Forum > General discussions > Other manufacturers > Apple unveils the 3G iPhone

On 2009-07-10 16:37:42, Boinng wrote:
Yep, not the cheapest thing in the world, but not the end of the world at that price either - worth it if you're still under contract and/or warranty for a while yet.

They should bring back the metal back and put tempered glass on the next one, you'd never need another phone..

On 2009-07-10 18:07:26, RyaN wrote:
Lol which one is the best though overall Mark?

On 2009-07-21 11:43:19, masseur wrote:
thats THIS saturday coming then

I assume by "customers" that you need to buy something to get the free t-shirt?

edit: I just got the email.. its first 1000 "visitors" - No purchase necessary. While supplies last.
might see you there!

A few months back, Apple made a plea to the Copyright Office to make jailbreaking illegal. The EFF called their reasoning "absurd" and "FUD." It's still sitting before them to make a decision.

Apparently, Apple feels they are in a losing battle and are now throwing out some pretty far-fetched reasons to the Copyright Office in order to back up their case. For one, they say jailbreaking could let users alter the Exclusive Chip Identification number, letting the jailbreaker make anonymous calls. They say "this would be desirable to drug dealers."

In further claims, they say jailbreaking could lead to cell towers or networks being taken down Hacks to the baseband processor (BBP) would mean “a local or international hacker could potentially initiate commands (such as a denial of service attack) that could crash the tower software, rendering the tower entirely inoperable to process calls or transmit data... taking control of the BBP software would be much the equivalent of getting inside the firewall of a corporate computer — to potentially catastrophic result."

Or maybe... Apple enjoys the success of the AppStore, and doesn't want anyone else encroaching on that market. The Cydia Store, Rock Your Phone, and various other non-AppStore sales methods are appearing, and gaining in popularity. If the AppStore is no longer the ONLY way to vend your app, theme (try getting one of THOSE from the AppStore), or tweak, Apple stands to lose some of that valued income. And therein lies the real issue.

I recently bought Coda for my Mac. Panic makes great software. When I bought this... I just used Safari. I went to their website, I downloaded the app, and I paid them through their own payment system. I didn't have to go to an Apple store. I didn't have to open iTunes to buy my Mac software. In fact, Apple wasn't involved in any way at all other than creating a beautiful piece of hardware and a slick operating system which my copy of Coda runs on. Can you imagine the outrage if you could NEVER buy (or get freely) any software for your Mac except through iTunes? Control...

And guess what? Professional hackers could, using only a Mac connected to the internet, gain access to all sorts of high-level secure sites, and wreak who knows what havoc. Does that mean all software for every Mac should go through Apple?

What all this "jailbreaking is illegal" nonsense comes down to is Apple attempting to maintain their absolute control on all software for the iPhone - which is flat out insulting. This doesn't fly with any other device... why should it with iPhone?

The nation’s cellphone networks could suffer “potentially catastrophic” cyberattacks by iPhone-wielding hackers at home and abroad if iPhone owners are permitted to legally jailbreak their shiny wireless devices — that’s what Apple claims.


A jailbroken iPhone is a weapon of mass disruption, Apple claims.
The Copyright Office is considering a request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to legalize the widespread practice of jailbreaking, in which iPhone owners hack their devices to accept software that hasn’t been approved for distribution through the iPhone App Store. Apple made the claim in comments filed last week (.pdf) with the agency.

The company’s filing explained that jailbreaking could allow hackers to altering the iPhone’s BBP — the “baseband processor” software, which enables a connection to cell phone towers.

By tinkering with this code, “a local or international hacker could potentially initiate commands (such as a denial of service attack) that could crash the tower software, rendering the tower entirely inoperable to process calls or transmit data,” Apple wrote the government. “Taking control of the BBP software would be much the equivalent of getting inside the firewall of a corporate computer — to potentially catastrophic result.

“The technological protection measures were designed into the iPhone precisely to prevent these kinds of pernicious activities, and if granted, the jailbreaking exemption would open the door to them,” Apple added.

Threat Level had no idea the iPhone was so dangerous. We’re gratified that Apple locked down this potential weapon of mass disruption before hackers could unleash cybarmageddon. This also explains why Apple rejected the official Google Voice App for the iPhone this week. We thought it was because Google Voice posed a threat to AT&T’s exclusivity deal with Apple. Now we know it threatened national security.

At stake for Apple is the closed business model it has enjoyed since 2007, when the iPhone debuted. More than 30 million phones have been sold. Apple has told the Copyright Office that its locked-down platform is what made the iPhone’s success possible.

The EFF has asked the regulators for the DMCA exemption, (.pdf) which would allow consumers to run any app on the phone, including those not authorized by Apple.

Fred von Lohmann, the EFF attorney who made the request, said Apple’s latest claims are preposterous. During a May public hearing on the issue in Palo Alto, California, he told regulators there were as many as a million unauthorized, jailbroken phones.

In an interview Tuesday, he said he suspected those phones have not been used to destroy mobile phone towers. “As far as I know, nothing like that has ever happened,” he said.

He added that, if Apple’s argument was correct, the open-source Android phone from Google on T-Mobile networks would also be a menace to society. ”This kind of theoretical threat,” von Lohmann said, “is more FUD than truth.”

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 says “no person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.” But under the law, every three years the Librarian of Congress and the Copyright Office must consider the public’s requests for exemptions to that anti-circumvention language.

Apple also claimed that jailbreaking would pave the way for hackers to alter the Exclusive Chip Identification number that identified the phone to the cell tower, which could enable calls to be made anonymously. Apple said “this would be desirable to drug dealers.”