HILARIOUS! ;-)
Blue Horseshoe loves Anacot Steel.
Che’
Comment by Jason Nelson — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 5:41 am
No, I have an AT&T corporate account, which they won’t let you add an iPhone to. So I had to unlock my AT&T-only iPhone to make it work with AT&T. (And I did the unlock knowing that Apple might break it with the next update, so I’m not asking for anybody to cry for me.) I have a couple of third-party apps on it, and being able to ssh into my servers from my phone is pretty cool in an emergency, but I’d give those up cheerfully if I could just get an iPhone that would support my AT&T corporate account, even with a surcharge.
Comment by bubbadv — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 5:56 am
The iphone does work with other sims and other apps. You just can’t upgrade it to 1.11 They warned people that could happen. If they didn’t listen then that is their problem. Im sorry to say this but the iphone without any hacking is the best phone/ mobile computer I have ever used by far. I want more features but I dont think I will have to wait long for those features. One way or another they will come in a sanctioned manner. Then I will have a better iphone.
Comment by John C — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 6:37 am
Yeah, Mark is right! People: Do NOT Hack! Is not as it is fun or anything… Just follow the rules that Apple (and Mark) tells you and don’t buy anything unless it fits your purpose from the get go… You will save a TON of money! You will be bored but rich. Unfortunately, it seems some people are not fond of rules and have no respect for the status quo.
Comment by Alfredo Octavio — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 7:15 am
I’m in exactly the same position as Mark’s friend. I never owned a smart phone before, although I had every PDA back to the Psion Series 3. All the PDAs have ended up gathering dust. Sure, I could add programs to them, either commercial or shareware, but there was nothing that was the ‘killer app’. The closest was a Dell WinMo5 device with GPS, but that was superceded by a TomTom.
The iPhone does what it does very well, and that’s enough for me. I already had AT&T because they are the only US carrier with rollover minutes. I’ve had Sprint and Nextel in the past and neither struck me as significantly better and neither did anything to keep me as a customer at the end of the contract period. The ‘low expectations of the cellphone industry’ is a big part of this. It will be interesting to compare the iPhone sales in Europe and the US…
So please, let’s see and end to law suits and people whining about what they think they were entitled to when they bought the phone. If you want to buy a 1.0.2 version and hack it, go ahead, but you’re out on your own. Until the US cellphone industry gets a big shake up, the iPhone is a reasonable compromise as far as most ‘average people’ are concerned.
Comment by GadgetGav — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 7:36 am
It also depends on where you buy your iPhone! A few days ago my friend showed me his new iPhone, purchased from MBK (a big shopping mall here in Bangkok) over a month ago for about 20,000 baht, unlocked, working like a dream on a local network SIM card. iPhones are not due in Thailand until sometime next year!
Comment by Mark Lamerton — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 7:51 am
Boo Hoo. If you don’t want it don’t buy it. Simple. The iPhone is more of a computer than any other mass consumer phone. As such Apple would be inundated with support issues if they let people develop within the OS. This seems to have escaped all of the “tech-savvy” people here. Do you want Java on the iPhone? Why? Java sucks on phones and is the cause of all sorts of issues and stability issues. 99& of users will not ever want to add anything to their phones. Even when PDA’s were the rage during the dot.com days some very small number of people added apps to their PDA’s. As far as AT&T only well newsflash; welcome to the U.S. cell phone market. Don’t like it then buy a Nokia N95 that does all sorts of things, none of them well, with pitiful battery life. let me know how that works out for you.
Comment by Terry Thiel — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 8:22 am
Mark,
As an aside, when your iPod dies, you might want to have a look at the Best Buy house brand (!) Insignia Pilot. It’s pretty nice, and if I didn’t have an iPhone (which replaced my iPod), I’d consider it. Two of the folks where I work — Linux + Open Source folks, mostly — bought one, and as far as I know, love them.
As for the iPhone post: I agree wholeheartedly. If one is willing to be bound by terms, then one should not be surprised to learn what happens if one should break them. I have an iPhone, and while hacking it sounds like fun, I (personally) have better things to do than mess around with it. What it *can* do now suits me fine; and if it didn’t, then I’d have bought something else.
Comment by Scott Parkerson — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 9:12 am
Awwww, the characteristic narcissism of open-source advocates - familiar and comfortable as an old, stretched-out sweater.
‘Apple doesn’t want my business’? Are you demented? They’re a business and of course they want your (ahem) money and involvement. You mean they don’t need your business - of course - but what you’re really noticing, belatedly it seems, is that you don’t need their products. Which says nothing about Apple or any other business, and next to nothing about you (besides pointing up your self-righteous inverted commodity fetishism, by which ‘buying out’ becomes a measure of your own worth). And while you profess not to understand needing to ‘break’ your stuff in order to get it to ‘do what you want,’ you seem to be uncritically accepting a definition of ‘break’ here that includes ‘nonsanctioned use.’ Which suggests to me that you’re willfully ignoring your own eagerness (demonstrated by your Apple/Linux switch) to compromise on some principles (elegance, pleasure, consistency, solidity) for others (transparency, access, data persistence, etc.).
News flash: people act ‘irresponsibly’ and ‘irrationally’ all the time. Your claims not to understand seemingly-irrational behaviour are your problem, not anyone else’s. Atop which I suspect they’re disingenuous; you’re not dumb enough to think that ‘By breaking it, you must know you’re giving up the “Just Works” factor, so what’s left? Rounded corners?‘ is actually a challenging or unanticipated question. Right?
You’re carping about ‘open systems’ in the abstract here, nobly but irrelevantly, when the facts remain that:
1) There will surely be third-party iPhone apps, one assumes, once Apple figures out how to integrate them neatly with its own suite of apps, because they’re good business.
2) The iPhone is simply a very good product, aiming a subset of smartphone features at markets that don’t buy smartphones. Occasionally, people like to purchase these ‘very good products,’ and are happy to focus on the 10% of ‘bugs’ they don’t like, ignoring the 90% of features about which they’ve no complaints. Which makes little sense, like most of what people do.
3) Just as using your precious Lenovo to play cricket would void its warranty, prompting no complaint from you the user, ‘hacking your iPhone’ (what a sad devaluation of the word ‘hack’) puts Apple in a position where it can’t guarantee consistency and correctness of its devices’ performance. Which is to say it’s perfectly reasonable for them to break these ‘hacks.’ Necessary? Arguably no. But understandable - and a calculated business decision. I’m with Gruber on this one: if I had an iPhone, I might install third-party software, and I’d be only slightly disappointed to see it wiped out by an OS update. There are plenty of people like me, I suspect (where do we fit into your little schema?), and far more, one imagines, who won’t bother with third-party apps at all. Again, your responsibility is to try and understand those people. You shouldn’t have too much difficulty finding them: leave your office building.
Side note: Don’t wanna harp on what seems to be a small slip, but I don’t imagine you bought a Video iPod to make your own videos; you could have done that at any time of course. You bought one to watch videos you’d made (ripped?) or were making. No higher reasoning: the product did what you needed, elegantly.
Obligatory Buffy quote, to enhance my credibility:
GILES: I have to believe in a better world.
BUFFY: Go ahead. I have to live in this one.
(And yes, Buffy and all her friends used Macs. QED! :)
Comment by Wally H. — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 9:16 am
If you don’t like those terms, your only recourse is to shop somewhere else to begin with.
I disagree. You may feel that is the only recourse that actually works, but the media attention that’s been caused by everything from the exclusive AT&T deal (which sparked a Senate Bill. how many geeks are there in the Senate?) to the issues with 3rd party apps and the firmware (which have been chronicled - in video even - on the NYTimes) there are other avenues for feedback.
As a poster above mentioned, if the people who were unhappy with the situation just didn’t buy the iPhone, the impact might even be less than it it now. There would be little economic impact to Apple, and on top of that, there would be no media attention either. Where’s the win in that? The media attention not only tarnishes Apple’s image (and maybe gets through to Jobs’ ego), but might also make a larger economic impact, in that it scares off the regular public from buying the phone - not because they want third party apps, but because they hear it has “problems” (personally, I can hardly count the number of people who’ve asked me if I was sorry I bought mine, not for some particular reason, but because of this shadowy “it doesn’t work” media cloud).
And ultimately, Apple is run by people (some may argue that). People listen to reason (some will definitely argue that). Public opinion and consumer feedback have a long history of affecting corporate practices (if nothing else, phones are now coming out specifically marketing themselves as everything the iPhone isn’t). Maybe hackers are tilting at windmills. Maybe we all should suffer being locked into one carrier. But I think if we just sit back and not do anything, we won’t get anything. Write feedback to Apple. Write a letter to your Senator (not about third party apps, about carriers) and get others to do the same. If you didn’t buy an iPhone, then you’ve got plenty of money left over for paper and stamps.
-Jp
Comment by Jp — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 9:23 am
I like my iPhone the way it is. I’ve installed hacked shit into it. At the end of the day and after the 1.1.1 drama I feel better just having my little gadget work. It was becoming a problem keeping up with updates. So now I have my phone working and controlled by Apple. No big woop. As far as I am concerned whats really missing is copy and paste. Can somebody hack that? Probably not.
Folks you can always buy a Blackberry or something else. Enough already.
Comment by Ricky — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 9:27 am
Having spent half my career working in the software industry and the last half teaching students how to avoid the mistakes I saw while I was in that industry, my take is very different in one essential respect. Yes, Apple was very upfront about what the iPhone was and what their intents were. Anyone who bought an iPhone thinking Apple wasn’t serious or that they could circumvent Apple’s stated intentions got exactly what they deserved. I couldn’t agree more.
But heaping blame and vilification on Apple for what they are doing ignores nearly 30 years of history. The Microsoft/Intel partnership revealed both the power and the flaws of an open environment. (Okay, we can argue about how open Wintel really is but it certainly is more open than Apple.) The power is obvious - the drawbacks aren’t unless you are a developer and even some developers I’ve met don’t get it. The basic problem is this. A powerful developer (a developer with one or more programs that is prominent in the marketplace) can force Microsoft to leave bugs in its OS or write code into the OS just for that application/developer. The result is an OS that is bloated, slower and less stable than necessary.
Apple has largely avoided this by drawing lines in the sand. It has told developers that certain techniques were forbidden. It has told developers that toolbox calls were deprecated and should be abandoned as soon as possible. Apple has told developers that deprecated toolbox calls would be eliminated. And stuck by its guns. This has sometimes angered developers - and I’ve been there. But the end result is a good one for users - and for developers who play by Apple’s rules. Playing by Apple’s rules may not always be fun or easy, I’ll admit, but at least Apple’s rules have been, for the most part, obvious and fairly applied to everyone.
Where I do place blame on Apple is for being less communicative than I think it should be. My impression is that Apple is playing coy with the iPhone. Is a web base SDK all we can every expect or is it a stop-gap measure for a future real OS based SDK to come sometime later? Apple should make this clear. Maybe the newest update does make it clear. Because Apple doesn’t really talk to the market we don’t know if the recent update was a deliberate scorched earth policy or if the scorched earth was a by-product of an update that made significant and necessary changes to the iPhone’s toolbox. It would be ironic if this update were really the first step toward a toolbox and SDK that future developers will be able to use…but it is profoundly possible that it is. Or not. And this is what Apple deserves to be called out on.
Comment by David Benson — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 9:29 am
“On a completely different point, I would like to see Apple start to put most of ther energy into products that have a lower impact on the environment.”
They do, my powerbook lasted me 5 years, most people I know went through 3+ pcs (including upgrades which were baically gutting the box) in the same time
Comment by James — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 9:38 am
I buried my lede a couple comments up, sorry:
You’re obviously right about the iPhone being opt-in, and about getting what you pay for. The way you frame those claims, and where you go from there (toward bog-standard ‘closed systems are anathema’ gestures): silly.
Comment by Wally H. — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 9:44 am
“If you don’t like those terms, your only recourse is to shop somewhere else to begin with.”
Ha, ha. That is precisely Microsoft’s thinking cca 1998 when United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and twenty U.S. states disagreed. It’s not a market economy, it’s a controlled market economy.
Comment by Damjan — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 9:45 am
Nice satirical post Mark. As stated above the problem is that the iPhone (an iPod) is a wonderful device. They’re just not quite wonderful enough. They’d be so much better if they just did this. or that. And there are those among us who think this way about just about every consumer item they ever see from Motorcycles to Televisions to Tee shirts. And a small proportion of those people try and do something about it by voiding their warranty and “improving” what they just bought.
What was great about computers is that relatively large numbers of people can improve them and all the services they connect to. What’s hateful about phones and PMPs is that very very few people can do it. So we have to stand on the shoulders of the few crazy people who think differently and spend their lives trying to turn a 9 into a perfect 10. Even when the manufacturer puts road block after road block in front of them.
Comment by Julian Bond — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 11:02 am
The day will come when you accept that not everyone thinks a closed platform for a *phone* is a sin as grave as you think it is. Or that it’s a sin at all.
You do a lot of subtly-veiled ranting against Apple ideologues. I suppose you think you’re better because you are fully out of the closet as an ideologue.
Comment by Joe Clark — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 11:06 am
> I don’t understand this continuing obsession with buying things that you need to break before they do what you want. It’s not just the iPhone; people did the exact same thing with the AppleTV too. Primarily to add support for other video codecs, like DivX and XviD. Why? (No seriously, why?…
Well, probably because they like the device and what it does, and they wanted to play their divX movies on it? Just a shot in the dark, but it really does come down to loving the products and wanting to extend the experience the provide to cover more than what Apple is willing to or wants to cover. I agree that people do these hacks at their own risk and the only people they should be crying to is each other if things go wrong, but as for why it happens, it’s pretty clear in almost every case: they want to play, or they want it to work differently.
Comment by Todd Sieling — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 11:29 am
David Benson posted the most reasonable position on this whole issue. The problem is chiefly with apple’s lack of communication.
Apple trying to eradicate dependency and cruft on an API that would have long-term maintainability issues is harsh, but if they’re doing it to ensure that people only use an official API which is far better down the road, that’s smart. Remember that trying to be backwards compatible with crappy APIs and old programs is what killed Copland and nearly killed Apple.
What the problem is, is that Apple’s incurring a lot of ill will by keeping its cards so close to its chest. Apparently, they feel the advantages of surprising the competition are worth keeping home-front developers in the dark.
Comment by CandleJack — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 11:31 am
Jesper said “There are hundreds of phones I could buy with supported SDKs. There are about three of them that I’d consider actually programming on. There are about zero of them that I’d consider actually owning…”
Guess what Jesper? There are millions of customers out there, buying phones. Each has different needs and desires. Apple is not interested in fulfilling everyone’s needs and desires. In fact, they are not interested in fulfilling YOUR desires. You should be able to understand their logic. They want, “only the best” customers, just like you want, “only the best” phone.
Calling Apple names because you don’t measure up as a customer is childish.
Comment by Bruce McL — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 11:34 am
Bravo. This is exactly what every single person whoever thought anything at all about the iPhone at any time in their life needs to read. You could not have made more logical sense.
Comment by Tanner Christensen — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 11:38 am
There is one more level of granularity then the two you mentioned:
- You can post another screed against Apple railing against the iPhone not delivering what was never promised, but acting as if you’re OK with it.
Your post started OK, but ultimately became just another whine.
Comment by Tom — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 11:47 am
*thundering applause* Well said! And what an outbreak of common sense! Yes, I, too, steer clear of anything I’ll have to break to make it work the way I want it to. I cheer on those who break a product to make it do what they want it to do, but your post just made me stop and ask, “Why do I do that?”
Comment by Penguin Pete — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 11:52 am
Get an OpenMoko. It’s like an iphone, but it runs straight linux. I must say it’s pretty ugly looking, but you can hack to your hearts content. It already has an accelerometer. Maybe someone will come up with a pretty KDE skin for it…
Comment by Joel — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 11:54 am
Google turns over user data to the Chinese government. I guess those billions of folks don’t count.
Comment by Tech Observer — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 11:58 am
@Jared, Mark already kind of said what I was going to say, but I want to add that the iPhone 1.1.1 update has made it much easier to explain to ordinary people the ramifications of Apple’s closed model. Have you read the NYT or BBC coverage of it? I think a lot of people on the street are aware the iPhone got re-locked-down recently, and that it sucks.
Unfortunately, I think you’re wrong. I believe what’s happen with the news, is everyone’s become somewhat aware that there is an issue and that people are mad, but they don’t quite know how the issue effects them. I’ve had a number of people—clients, friends, and associates how have asked me questions on the line of “did I get screwed, because I don’t understand what the fuss is about?” And the fact is, 9 times out of ten, if they don’t understand the conversation, then NO, it really isn’t an issue for them. The truth is while ‘which carrier’ you have to use is an issue for everyone, hacking your iPhone ISN’T.
It doesn’t matter how many newspaper articles try to make it true. In the US, we have a culture of cellphone users who can barely use the basic features of their phones. It’s the same type of computer feature-itist that use to exist. I’ve got my phone, voicemail, contacts, calendar, camera, music, this, that, SMS, and more stuff. And they use phone, voicemail, maybe the camera, and ringtones (and are barely competent at getting new ringtones playing).
The iPhone makes all those features and functions easy to use, and quite a few people are very, very happy about that alone. That haven’t looked any further. I feel like a lot of the iPhone hacks are like the iTunes share music across the network hacks. People went too far, too fast, and got way to boastful about it. I don’t think Apple cared that much about the hacks, until the newspapers and business started taking them task for making it so easy for hackers to access. Yes, these would be the same newspapers now saying how Apple is harming its consumer relationships by closing the holes that were probably known about before.
It would be nice if Apple indicated whether or not there will be a future SDK kit. I’m one of those hoping that in the future there will be, and the possibility of certified third party applications. I also think some developers have done fantastic stuff with the Web Apps, and admittedly for me those seem more than satisfactory.
But with or without future hacks or Apple certified methods for accessing the iPhone, the iPhone still rocks and most people are happy for what it is. But for me, I view all hacks as hacks. Whether they are for my OS, my website software or an iPhone—they require time, energy, and extra diligence to keep up with, and sometimes they leave you with no where else to go. It doesn’t stop me from using them, but I never use them for anything that effects my livelihood.
Comment by allgood2 — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 12:04 pm
“I don’t buy songs from iTunes because I won’t purchase anything with DRM” - Anon
Where have you been? iTunes Plus has been out since June. EMI (one of the big four music companies) has over a million songs on the store that is 256 AAC and is DRM-FREE.
Apple’s blurb: “With iTunes Plus, you can get our highest-quality audio with no restrictions for personal use. iTunes Plus songs are available at $1.29 per song, music videos are still $1.99, and albums are generally available at the same price as DRM-protected versions of the albums.
And best of all, you can upgrade all the eligible music you’ve previously purchased from iTunes to iTunes Plus for just $.30 per song, $.60 per music video, and 30% of an album price. New additions to iTunes Plus music are added to iTunes all the time, so check back often to find new music available for upgrading.”
Comment by JGowan — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 12:09 pm
Good post… and a nice antidote to all the ranting and anguish about why Apple should just open the thing up to any developer with half-baked code. Anyone who knows Apple understands that the company has always placed a premium on controlling the software and third party add-ons so that the thing “just works.”
Management of the total experience is Apple’s secret sauce. This approach was true from the beginning — when programmers faulted the Apple OS for not being as easy to program as DOS. And it is true now with the iPhone. Controlling the development framework is an absolute with Apple.
The media doesn’t get that and have made a huge issue about something that only matters to developers. But the media is all about hype for hype’s sake. For the rest of us the question is simple, does this product do what I want?
Developers have a different take on the universe. And for some of them, the question is, does the product have an open enough architecture to allow for various hacks and workarounds. To those people Apple said (from day one), don’t go there, we don’t play in that space.
But developers don’t like to be told what not to do. Some of them chose not to listen to Apple and got bricked. So why all the anguish? You play in someone else’s sand box, you play by their rules.
Of course anyone who knows Apple also knows that they understand the value of third party add-ons. And my guess is that in the next few months, Apple will release an update that allows app development to go on. But that development will be within a controlled framework and with a formal approval process.
That’s how Apple works. That is what allows them to put out cool stuff that works for most consumers. But even that approach won’t work for many developers. Those folks will never find Apple open enough. And they can whine and call Apple all kinds of names. Or they can acknowledge that every company is defined by its own DNA and then move on.
Comment by TimT — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 12:10 pm
@36 jp:
“The media attention not only tarnishes Apple’s image, but might also make a larger economic impact, in that it scares off the regular public from buying the phone - not because they want third party apps, but because they hear it has “problems”
Y’see, the problem with that is you’re condoning the behavior that has deteriorated our media completely. It’s not ok with me to manipulate everyone else just to strike a blow at apple to get what I want. Why is it ok with you that the general public gets the wrong idea? People are walking around all over the place with the assumption that Apple’s going bad, and the iPhone is complete crap, when in fact Apple has brought a device to market that totally changes the ballgame (just not quite enough for some folks), and iPhone owner satisfaction ratings are through the roof. But how is the general public gonna be well-informed when all the media attention is complete horseshit? Or even HALF-horseshit? The media spouts say Apple is evil for bricking iPhones that were unlocked, but no one is focusing on the perfectly-logical technical reasons for why it would happen, and no one seems to give a crap that people were breaking a contract. Accountability is seemingly dead.
Mark is completely right. And I’ve heard it in countless blogs and news stories. If the damn thing doesn’t do what you want, either don’t buy it, or don’t go crying to Apple when hacking it goes sour. I mean jesus, when I was 5 years old and opened up the TV remote control with a screwdriver, I’m pretty sure I knew I was risking breaking the thing. And if I had, I would have accepted the consequences. Sure, it’s your device and you can do with it what you want. And you may be a competent developer who can “hack” it or unlock it without breaking it. But Apple isn’t developing their updates for your hacked codebase. They’re developing for what they gave you. And if it breaks, it really, REALLY isn’t their fault…and you really, REALLY weren’t entitled to the update anyway, since you broke the end-user license agreement.
Comment by punkassjim — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 12:21 pm
This argument seems to really ignore the obvious. People buy Apple stuff and hack it because they like how it works way better than anything else, but there’s just a couple extra things they want.
The cogent part of the argument is that hacking Apple’s stuff is not the way to influence Apple to be more open, but that seems like a fool’s errand anyway. The first step there is not to boycott Apple, but to make the general public aware of openness issues. Your battle for an open Apple begins and ends with the vast majority of consumers, and frankly I don’t think you’ll ever get more than 1% of the population to really care about openness as long as the product is as juicy as an ipod or an iphone and keeps the restrictions out of your face.
The other thing that Mark has off is this idea that Apple doesn’t want hackers on their hardware. They may not care about them as customers (ie. cater to them), but I think Apple benefits tremendously from what the hackers are doing, and Apple knows it. Just like all the info leaks that come out before a product announcement, Apple is aware of everything that is going on and is smarter than the average company about playing it to their advantage.
So while I agree with Mark that I wouldn’t buy an iPhone to hack it, I don’t see any reason that you just plain “shouldn’t” by an iPhone to hack. Personally I hack code all day professionally, so I have no interest in hacking in my spare time on consumer devices. Incidentally that’s the same reason I use Mac OS X instead of Linux.
Comment by Gabe da Silveira — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 12:23 pm
yeah, bro. I switched from wearing nothin’ to burlap underwear. ‘Cause it’s FREE. And open. And uncomfortable as bloody hell.
Comment by turkeyneck — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 12:38 pm
“I don’t understand this continuing obsession with buying things that you need to break before they do what you want.”
There’s a very simple, and very obvious reason that I’m not sure why you avoid so carefully — which is that it’s not possible to get the results you want any other way. Can you understand why someone would buy a car and replace its engine? Or paint it another color, that wasn’t available from the factory for that car?
“Oh, but you could’ve just had this OTHER car, which comes in that color!”
Do you really think that an N800 is just as nice as an iPhone?
Comment by Peter Crabtree — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 12:41 pm
I would think that considering this is a Version 1.0, and a new market venue for Apple, they are being cautious and limiting the network to just one and the programming to WebKit, until they are comfortable with a balance of security and openness. As one poster indicated, it wouldn’t surprise me if, down the line, third party applications can be installed, through purchase at iTunes (after being tested by Apple one would assume).
Personally, it’s the best phone I’ve used. It doesn’t have all the features of other phones, but it has all the features I need, and synchronizes on my Mac better than anything else I’ve used.
And if it hasn’t happened already, I would suspect that one day, when Apple is ready, they’ll add the ability to code iPhone apps in Xcode, like they did for Dashboard widgets.
Comment by Andy — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 12:43 pm
Even after using the Nokia N95, I still find the iPhone a better phone and I would rather make apps for it. If Apple announced an iPhone SDK tomorrow, they would have a huge number of developers aboard (from indie-devs to large companies). People want to develop for this phone. There would be a lot of crappy applications, but I’m sure there would be a couple amazing (and very useful) apps too. In the end, I think allowing 3rd-party applications is a competitive advantage.
I think Apple will be forced into allowing 3rd-party applications because the cellphone market is very competitive. Right now, no phones compare to the iPhone and usefulness+ease of use. Soon, other phones will. They will also have 3rd party applications (most of them poor, but a couple gems) and Apple will have to make a change just to stay competitive when they have less of a competitive advantage.
Comment by Matt Thomas — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 12:44 pm
>Not yours, not Ambrosia’s, not J. Random Hacker’s. You may own the hardware, but you only have a limited license to use the software, and an ongoing contract to use the network. If you don’t like those terms, your only recourse is to shop somewhere else to begin with.
There are two aspects to the iPhone/iPod Touch:
* Their hardware, the device - which clearly is bought
* The software, the OS, shell etc. - which is only liecensed.
So, if someone is able to port a Linux based Window Manager to work on iPod Touch, would that change your opinion about buying an iPod Touch?
Comment by Alok — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 12:46 pm
“I don’t understand this continuing obsession with buying things that you need to break before they do what you want.”
This has been my gripe for a while and I totally agree. Especially when there are hacker-friendly platforms (e.g. Linux) and now hardware (e.g. OpenMoko, Chumby) that want that kind of activity on it, that opens its doors all the way and asks people to play. They’re out there! Now, I get it if it’s just about your own skills, about adding that *one* ability that you’re missing (i.e. I just need Perian on my Apple TV to see the rest of my videos, and everything else I’m cool with) but it’s this activist angle about things at the core of the product offering itself that just blows my mind.
It seems like, if you want to support open platforms, you should support the businesses that provide them. Perhaps if those companies became successful, then other companies would follow suit — like IBM’s adoption of pre-installed Linux for enterprises, no doubt about it: that was a HUGE deal when it happened — but buying closed stuff and hacking into it only conveys the message that there’s still extreme value for those closed products, and that the open stuff isn’t sufficing. And you’ll be sending them a message, but only one they can take their sweet time with.
You may think you’re sticking it to the Man by hacking your product, but really, you’re just hacking a product you’ve already paid the Man for.
Comment by Anonymous — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 12:50 pm
I think your post contains a false dichotomy. Let me try to illustrate with an analogy:
> The Democrats made it very clear what they were offering: Health care reform, repeal of Bush tax cuts, opposition to school vouchers systems, etc., etc. If that’s what you want, then vote for them. If not, then don’t. Vote for them for what they are, or don’t vote for them at all. Your choices don’t get any more granular than that.
The Democrats have been unwaveringly clear that they oppose school vouchers systems. If you don’t like those terms, your only recourse is to vote for somewhere else to begin with.
> My current theory is that it’s some twisted form of wish fulfillment. “I wish this party understood the value of school vouchers systems, but they don’t, so I’m going to keep voting for their platform until they get it.”
Transposed in those terms, I think the fallacy is pretty clear. There are many reasons for buying, and for not buying, an iPhone. The decision, like every decision, is a trade off. I bought an iPhone because it is the best smartphone available right now. I also want third party applications to run on it, and it’s entirely reasonable to advocate that Apple not restrict those applications. Saying that buying an iPhone is a fortiori supporting the third party application policy is like saying, “You voted for the Democrats, and that includes their policy on school vouchers. You have no business now opposing that policy.”
Sure, I shouldn’t *expect* that third party applications will work, but I can and should advocate for third party applications as loudly and irritatingly as I can manage. My analogy above is apt: dissent is a political process, and that includes dissent by users from a company’s product policy. I would have thought “free as in freedom” proponents would be alive to the political aspects of the use of software and other products.
Comment by Kevin — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 12:59 pm
So Mark, you hate hackers for doing what they do best: hacking.
Comment by david — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 1:09 pm
OK, so the iPhone/iPod Touch/AppleTV are for non-geeks closed evil systems designed to funnel your purchases of media to the iTunes store and your money straight into Jobs’s wallet. Right, I got it. Thanks.
you know what? I don’t care. I like the phone but not enough to buy one and my old video iPod still works fine. ten minutes of googling tells a new AppleTV buyer that there’s plenty of options out there to convert unfriendly formats like Xvid/Divx/Matroska to h.264 without opening the box and hacktoring the codecs. my ATV plays everything I throw at it. it does what I want out of the box. I don’t need to buy squat from the iTunes store, and once converted I don’t have 27 different and incompatible video formats littering my system.
if you want more than it does, buy something else, or take your chances on breaking it as long as you don’t bawl about it afterwards.
Comment by 42 — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 1:10 pm
What’s wrong with a company spending millions to develop a product and then protect it from unintended uses (in their eyes)? If you wanna hack it, then hack it… just be prepared to face the consequences of that action (firmware updates breaking everything, no warranty etc…) otherwise stfu. What a bunch of whiner babies. It’s their product and they can do what they want with it… if you dont like it, dont buy it, thats the american way. I dont see you big babies complaining about Ford, Toyota or Honda not letting you run custom apps in their onboard computers… why not? Yeah. I was right the first time. STFU.
Comment by Timo — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 1:11 pm
I’d like to see which programmers here don’t have a clause that states they are not responsible for third-party modifications to their deliverable code.
Comment by Roger Wilco — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 1:12 pm
@Peter Crabtree: Geez, painting your car is a horrible example — last I checked it was very easy to change the wallpaper on the iPhone. Not to forget, you’re not going to get service from the car maker for that custom engine — for example, Volvo’s warranty only covers original parts or “genuine” parts that were replaced as part of warranty service. You want after-market service, you have to buy extra warranty coverage from someone else. No one’s selling that for hacked iPhones, as far as I can see.
“Do you really think that an N800 is just as nice as an iPhone?”
Define “nice.” That’s a entirely relative term, and the answer says a lot about what is important to that person. Yes, usability is important. So is functionality. So is compatibility and adaptability. I won’t deny that Apple has made a gorgeous, attractive phone, but for many people, that’s where it’s pros stop.
Comment by Anonymous — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 1:14 pm
If you’re switching your desktop to Linux then all you’re using your desktop for is web, mail and rebuilding the kernel. If you want to edit video, run Photoshop (GIMP is equivalent? guffaw), make music, video chat, edit Word documents without weirdness, get a Mac of, if you’re really dumb, a PC.
Comment by deathbychichi — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 1:16 pm
I suspect that the iPhone hackers were denied a pony when they were a kid. They weren’t the sort of people to settle for the fact that a high rise apartment in Manhattan isn’t a good place for an equine. All this hacker hysteria misses the point. Apple doesn’t care if you hack your iPhone. It just won’t give you any warranty service, if you do. Nor will Apple protect you from your own foolishness. If you modify your iPhone and an update wrecks it, that is on your own head. It’s called accepting responsibility for your actions. The hackers don’t seem grown up enough for that.
What most of the hackers miss is that the iPhone is too new. The iPhone’s Operating System is unfinished; It is immature. The fact that its applications run at root privileges is proof; that is an open invitation to malware. Perhaps Mac OSX 10.5 Leopard’s release, later this month, will help. Perhaps, Apple can then free up programmers to fix the iPhone so it will be mature enough to support Third Party Developers. But, I can see no reason why Apple would want the current hackers among their ranks.
Mostly, Apple and its Third Party Developers act in a symbiosis where each aids the other. Even so, this is an uneasy partnership. The current hackers are parasites, pure and simple. They don’t care if they harm Apple or its plans. They demand a right to do anything they want with the iPhone software because they bought the hardware. They break into the system and have no idea what damage they do. Then, they want to blame Apple when the iPhone breaks on an update. All Apple has wanted is for these people to live up to the promises they agreed to when they accepted the iPhone. But, that kind of behavior is impossible to people who were denied a pony as a kid.
Regarding your comments about open source. Open is not defined in the dictionary as “good.” There are some major disadvantages to open source. The first one that the Open Source developers have their own agenda which may not come within a mile of the consumer’s needs. That is why Desktop Linux has gone nowhere and why the various packages of Linux bicker at each other so much. It’s also why Linux developers have never produced anything as good as an iPhone. It takes a company to provide the focus to create something new. Linux is basically parasitical software on equipment that the Open Source community is incompetent to produce.
The major complaint I have against open source is the Socialism implicit in it. Socialism is brain dead; it’s why the Soviet’s produced a 1965 Fiat automobile for over thirty years; they had no means or incentive to provide improvements.
Proprietary doesn’t equate to “bad” in the dictionary. Companies have their own restraints; they have to live in the real world. They must find ways of delivering products and services that the customers want. They tend to pay no attention to non-customers– “stakeholders.” Nor should they. If you want a “Green Computer” and believe that the public will pay for that, then go into competition with Apple and drive them out of business. The problem is that “Stakeholders” want uneconomic actions that the customers are unwilling to pay for.
The reason that we have landfills in the US is to bury the items that are uneconomical to recover now, Gary Cook. A hundred years from now that will not be so; we will mine the landfills. The country with the best record of recycling in the world before the Environmentalist piped up was the US. But, some recycling is stupid and uneconomical. The US is in no danger of running out of landfill space; people just don’t want one in their back yard. Tough. Let them accept the inconvenience and expense of pursuing that chimera.
Comment by Louis Wheeler — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 1:25 pm
Sadly by the fact that I live in phone hinterland aka Canada I think we Canucks will be lucky to see the phone in 2008 if at all.
What I don’t see allot of attention on nor have I seen any official statement by Apple is what happens when a users contract runs out with AT&T. If you do not reup with AT&T are you left with just an iPod?
Comment by John — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 1:29 pm
Very good points in the article. I bought an iPhone. And I leave it alone. And it is a great phone. I bought it for what it is and I like it for that: the best damn phone I’ve ever owned. I turned off mail–I ain’t no Crackbery addict. I don’t surf the web or watch YouTube on it. I do use the Maps sometimes. But the phone features have no peer. The Apple Bluetooth headset just works seamlessly–and chargin from the same cord as teh phone is a real breakthrough–no other phone offers that as far as I know. Tthe IMing is simple–easier than any other phone I’ve had. The UI is peerless. Its a great phone experience. I don’t buy from iTunes–neither songs nor ringtones. And I never will. I by used CDs and rip them. I don’t care about ringtones–I keep my phone simple and unobtrusive. There are more important things in life than dicking around with technology. Its a freaking phone damnit. And a damn good one. that’s all I wanted and what I got. Good deal.
Comment by Digginestdogg — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 1:29 pm
Too much whine.
Wasn’t there a time when Dive into actually contained something useful?
Cry me a river about your Linux, I couldn’t care less.
Comment by No — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 1:31 pm
I am continually surprised that people as sharp as Mark and John espouse this line of “If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.” Hacking and complaining are the twin motors of innovation.
Comment by TMQ — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 1:32 pm
Unfortunately for all of us, Apple sometimes produces the best hardware at the best price. Their software is locked and largely useless for any but the most brainless users, but the AppleTV is a great example of fairly unique hardware (for now). Your DivX DVD player may play files from USB mass storage, but there will be no way to use it as a networked player. I don’t keep my movies on DVDs or on thumb drives (!). I keep them on network shares. I’d rather build my own player, but it will be bigger, louder and at least $1500 to get the video cards and processor speeds needed for HD. The AppleTV can do all of this hardware-wise and only need software modifications to make it un-braindead.
Comment by anon — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 1:41 pm
Far from ideal, but doesn’t VMware run on Linux? You run Windows in there and therefore also iTunes to get ‘official’ access to your iPod.
Comment by manu chao — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 1:55 pm
Microsoft justifiably gets a bad rap for these sorts of things, but if you go out and get a Pocket PC phone, you can load whatever you want on it. You can install Python, run it on a Pocket PC phone, and write your own code. You can run Emacs on a Pocket PC phone. You can ssh from your Pocket PC phone to your Linux box and run things there. The set of things you can do without even hacking it — just loading new software using the standard procedures — is flatly amazing.
Given the closed nature of most phones, Microsoft is one of the paragons of openness in the phone world, which says more about the sad state of the phone industry than it does about how wonderful Microsoft is.
In any case, my next phone is going to be a Pocket PC, and I’m not even going to apologize about it to people who don’t like Microsoft. I’m going to ssh into my server, then pop open Emacs, then ask them if they can do that on their phone.
P.S. When I can affordably buy a decent Linux phone for my carrier, I’ll probably switch to one of those. Linux phones rock.
Comment by Andrew Norris — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 2:04 pm
So, you think people who buy iPhones and hack them to run their own software are silly, but you bought a machine that came with Windows which you’ve hacked to run Linux? Pot, kettle, black.
Comment by Super Duh — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 2:17 pm
You make some good points, Mark, but I haven’t been able to find a phone based on an open platform that has the hardware to compete with the iPhone. I haven’t seen the same software feature set from any other phone either. As much as I don’t want to have to hack an iPhone to add a few applications, I’d do that before hacking an open phone up to the point where it satisfies the basic functionality I already get with an iPhone.
Comment by Jonathan Roes — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 2:23 pm
> I can’t fathom why they would partner with particular carriers: an iPhone open to any network would surely just cream the market. But they have, for whatever market reasons.
Because they are getting 10% of AT&T’s revenue on data traffic and call minutes. That’s a lot of minutes, a lot of money, and they wouldn’t be getting any if they didn’t give AT&T exclusivity.
Which, incidentally, also is why Apple are so totally anal about locking down the iPhone, relocking it, and screwing over every buyer with a wish to hack. If they weren’t, AT&T would come after them with an army of lawyers and lawsuits. Which, incidentally, is also why I think the iPhone might be deemed illegal in Norway. Because, you know, carriers are not allowed to lock down devices for more than 12 months (Technically, they can charge a small fee to permanently unlock an out-of-contract device). $DEITY, I’m so glad I live in a country where corporations aren’t unilaterally allowed to rape their customers.
Comment by Arve — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 2:28 pm
I agree that it is unreasonable to expect Apple to fix a product whose warranty you knowingly violated.
But I think it is reasonable to want to modify things you buy if you don’t like the stock version. “One spicy chicken sandwich, hold the mayo.” I run 100% biodiesel in a truck that the engine manufacturer warranties on B20 and the truck manufacturer only warranties up to B5. It’s worth it to me to void the warranty for certain reasons. So it might be worth voiding the iPhone warranty if I like it a lot, but really want it do one more thing (disk mode, native apps, carpenter’s level …)
I also thought it was unreasonable to complain about lowering the price on the iPhone - but people did. Lots of people. They complained long and hard and most of the arguments were b.s. But they complained enough that Apple felt pressured by the PR hit.
So if a few people hack the iPhone, and enough people modify their iPhone to take advantage of that hack, and enough people act pissed that Apple broke those apps (”inadvertently” or not), maybe Apple will give in.
So I say keep it coming. Piss and moan long and hard - doesn’t have to be reasonable, doesn’t have to even be rational. Just make lots of noise, iPhone buyers, and write lots of negative articles, silly pundits. The best thing people who want the iPhone opened up should do is NOT to boycott it, because Apple doesn’t tweak good products people don’t buy enough of, they drop them (Newton? Pippin? Mac TV? Lisa? Apple III?). The best thing people should do is KEEP buying them, so Apple won’t drop it, and KEEP complaining, so Apple opens it up to nix the bad PR.
Comment by Adam — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 2:30 pm
Hallelujah to rdas7 and his comment #23.
Comment by DeRay Norton — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 2:51 pm
Bad Apple
The out-of-the-box iPhone is like a genius being forced to study with the rest of the class. There is tremendous unrealized potential in the iPhone. Third party applications began to make this clear with offerings such as Voice Recorder, faux GPS, and SSH. That’s when the iPhone began to reach epic device.
It is clear Apple made extra effort to make third party application development very difficult with firmware 1.1.1. It was unnecessary and reeks of greed. Apple made themselves rotten.
Comment by FritzSalmon — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 2:52 pm
The only thing more annoying than people whining about the iphone are people who don’t even own an iphone that are whining about the iphone.
Is my metawhining annoying? Hellsya.
Comment by spoonyfork — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 3:32 pm
from comment #7,
[...] “My own perspective on the AppleTV is that it’s crippled due to lack of 1080i, and in that space the notion of narrowcasting your format support down to Apple mothership approved H.264 is the kiss of death.”
Small note, but AppleTV does do 1080i, just not 1080p.
“Apple TV works with widescreen, enhanced-definition or high-definition TVs capable of 1080i, 720p, 576p, or 480p resolutions…” [Apple.com]
Comment by deadline — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 3:33 pm
Consumer backlash, ‘whining’ as some like to call it, is the free market at work. The guys hacking iPhones are the guys with ratty ‘Think Different’ tshirts — Apple’s core of hardcore fans.
Comment by Anonymous — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 3:43 pm
That was talking about here http://www.eupodiatamatando.com/2007/07/02/aqui-pro-iphone/ (but in portuguese)
Comment by Silveira Neto — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 4:31 pm
I have to agree with Wally H.
“using your precious Lenovo to play cricket would void its warranty”.
So, it’s a computer. Forget that part. Your new car most likely wouldn’t start without the computer working. Do you consider your car a computer?
And how many people buy cars to hack them? Customise them, within factory limits, sure, but hack them? I don’t want to open my Merc or BMW and use it to do off-road racing. Some do, but they are within the minority. And so are hackers. (And yes, I do wish I had a Merc or BMW).
You guys have to realise that you are the 1%, and other people are the 99%. As much as I love driving, I don’t want to open my bonnet. I don’t want to know anything about the inside of the car, other than it’s performance. I don’t want to hack my (future) iPhone.
That said, my iPhone lust is that I can write web apps that do all that I want with it, and replace my PDA.
I would like to see 3rd party apps, and I’m certain they’ll come after 10.5, after all, it’s still early days…
As for hacking the phone for other carriers, I’m sympathetic, but networks are networks. That’s part of the deal at the mo.
I’m just not sure how Apple will approach the European market, when they’ve rejected Vodafone, the only pan-European carrier, as far as I know. For example, here in Malta, though the market is small, Vodafone is one carrier, and the other carrier is unknown outside Malta. Are Apple going to make each European country bid to cater to the iphone? And what about when I move country, as I’m prone to do… Is my iphone then worthless?
As for anon:
“Their (Apple’s) software is locked and largely useless for any but the most brainless users”
Maybe we’re not brainless, just not interested in taking things apart for the sake of it? I bought my CD player to play CDs, not to hack it to play DVDs. Am I brainless? I use Keynote to make presentations, not hack it to screen movies…
Comment by Martin — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 5:29 pm
If I buy it, it’s my property. I’ll do whatever I want with it. Thank you very much.
Comment by richard nixon — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 6:09 pm
I just said nearly the same thing to my friend the other day. Wondering why so many people were complaining about hacks not working, or unlocking failures and saying how they wish they would have kept their N95s, or should have waiting for this or that phone. I’d like to see more positive blogs on iphones, not so many ‘iBrick’ blogs heh.
Comment by Greg — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 6:10 pm
One of the problems here is that those who won’t be happy unless they can hack their iPhone (DVR, etc.) comprise a very small minority, which is why Apple doesn’t really give a damn.
Unfortunately they’re a loud, annoying minority that, needless to say, dominate these kinds of forums.
Comment by BobH — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 6:14 pm
@93:
As much as I love driving, I don’t want to open my bonnet. I don’t want to know anything about the inside of the car, other than it’s performance. I don’t want to hack my (future) iPhone.
Personally, I coudn’t have less interest in hacking a smartphone for the sake of doing so. The reason I have no interest in an iPhone is not that I’m not supposed to “hack” it, it’s that it doesn’t do what I want out of the box, and they won’t let me alter it.
Out of the box, my Pocket PC didn’t play most media types I care about, didn’t have a decent browser, didn’t have any programming tools, didn’t have a decent text editor, didn’t have any games I like, didn’t have a weather widget, and didn’t have a decent scientific calculator. Now it can do all those things. Not because I took the thing apart, but because I installed the software I needed.
A few of those things already come on the iPhone (especially a decent browser), but most don’t. Some of those things can be handled through the browser to some degree, but many can’t.
I know not everyone needs all these things on their phone — it’s a pretty random list. But many, many people need something that needs to be on the machine but isn’t part of the base system. Until there’s a way to get that done, the iPhone won’t do what they need it to do.
Until Apple supports a real programming API, I imagine that the iPhone will continue to be utterly worthless to me.
Comment by Andrew Norris — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 6:56 pm
I would have been happy with my iPhone had there never been any hacks, and I was very happy until the hacks appeared.
I became happier that there were hacks.
I am sad that the hacks would be taken away were I to get the new firmware.
Does this make any sense?
Comment by Danno — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 7:53 pm
I do and don’t agree with you. I agree that purchasing a device with the goal of breaking it so it can do what you want is absurd. At the same time, I bought an iPhone before it was hacked and had no intention of hacking mine.
Then some useful tools came along, such as a shell terminal. I thought I’d give those things a shot, since I maintain my own network and servers and a terminal app is extremely useful, even if just used for pinging servers.
Not too long after that, lots of useful things came along, such as weDict, an open source dictionary app that uses StarDict’s collection. I discovered that there are language translation dictionaries for practically every language I could want. And I’m traveling to Norway in 4 days, so that is something that will be EXTREMELY useful.
That all said, I completely expected that Apple would be likely to lock out 3rd party apps on a revision, so the 1.1.1 revision doesn’t surprise me. What does shock me is that Apple’s baseband firmware revision looks to me to be maliciously written to lock out users from using their iPhones if they hacked it. (Of course, there are many reports of bricked iPhones that were never hacked, with subsequent beration from Apple Store Geniuses when those fones were brought in for troubleshooting.)
The attitude Apple is taking is that they have the right to destroy your hardware if you don’t use it the way they prescribe. They *do* have a right to offer firmware that locks you out again or reinforces the single-carrier restriction (at least theoretically), but they don’t have a right to retaliate against me by bricking my device simply because I tried out a few hacks.
Don’t forget that a hacked iPhone (not referring to unlocked iPhones) can be restored to 100% factory default.
Comment by Jory — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 7:58 pm
While I agree not to buy an iPhone if it doesn’t do what you want, it does make me wonder why Mr Jobs crowed so loudly about it running OS X. After all, if it’s going to be a closed proprietary system, then who gives a shit what OS it runs as long as it does what you bought it to do.
Comment by Brau — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 8:27 pm
> So, you think people who buy iPhones and hack them to run their own software are silly, but you bought a machine that came with Windows which you’ve hacked to run Linux? Pot, kettle, black.
Erm…you don’t need to “hack” a PC to install a new operating system on it. There’s no protection built into it to prevent you replacing the contents of its hard drive with random gibberish if that’s what you want to do. With, for example, the iphone (and a lot of other hardware), not only is it impossible to replace the OS with another without voiding the warranty (this is true of many consumer PCs too), but it’s just not possible to do - even if there is no technical reason why the new OS can’t be used, the hardware is locked down to prevent anything but the original one being used.
Comment by Benjamin A'Lee — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 9:34 pm
Mark: I cannot easily read through the posts in your archive in reverse chronological order. Is there a way that you can fix this? Otherwise I will have little opportunity to read your blog.
Comment by Jon Tyner — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 10:00 pm
To be frank, Apple does want your business, you just don’t like their rules.
Comment by Phil — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 10:36 pm
@57 punkassjim
I never said I thought it was “OK with me that the general public gets the wrong idea.” I’m not a blogger or a paid critic, so I don’t have a bullhorn, but I have no problem telling the people I know that the hype is overblown and why (or, as much why as they’ll listen to, which is usually very little before something else bright and shiny passes in front of them…)
Anyway… the fact is that the situation is there. People are complaining, the public hears shouts and murmurs, and they assume the worst. Hopefully, Apple takes the bad press to heart. I’m just being honest - if that’s what changes Apple’s mind, then that is fine by me.
And I’m not condoning hackers whining about their phones not working. Them’s the breaks. I am saying that the whole “love it or leave it” is a false dichotomy. You can can buy it and still ask that it does more. Consumers do this all the time, and occasionally a corporation listens. I hope Apple does. (One last note for the record - I have an iPhone, I like my iPhone, I have not added any 3rd party apps, I have not tried to jailbreak or otherwise hack my iPhone, and most likely, I never will. That said, I think it can do more and I’m not afraid to ask Apple to make that happen - it’s within my rights to ask, and it’s within their rights to tell me to piss off.)
-Jp
Comment by Jp — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 10:51 pm
@Brau, excellent question. I’ve wondered if the reason I’m so bitter at the iPhone being a closed platform is due to exactly that. When Jobs mentioned it running the “full” version of OS X so many times, I really got my hopes up that it could be something great. If he hadn’t mentioned that, I don’t think I would’ve minded that it was just a phone with a fancy UI.
Comment by Seth — Friday, October 5, 2007 @ 11:56 pm
I’m sick of people not realizing where all this is going, and then mindlessly baying out apologies for the ones who steal their sunshine (owning the means of your own production.) These are same thieves who then rent it back to people in the form of credit. Not having true ownership of something you ‘buy’ into is not the way of capitalism, it’s the way of serfdom.
Remember how in the movie Artificial Intelligence: AI (disappointing movie I know, but there’s a few good points in it) David and Gigolo Joe teach the audience about how information is the most valuable commodity in their society? They have to incrementally pay just to get a scrap of trivia that anyone in today’s world can look up on Wikipedia for free. This is a future the RIAA/MPAA et al. would like to steer everyone towards. Pay-per listen/view/search, you rent all the software/hardware…..in short, we would see the legal status of ownership in a ‘free’ market go completely tits up, where all the content and products WE contribute have absolutely no point of reference in ownership to anything other than governments and their corporate handlers. You produce it, they hold title to it and lend it back to you under their terms (sound familiar?) Is that really the kind of world you want to live in?
If you like the iPhone and want to give your hard earned money to OWN a piece of hardware, you can do whatever you want with it so long as you can get away with it. The nature of capitalism is opportunism and competition, so if Apple wants to compete against the community it’s trying to sell products to, then so be it. May the side with worst reputation win… :P
Comment by yourmemoriesaremine — Saturday, October 6, 2007 @ 1:22 am
The tension which is being experienced here is Commoditization vs Productization.
And I will solve it for you free although you dont deserve it.
The PC industry rushed to commoditize that which would be revolutionary if it were in every household that which was technologically inferior and in almost no households. Open source exists only to commoditize the myth that technology is common, free and hackable. But only because noone has it, UNTIL they do. The more common and free (and old) it is, the more hackable.
The product industry is correct when it produces substantial innovation by NOT commoditizing. And its an easy argument to make, that commoditization occurred too early in the mobile device market as it tried to mimick the PC market but without substantial innovation or competition.
To sum up, linux would not exist without DOS. (As much as they wish linux was inspired by UNIX). KDE and GNOME would not exist without windows and macintosh.
But where Apple went huge is they realized that commoditization makes no sense when there IS a huge existing market. As in BILLIONS of dollars a year like the cell phone market (which was a result of commoditization of crappy lackluster non-innovation).
If I was a CEO I would go totally proprietary now, people who are looking to commodity products simply dont expect anything better than 5 years ago and want it for free. The paying public expects more.
Productization is where its at. I should expect the market to become markedly more closed in the next 10 years as the commodization boom retreats in favor of innovation and feature rich products.
And we will all be alot better off for it.
Comment by ten — Saturday, October 6, 2007 @ 4:23 am
It’s interesting to see where this is all going in the big scheme of things. We are currently fighting a battle, and ultimately, either proprietary or opensource will win. Why? Let’s have a look at history.
It seems that ever piece of legal technological news is either somewhere in the midst of ‘Company X introduces restrictions and lock-downs’ and ‘Company Y goes open-source / open-sources foo’. It’s also interesting to note that the ‘intensity’ of both sides is getting quite big, lawsuits are bigger, copy-protection is harder to crack, more fedral laws are passed whereas on the other hand, you see more open standards, the open-source bubble getting bigger and more companies deciding to either drop freedom restrictions or go open-source (example : Sun, Novell, Intel etc).
So I guess in the end, we will either all be using open standards or every single thing in our life will be locked down.
Just like the author said, it’s not worth standing around and doing nothing and giving companies money if you don’t want to be locked down. So just avoid the company.
Comment by SamSpillaz — Saturday, October 6, 2007 @ 5:42 am
“You may own the hardware, but you only have a limited license to use the software, and an ongoing contract to use the network.”
Bollocks. You may be obliged to pay that contract for 18 months, if you don’t terminate, but that doesn’t mean you have to *use* it. Furthermore, for an early termination fee, of $175, you can terminate your contract. Or, your contract may run out. And, legally, as per the DMCA exemption, you can unlock your phone to use with any network you like.
Mark is wrong. Apple is wrong. And John Gruber is wrong for agreeing with this 100%.
Christiaan
Comment by Christiaan — Saturday, October 6, 2007 @ 6:13 am
Anyone with six hundred bucks, and the paycheck to cover the $1400.00 in AT&T freight for two years ought to be alert enough to hack their iPhone only with their eyes wide open, and be adult enough to avoid whining while extricating themselves from any traps. Apple owes contract violators nothing.
Apple’s competitors owe the world as good a phone AND a better deal, but where are they?
For users dusting themselves off after arm-wrestling with Mother Apple, an iPhone SDK and apps to assuage the PC Enthusiast will emerge when 1) iPhone’s available in worldwide markets, 2) 3G–or better–is common in those markets, and 3) Leopard Xcode is shipping.
“Broken pipes, broken tools / people bendin’ broken rules” - Bob Dylan
Comment by sfenerule — Saturday, October 6, 2007 @ 9:54 pm
Focusing more on the phone companies:
The problem with the US is that competition in the cellular industry is almost non-existent - what’s the f%$*ing point in allowing the companies to merge again after trying to break their monopoly some decades ago? The companies are huge and they know you don’t really have much of a choice. Check out India - you say “locked phones” and people would be like “What kind of a mythical creature is that?” Competition among many operators has meant that, to a great extent, phone companies cannot afford to take their customers for granted. The only lock-in you’d find in India is by the stupid CDMA operators (who try to force customers into contracts bu subsidizing phones and rates). Indian consumers generally do not even know about long term contracts for phone services because they just don’t exist in the GSM world - it’s either “pay as you go” or “prepay and use that money for your calls within a fixed amount of time.” There’s nothing like “pay the operator for 400 minutes a month - if you use less than 400 minutes, it’s your problem and if you use more, then sell your house to pay the bill.” :D
Push your politicians to make these phone companies behave well (which I doubt you’d be able to accomplish).
It’d be interesting to see what happens when (or if) the iPhone comes to India.
Comment by anonymous — Sunday, October 7, 2007 @ 9:25 am
Sorry, that should be EM8634.
Comment by Jared — Sunday, October 7, 2007 @ 12:25 pm
The idea that Apple is the “New Microsoft” betrays a sense of stupidity and denial that quite frankly drives most of the more moronic criticisms of Apple. (and make no mistake, most of the criticisms of Apple of late are moronic). Pretending that Apple has earned the wrath of more than a few dozen people over the clearly articulated possibility that iPhones with cracked software could be in trouble when updates to FIX THE VERY BUGS THAT ALLOWED CRACKING were applied is simply nonsense. And the aforementioned complaints that Apple is the “new Microsoft” are from Microsoft pundits who bet the farm on everything Microsoft only to see Apple survive profitably in the new Millennium, once again define the PC industry, completely take over digital media players and now embarrass phone manufacturers in general and Microsoft’s miserable Window’s Mobile in particular with a breakthrough device. In short, it’s sour grapes. Nothing more, nothing less.
Comment by His Shadow — Sunday, October 7, 2007 @ 1:16 pm
Mark,
Are you gonna blog about all the other phones you’re not planning to buy? My feeling is that you’re attracted (maybe even obsessed) by the iPhone’s coolness but stand before a dilemma because besides the looks of it, you’d want it do to more than the standard feature set. Point is Apple doesn’t give shit about what you think of it and whining won’t change their mind. For them, the iPhone is just a vehicle to make money. The vast majority of the general public doesn’t care either about 3rd party applications. I like what Apple’s doing with their phone offer. Limited but proven functionality. For me, they could even have ditched the camera because I never use it. For general purpose computing, mankind invented computers.
Comment by Yuwang — Sunday, October 7, 2007 @ 7:56 pm
jobs was never more than a woolf… just like his friends…
in the late 70, when this guy (among others) envisioned “computers for ordinary people” he said it but didn’t understand it! (not the first one, huh…) what he meant was dollars and cents in his wallet (as simple as that)
i am telling you today that “computers for ordinary people” has nothing to do with apple or microsoft - but again, you must know that, by now, dear dreamer…
“computers for ordinary people” is about the new edge which is already started, when the planetary conscience of sappiens sappiens involves into what will happen anyway (because it is already happening, no matter “how much” is put on the table for this not to happen) - it is simply inevitable (as any natural law) and computer science via open source is just related to the growing cognitive and communication level of this species… more about that, soon… (2011)
d
Comment by anonymous — Sunday, October 7, 2007 @ 9:31 pm
@51: “Get an OpenMoko. It’s like an iphone, but it runs straight linux.”
Well, yeah, except for the part that the OpenMoko doesn’t *work* right now. Totally the same except for that little detail.
As the main page of the OpenMoko wiki says:
“Currently it is not suitable for users. The state of the software at the moment is pre-alpha.”
and
“Unfortunately, due to issues with the “suspend” feature, the Neo is limited to only a 3-5 hours away from a charger.”
I understand that people really want to believe that the OpenMoko will solve all of their problems and be the open phone platform to end all platform wars, but let’s not kid ourselves about the current state of the world.
Comment by Nat — Sunday, October 7, 2007 @ 9:43 pm
Wow it’s hard for me to keep a blog, cause I can’t think of anything worth posting about. Good show, the world is a better place because of this. I dare say Apple is too!
I also like their Starbucks music integration. That’s so smart! I am in there all the time I hear some stuff that interests me and the clerk behind the counter is clueless usually. Which makes sense cause half the time the screw my order up! I mean I would complain about the high price of my coffee doesn’t warrant a screw up. But you understand blind corporate obedience, I should be thankful for such a great thing!
Toodles.
Comment by Sausage Dog — Monday, October 8, 2007 @ 11:12 pm
It’s like this: if you’re the sort of person who whines that Apple broke your iPhone, what this actually means is that you have an abusive relationship with Apple. You know that Apple is the sort of company that will fuck over its customers in order to make deals with the worst companies in the world: record cartels and wiretapping telcos. Apple claims to be all about the user experience — but what kind of user experience is it to know that at any moment, you might be charged more for content you already bought? I’m not whining, I’m criticising. The difference is that whiners keep coming back for more; critics stay away.
If you’re the sort of person who defends Apple and other manufacturers of closed systems, you’re merely enabling bad behavior. The problem isn’t that Apple broke iPhones in an update. The problem is that Apple locked the thing down in the firstplace. Apple built the iPhone on a powerful base. The only reason they are denying you access to that power is that they can make more money by doing so. And the only reason that’s so is that it’s impossible to get a cell phone on the networks without dealing with companies like AT&T. Every cell phone has had the capability to locate itself via triangulation/signal profiling for years. It’s required so 911 can locate you. But there is not a single cell phone that actually uses that to tell users where they are. Why? Because there’s no competition in the market. There’s no shortage of bandwidth — ten or so years ago, the TV companies were given a shitload of it for free. They’ll eventually have to give back some of it. But until then, there will be five or so cell phone companies, and that’s it. But you don’t care that we’re stuck with shitty technology forever, because in your view, we’re lucky to get something that works at all, and Apple doesn’t “owe” us anything. Well, that’s bullshit. If you want to have a market for cell phones, then we’ll fight Apple in the marketplace. Give me a wireless Carterphone decision, and we’ll have iPhone killers inside of six months. In a free market, open will always win in the long run. But until there’s a market, it’s reasonable to criticise Apple for participating in a system that locks out innovation, fucking over all consumers.
Comment by anon — Friday, October 12, 2007 @ 1:01 pm
I agree that one should buy the iPhone for what it is, a closed, proprietary system, albeit one that does many things very well. At the same time, though, I feel Apple is making a mistake by not providing some way for third parties to develop iPhone apps.
Comment by Jake — Friday, October 12, 2007 @ 7:25 pm
Sometimes I think Mark is actually working for Google as an internet mapping/visualization market research specialist–someone who posts out these topics and sees where the ip dots add up to… :)
Anywho, If this is all the big deal that the iphone measures up to, i am really kind of disappointed. I was thinking when they were leading up to the mysterious release and then made a big deal about os x being on it and that it was 4-8 gigs, that the whole point was that it was going to be kind of like a mobile computer, with the ability to load the apps from your regular mac workstation, use it with a monitor, mouse, etc, (kind of like a mobile, mini mini) or something.
Of course, as many have said above also, that would predicate the ability to send and receive very large files over the wireless network, also very disappointing in this country.
I can’t believe that it’