LaPorte Rips Apple on Radio

[aristobrat]

People who buy iPhone. Indifferent.
People who buy iPhone and mod it. Indifferent.
People who buy iPhone, mod it, and then complain when it does not work.. Super Dumb.

Leo is clearly in the last group.

What's kinda ironic is that Leo wasn't willing to tinker around on his personal iPhone. He mentioned on a MacBreak Weekly (or TWiT) podcast that an owner of a pawn shop sent him an another iPhone for him (Leo) to run his hacks on/unlock.

Wonder if he actually ended doing it on his personal phone (after being oh-so-cautious)? heh

http://leoville.com/blog/2007/09/15/1009/

I was reluctant to brick my own iPhone, but thanks to David K. MacArthur of Fast Cash Pawnbrokers who FedExed me an unactivated iPhone from his large collection of pawned phones today, I decided to sit down with Shooby’s excellent instructions and try iUnlock.

 

[plumbingandtech]

What's kinda ironic is that Leo wasn't willing to tinker around on his personal iPhone. He mentioned on a Macworld podcast

Wow! Really?

This makes me ignore his rants even more and I did not think that was possible. So he espouses hacking and all that on phones that don't belong to him but when it comes to his....

 

[Klaxons2012]

i wish Apple would stop selling the iPhone and say to hell with it.
this is one of my favorite electronics purchases and these "frigtards" as fake steve would call them are ruining it with their incessant whining.

if you hack or do anything the vendor did not intend for the device to do, it's their job to stop you from doing it! period! we don't live in a hippie commune, you're in a capitalist nation. Apple isn't obligated to give you full support for your bricked iPhone along with a bowl of lentil soup for your trouble.

if i mod my MacPro and the mod is invalidated with a firmware upgrade, it's not like I can go to the Apple Store and get a brand new MacPro! I'm SOL! Why? BECAUSE I VOIDED THE F'N WARRANTY! Grow up!!! The iPhone is no different from a computer. If you want open source, go get a damn Nokia with their ugly icons.

 

[gr8tfly]

It would've been super easy for them to do a checksum and make sure the files are okay before going ahead. Any programmer knows what I mean.

Even Microsoft doesn't intentionally brick Windows Mobile phones that have been unlocked or modified. This was definitely intentional, because there were easy ways not to.

Wow. Then it's a really good thing you don't work in this profession.

To repeat: Apple could've very easily watched for phones that weren't correct, and STOP. Or... they could've easily updated / fixed the modem code since THEY HAVE THE KEY FOR SIGNING IT.

Feel free to discuss whether they have the "right" to brick or not. But no one can say there weren't easy ways around it.

(Senior engineer... started programming in 1964 at 11 years old. Seen it all. Twice. )

i haven't seen evidence that anyone posting here actually knows the internal interfaces in the iPhone. There is evidence the bricking was NOT intentional (like, at least one unlock method did not brick?). Other assumptions can be made.

When making a patch to code that is has a checksum, you also need to recalculate and patch a new checksum. Otherwise, the device will fail its initialization validation tests.

So, if Apple validates the code by simply doing a checksum, it will assume the code is correct. I don't know the interface to the modem (and its code), but it could be very limited. They might not be able to dump the code to do a byte by byte comparison.

Not that it's proof of what's actually going on in the code, but during the update process, iTunes does tell the user it is "verifying existing software". At least, this provides some evidence of attempting validation before applying the update.

(You must have had some great access to mainframes back in '64. I was 10. Didn't get my feet wet for another 8 years. Feels like I've been there, done that, at least twice... )

 

[IfoneH@X0R]

This whole conversation is pointless for two reasons,

1 - Magnuson-Moss (federal law issued in 1975 I believe, anyhow its old) prevents Apple from voiding the warranty based on third party modifications. Apple could require users to re-lock their phones before any warranty is applied (ie you would be required to re-lock your phone before doing a firmware patch), but their current practice is outright illegal unless they have a large base of evidence to show that unlocking phones damages them and must prove this to a federal judge.

2 - Phone companies already tried to fight back against this "outdated law" and in response to that, in November of 2006, the U.S. Copyright Office issued new rules that reinforce the ability for consumers to move phones from one carrier to another. Why the Copyright office you ask, well the whole argument is that you are required by copyright law, and your user agreement, not to make any changes to your cell phone's firmware because it is the company's intellectual property. The copyright office said no, and now its the law, that you can change your phone to enable it to function on whatever network you want.

 

[Gonzlobo]

Legal or illegal, apple isn't making any friends by hosing their customer's stuff. While it's cute to brick iphones as a short term 'fix', it's going to hurt them in the long term.

I know I was interested in buying into the macintosh hype shortly after buying my iphone on iday, but their unwillingness to issue prompt updates for obvious iphone flaws, their consumer unfriendly acts of recent weeks and their heavy discounting of a brand new device will have me looking elsewhere.

It's a shame, because the iphone is pretty cool. Apple - the company - isn't.

 

[plumbingandtech]

Bricking is a by product of normal system updates writing normal update code to the system.

If the result of people modifing the code (hacking) results in a OS that can not be updated properly, then once again, for the million'th time.

The user bear must responsibility for their actions.

THE iPhone OS is not their code.

Pottery Barn Rule: You break it. You own it.


What something you can hack to your hearts desire?

Then the iphone is NOT for you.

Buy an openmoko. Hack all you want. Just don't expect it to be as good as an iphone in any other aspect.

 

[sanford]

Magnuson-Moss applies to manufacturer's voiding expressed or implied warranties when the third party modifications are irreversible -- they don't have to fix the product with the third-party modification still installed -- or cause damage to the product.

I wouldn't take much to prove that software modifying an iPhone -- designed and built to work on only one GSM frequency -- to work on other frequencies is damaging the iPhone. It's only supposed to work on one band, but now it will receive and transmit on other bands. That's broken. If your family-band radios suddenly started receiving and transmitting on police and emergency networks, potentially causing usage issues, you'd say they were damaged and asked the be fixed under warranty.

So, unlocking an iPhone does pretty obviously damage it, even under Magnuson-Moss. But since it's software and can be transparently fixed without leaving footprints, then relock it before requesting warranty service. But there is no consistent, stable relock for iPhones. Maybe Apple could devise one. Great. But Magnuson-Moss doesn't in any way require the manufacturer to repair damage you caused with third-party modification so they can then repair warranty-covered damage under warranty.

This whole conversation is pointless for two reasons,

1 - Magnuson-Moss (federal law issued in 1975 I believe, anyhow its old) prevents Apple from voiding the warranty based on third party modifications. Apple could require users to re-lock their phones before any warranty is applied (ie you would be required to re-lock your phone before doing a firmware patch), but their current practice is outright illegal unless they have a large base of evidence to show that unlocking phones damages them and must prove this to a federal judge.

2 - Phone companies already tried to fight back against this "outdated law" and in response to that, in November of 2006, the U.S. Copyright Office issued new rules that reinforce the ability for consumers to move phones from one carrier to another. Why the Copyright office you ask, well the whole argument is that you are required by copyright law, and your user agreement, not to make any changes to your cell phone's firmware because it is the company's intellectual property. The copyright office said no, and now its the law, that you can change your phone to enable it to function on whatever network you want.