It's a love hack baby
The more popular the computerized device, the quicker it seems to get hacked.
Apple's much ballyhooed iPhone was released 3 months ago with some reasonably draconian lock-up measures to protect their relationship with AT&T. iPhones do not allow 3rd party applications to be loaded, for instance; they also are "locked" to the AT&T network, forcing iPhone users to enter into a service contract with AT&T wireless (formerly Cingular), ranked at the very bottom of wireless providers for customer service as well as being notorious intimate with the U.S. government.
However, less than 100 days after release, there is a thriving market in hacked phones. Wired has a story about unlocked iPhones being sold on eBay and Craig's List. MacWorld has an article explicitly explaining, step-by-step, how users can unlock their phones themselves.
What I can't figure out is did Apple allow some back doors so that they could take the sweet, sweet AT&T deal and wink-wink, empower the users or did they just screw up?
It could be either. I am afraid that i believe the latter. If true that they just messed up, it leads to an interesting implication that maybe you just can't lock stuff down anymore. Oh, would that that were true. But that might be the case. The complexity of modern software coupled with the need for frequent updates, means leaving emmentaler-sized holes in computer gadgets. Perhaps we'll get to the point when "locked" device are not only rejected by the market, not just for being unfriendly to the customers, but because it can be easily hacked?
Posted on September 17, 2007
