Could you explain why?

You are home playing Halo aren't you?

This is probably reason #971 for my being happy about having no interest in an iPhone. As a somewhat disinterested observer, then, I'd say:

1. Customers: This is what you risk when you buy closed-source products. Your risk only compounds when you also accept hardware lock-in.

2. Company: Apple seems to have taken another step down the road to appearing just like Microsoft: bullying toward its customers and cowardly towards the competition. One small point in their favor: If Microsoft had the iPhone, it would ship the update that breaks modified phones without prior warning. In fact, it would probably stealth-download the update any time your phone was connected to the network.

Granted, I'm not a road warrior. Nonetheless, I'm perfectly happy with my $50 cell phone and free (hand-me-down) laptop. As guilty as it makes me feel, stories like this only increase my happiness.

Xbox Live crippled modchip machines a few revs back. If you're going to dick with the engineering internals of your black box, that's one of the risks you take. If I bricked my router by flashing OpenWRT wrong should I yell at the router company?

I think people may not understand just how deep the hacks had to go in order to successfully unlock the iPhone from the AT&T network. Recall that the unlocking took a relative eternity for the iPhone compared to other phones, which means Apple tried to bury things really deep, and that the hackers had to do some serious slash and burn to get around Apple's code.

Although it's certainly possible for Apple to have "bricked" the iPhone intentionally, I strongly suspect they didn't, because it's just too much work. I think the real reason for the warning is that Apple is acutely aware just how hacked the unlocked phones are, and are trying to warn people not to try to bring in phones that have voided their warranty (yes, people should know better, but I'm sure there will be a lot of folks who will try anyway and get mad when they can't get the updated software).

There's nothing illegal about this, by the way. From what we know so far, Apple isn't changing unlocked phones over the air or anything like that - any possible incompatibility is going to be tied into the software upgrade that of course everyone is going to want. Apple isn't under any obligation to provide free upgrades to unlocked iPhone - if you've unlocked it then the safest course of action is to simply not upgrade until you can verify that the unlock hacks still work, and wait until the hackers unlock it again.

..this is STEVE JOBS we're talking about here. I have no doubt whatever that even *before* the unlocking software existed, Jobs was already planning to have updating software that would disable the phone if you'd messed with it.

Seriously now. Did anyone who unlocked their phone *really* think Jobs would just roll over for them? If so, they haven't been paying attention to his career. But, then, I imagine a lot of people who bought that phone weren't even pubescent when Jobs was doing his typical act in the late 80s and early 90s...anyone who's been paying attention would know that this was inevitable.

After all, it's the same mentality that cost Apple the Windows operating system. Some things don't change. Some people don't.

Unlocking your phone so that it can use other phone services seems to me like an unreasonable thing to do after signing a contract not to do so. But not being able to use your iPhones file-system or put ringtones on the phone from your own music files without risking iPhone disaster is an equal form of robbery. Nickel and dime-ing your best customers is bad business Steve...makes for unhappy shareholders!

I assume there is some way to do a factory reset on the thing? The unlock doesn't break that does it?

If there is no factory reset they are insane.

Apple shouldn't fight the unlock. It should just try to save face with ATT. I am sure we are talking about 1-3% of iphone users unlocking....

There is nothing on a Apple iPhone purchase receipt that states any warranty disclaimer of the sort mentioned in this article. It is however included with the phone packaging.

The unlocking software hacks available now pretty much rewrite the OS in a significant way.

I will not use a iPhone locked to AT&T; it's just not cost effective. Especially so when roaming. For instance every time the phone is turned on or wakes from sleep it connects (or attempts to connect) to the Edge data network. Thus incurring roaming charges irrespective of any actual direct internet usage. (Which in some cases have been quite significant un-negotiable surprises.)

Almost all Apple needs to do to break the iPhone from any other SIM is require that an AT&T Edge data connection has to be available - which it may or may not be, depending on one's plan and SIM card.

I am sure that Apple well understands the battle it has chosen to fight here, especially as it controls both the Phone OS and the software connecting link to it - iTunes. Thus it feels that it is in a very good position to control the cash flow associated with the iPhone's use by consumers.

Only time will tell if the free iPhone hacking movement will be intellectually capable of breaking a continued monopoly move by Apple.

Apple's position in the long run should only enhance sales of any unlocked phones designed to perform in a similar fashion by their competitors.

Or so we hope as consumers - that we control the actual use of our purchases and not the corporations who make them.

> unless you yourself actually choose to install a

> new operating system.

Apple stopped supporting my version of Microsoft Outlook with their most recent update to iTunes without any notification.

They rendered the most important feature of my phone (synchronization with Contacts and Calendar) useless.

At least there's time to restore your phone to the Apple settings before the upgrade and not lose anything. I didn't find out Apple dropped Outlook 2002 support until after the fact.

It seems every week Apple drops a bomb on us early adopters.