When official apps are supported neither will we.

I wonder how many geniuses are going to upgrade and post about how they lost their apps.

Just try purchasing RIM's Blackberry somewhere where it is not officially supported, like in some african country (it was introduced in Nigeria only in 2006). It won't work! RIM requires not only cooperation of your mobile network provider, but your company's administrator as well. Try hacking it and you will see how far you will go.

What we have here is VERY popular device that people are trying to:

a) use on non-Apple approved networks

b) use with non-Apple approved applications

there are places where Blackberry has similar restrictions. However Apple offers alternative - iPod Touch.

Of course there are some of us crafty men (and women too) who are inpatient and want to play cat and mouse game with Apple. No need to panic dear readers, it is the game that we like.

However if you can't stand the heat - get out of the warp-core ;-)

Happy New Year to all my fellow geeks from Netherlands

Don't count on it, chief.

Watch for the SDK to be seriously gimped.

Nope, it can't. If you track down in the Gizmodo post you'll note that he used a utility written by our own Erica Sadun called "MakeItMine" that does require a jailbreak.

Thanks for the explanation.

"Or are we expecting Apple to leave open known vulnerabilities"
Which is of course where all coming from. But, will this be seen as Apple increasing the security of a high profile product OR as Apple dashing the hopes and dreams of hackers. I'm sure there are a few hackers out there that wish the image overflow still existed... as are a few more unsavory types.

I agree with MrShabby - the iphone / touch community has taken a remarkable piece of hardware and made it more useful. Hacking my touch was pretty easy - now it does what it should have done all along.
The hack tools are well designed and easy to use too. It actually quite impressive.

I think "COMPLETELY blows you away" is a little too strong of a sentiment... sure, I'm blown away by what it could possibly do in the future, but I've yet to see one single third-party application that excites me enough to not wait for the legitimate, supported sdk and resulting apps.

I'm sure tap tap revolution is great fun and all, but it doesn't exactly completely blow me away.

Now... if some enterprising soul found a way to connect an external nintendo-esque game controller via the dock port for third party games, that might blow me away.

I agree people who hack have little right to complain about firmware updates that break them. but I expect the hacker community will provide a tool that makes it safe to upgrade.

I understand both sides of this - Apple wanted to keep the device simple for the masses with no interest in hacking or the fruits of a hacked device. But I also appreciate being able to use this fantastic device to do MUCH more than the capability it ships with. The thing is a computer - any advanced user would be frustrated with a computer that's locked down.

Even when the SDK ships people aren't going to be able to do all the stuff they can do with a hacked device - that's my guess. I don't see Apple giving iPhone users root access.