Introducing the iBrick, for our Most Eager Customers
by Ewan Spence
The news that Apple will potential ‘brick’ (to render a piece of technology as functional as a brick) any of the iPhones that have been unlocked and modified by their owners is something that I’ve both been expecting, and that I’m decidedly unhappy about. In no way am I a fan of Apple (as I’m sure some of the other writers here will attest), but while Apple are arguably within the rights of the software agreements that they placed in front of the user, the legal minefield of subsidy, unlocking, DMCA acts, and a million and one other things mean that there could be very choppy waters ahead if they go ahead with a controversial firmware upgrade.
All of this is horribly reminiscent of the war that Sony has been fighting against the owners and third party developers on the Sony Playstation Portable. The PSP, with a 480×288 screen, USB and WiFi connectivity, and huge amount of portable horsepower proved an irresistible lure to the bedroom coders, and they started to work out how to get their code running on their devices.
But while Sony closed down the loopholes, and provided more carrots to try and get people to upgrade to the latest firmware (adding in a Web Browser for version 2.0, adding streaming for podcasts at 2.6, the ability to save podcasts to the memory stick in 2.7, Playstation One emulation in 3.0, and so on); ensuring that each blockbuster game required the latest version; and generally playing whack a mole as coders continued to find tiny chinks in the code (classically, a buffer overrun in the code to display a picture ultimately led to the first major ‘crack’ in the system), they never took the route that would see them switch off a PSP. Any bricking was because the hackers were exploring with no official guide to the system.
The company that asked us to “Think Different†is about to embark on a huge game of cat and mouse with some of the brightest minds and collective wisdom on the planet. Apple need to be lucky every single time. The hackers need just one of them to get lucky, just once, and everything will open up again. And the process will begin again.
Herding lolCats would be easier than keeping the iPhone closed.
