NYT on unlocking phones

@#11./Jt Hollister: you should rather get 20 to life for not understanding that free beer is good, but free speech is even better. Even if a statement proven to be false would qualify as slander, it would rather make a cause for civil action - and Apple's got enough lawyers to sue NYT if they wanted to - than a criminal offense to be prosecuted and thereby diverting away resources from addressing what I and most sane people would consider more harmful crimes. Motive, evidence, bla bla: you just may have been watching too many episodes of Law & Order. Please go get yourself a law degree before you post 'FACTS' which are NONSENSE and EXTREMELY ignorant. Thanks but no thanks for your legal advice.

Michael -- "Nuke the freakin' neckbeard hackers!" - lol. Nice ;)

>My concern is not with what you believe, or with what the
>Times reporter believes, but with the article's expression
>of certainty.

Got it. And on that, I totally agree. :D

Cheers,
FL

Fritz,

You don't need to look no further than former members of the iPhone Dev Team to see that the bricking was solely the fault of the AnySIM (et al) coding itself.

Umm, this is the NYT we're talking about here... everything they write is slanted and biased.

Michael, Steve Jobs saying "Nuke the freakin' neckbeard hackers!" would be, to me, malicious intent. Far and away from what I consider Apple's intent. When I say I believe that there was intent on Apple's part, I'm not saying that it was malicious.

I believe that the intent is being pressured upon Apple by AT&T over subscriber loss. We have Job's on record with the "cat and mouse" statement about stopping unlockers and jailbreakers. We have an Apple statement giving fair warning that they'll be bricking modified iPhones. So, the "intent" to stop these people really isn't an issue, it's pretty much fact. But was it malicious? To me, no.

Hi Fritz:

I respect your position. We can both look at the available evidence of Apple's actions and motives, with judgement intact, and come to different conclusions. My concern is not with what you believe, or with what the Times reporter believes, but with the article's expression of certainty.

If the NYT has technical evidence, internal memos, a policy statement, or emails from Steve Jobs saying "Nuke the freakin' neckbeard hackers!" that lead to the conclusion of fact that Apple deliberately and specifically chose to disable unlocked phones, then fine. If such proof is not in hand (and I will bet my imaginary iPhone that it ain't), the article is needlessly inflammatory.

A simple "is believed to have" qualifier would have cast the statement in a different light. It's inarguable that Apple is believed to have created an upgrade that deliberately disabled unlocked phones -- we have evidence here that many people do believe that. It's speculative to say that Apple created an update that was designed and intended to disable unlocked phones, and without evidence of motive I think it's irresponsible of the "paper of record" to contribute to an atmosphere of blame.

(On a side note, I want to thank everyone so far for the relative lack of rancor in the post comments, not always the case when it comes to iPhone stories... :-)

There's no motive. There's no reason for Apple to brick phones. They already lost the money from AT&T, and they're not getting it back if they break someone's phone. They're just going to piss people off.

People, Apple is a very smart company. They know how to do business. Bricking peoples' products is NOT how you do business, and it is most certainly no evidence that Apple has done this.

No one has presented a motive, nor any evidence whatsoever that Apple did this on purpose. It's just everyone's "hunch". I can see how you could possibly think that, but a few seconds of thinking logically should dismiss any such possibility entirely.

Moreoever, for the NYT to come out with an article that states this ridiculous theory as a FACT is SLANDER and EXTREMELY illegal. This reporter ought to be locked up for 5-10.

Michael -- I understand, and appreciate your position. But, I still disagree with you.

Sure, I agree there's a stretch in linking deliberately broken apps with a presumed deliberateness in bricking phones, but it doesn't require that big of a leap for me. I can understand people not wanting to believe this is true, because of the crumbling house of cards that would result, but I'm actually kind of osmotically drawn to it, all things being equal.

Furthermore, I do not accept responsibility for giving Apple "a big ol' PR black eye" because of my beliefs. There are a lot of smart people who work at Apple. If they want to avoid bad press, they know how to do it.

To quote our great president, "Fool me once, shame on ... shame on you. Fool me ... cain't get fooled again!" Fear (of getting burned, in this case) is a much stronger motivator than pleasure (of having the latest & greatest, in this case).

Cheers,
FL

Well, the unlock software was obviously thrown together quite quickly. There was little to no testing, and I can't imagine it was anywhere close to bug-free. By no means am I suggesting that the iPhone Dev team are bad programmers, it's just they wanted to get unlocks to the public as fast as possible. The code was rather shaky to begin with, and Apple's update pushed it over the edge. Apple couldn't afford to go out of their way to make sure it DIDN'T break jailbroken iPhones (when the unlocking was already costing them a lot of dough). They made sure everyone knew though, and yet, some fools still installed the upgrade, being well forewarned that it would brick their phone. Some people are beyond me!

Well, it's Conventional Wisdom now that Apple "broke" peoples' iPhones for whatever reason. I've talked to many, many people who believe this now, even if they don't know any actual facts. What sucks is this misinformation was mostly generated by Apple fans.

Congrats, unlocking zealots. You've given Apple a big ol' PR black eye for no reason other than your own self-interest. Next time you want to throw a fit, Isuggest you aim bigger and start a rumor that MacBooks will kill your family in their sleep.