@20: the day you stop defining 'screwing up a phone/touch' as installing and testing it with software authored by someone other than Apple, and face the fact that this activity is legitimate and normal, is the day the pain in your ass will go away. Installing software on an phone/touch is something done by thousands upon thousands of phone/touch owners, and is therefore perfectly legitimate for potential buyers (agreed, not nerdy kids who are starved for attention) to do as part of their evaluation of the product. Sounds to me like Apple needs to address the problem by making it simpler to restore phones/touches back to their virgin states if they want to display them and allow us to use them. Or, more likely, I suppose, is that the developers who brought us jailbreakme.com will rescue you first and make re-virginizing as easy as they've made installing third party software on your demo model phones/touches. (Anyone care to talk about the fact that those same developers patched the buffer-overrun vulnerability before Apple did?)

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Thats hilarious!

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Okay seriously? @18: Of course that's their job and what they chose to do. But how about people treating other people nicely? You don't just purposely drop dishes on the floor when you're done eating so your waiter can pick them up cause "it's his job and he should do it". Same thing here. It does take a little while to restore a phone so why cause someone some extra stress? You've obviously never worked retail or in a restaurant. Please, let's all be nice to our Apple Store employees.

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I also saw one at the NY 5th Ave. Flagship Store. The best thing is, that the Apple Geniuses don't know how to handle this. Why? Just because they have to replace the iPhone by another one...

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@24

You're kidding, right? I highly doubt that the geniuses at the flagship store don't know how to restore an iPhone/iPod Touch, or that restoring them would "fix" the problem.

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@15 icruise:
All the iPhones in the Apple Retail Stores are fully activated (with a Cupertino area code). They can send/receieve SMS, email and make calls. If they appear to be locked-down, it's either the result of a customer fiddling with it, or an incorrect/incomplete restore.

@16 Zews: You, sir/madam, don't know what **you're** talking about. The CPUs have DeepFreeze on them, so that they don't have to be restored nightly. The iPhones/iPods don't. They have to be restored individually.

@17 ScotteusMaximus:
As a matter of policy, ARS employees in the store after closing (solely the realm of Mac Specialists) are supposed to manually clear each phone (of non-demo photos, SMS, recent calls, notes, etc). It's to prevent exactly what you experienced and it's a pain in the ass -- I once had a phone with 160+ photos that had to be removed one at a time. (The other 4 on the table had ~100 each.)

@18 AppleTwo: I have **two** jobs -- one of them salaried, an advanced degree and more than a decade's experience as a developer, thank you very much. You obviously haven't had to look for a job in the last few years -- it's very tight and very cheap, even where there's "job growth." You should experience the frustration of being told that you're a fantastic candidate, but you're overqualified and nobody has any openings for someone your level of experience.

@20 Nachos:
When I said it would take 5-6 hours, I meant if every iPhone and iPod Touch (it's NOT an "iTouch," people) had to be restored, it would take a total of 5-6 hours, at least at my store, where we only have one restore image machine and it takes 20-30 mins per phone to restore and reload the demo content.

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@ Apple Store and AT&T Store employees:

Please explain why it is such a PITA to restore an iPhone or iPod touch.

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Hmm. it sounds like the hackers are doing Apple a favour. The new jailbroken phones fix the TIFF exploit and make the iPhones safer for surfing the internet.

It is the stock Apple iPhones that are unsafe and vulnerable to viruses NOT the jailbroken iPhones.

Don't beleive the FUD from Apple.

FUD 1 -- Breaking the iPhone causes irrepable harm. UNTRUE. (As others have pointed out you can do a restore from iTunes)

FUD 2 -- Jailbreaking the iPhone makes them vulnerable to viruses etc. UNTRUE. It is the stock iPhone that is vulnerable to viruses with the TIFF
exploit in the Safari browser. The jailbroken iPhone is not.

I find it hard to beleive anything from Apple's mouths these days.

IMHO, Apple and AT&T do not want you to put third party apps on the iPhone since it might affect the amount of revenue that BOTH Apple and AT&T get from the wireless cellular service. (e.g. using a Chat program might cut into SMS messages. Using Skpye might cut into phone revenues etc).

When the iPhone SDK gets released, it will be interesting to see what third party apps Apple will allow on the iPhone. I would not hold you breath for a iChat type client.

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hmmm very wird that if its a new phone it has sms already, i can nitice it because of the red number on the sms icon. ;)

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luckily for iStore hackers even if they block the hack over wifi I think they are powerless over the EDGE connection, unless ATT wants to get in on the fun and start blocking URLs

on another not, i really want to hack my phone. I've heard from many sources that it "causes no damage" and that a restore "removes all traces" is this a provable truth? or is it just assumed because the phone is no longer jailbroken after a restore? what's the possibility that some small setting will remain changed and flagged by apple in the next update for bricking?

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Wow, I can't believe there's 30 comments already and no one has mentioned this. APPLE, FIX THE &%$#@ TIFF VULNERABILITY ALREADY! Bam, problem solved.

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@20: Best comment ever! Wish tuaw had the ranking system the way engadget does.

"that said, if you're the kind of kid who comes in and unlocks them because it's so edgy and cool (or whatever you kids are up to these days), you won't care how much annoyance it causes us anyway, so i suppose this is pointless.

and if you think you are "informing the masses" on the unlock, you are so far from on target. most people who see the unlocked phones are going to freak out and think they have a virus or something. people are retarded."

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remember that when you add any applications, you void the warranty on the iphone.

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I saw a jailbroken (is that a real word??) iPod Touch in London's Regent Street store yesterday.... I smiled

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@30: jailbreaking never hurts anything permanently. You *can* always do a restore.

It is SIM unlocking that can cause bad things to happen if you are not careful.

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If I see you doing this in my store, I will throw you out.

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of course this is staged all the apple stuff have another cabe that hold em there so ppl dont just snatch the damm thing

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@36: That's interesting. Sounds like you are an Apple store employee. Do you make it a regular habit to promulgate policy, or is that Apple's? I suspect it is the former. If it is the latter, I sure would like to read it in a more official forum than in the comments section of some blog you like to follow.

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