CUPERTINO, CA — For a company that started in a garage and once encouraged its supporters to “think different,” Apple has grown to be impressively corporate. Hackers and crackers have generally been kind to the marketplace mini giant, but with the release of the uber spendy iPhone and its one-service-provider-fits-all approach to coverage, some techno fans have found ways to unlock their iPhones and remain customers of their pre-existing, non-AT&T, cell phone companies. Alas for them, an announced update has threatened to return unlocked products not merely to the status quo, but to the dumpster.On Monday, Apple warned owners of unlocked iPhones that the next software update would likely be their last, because it would break the trendware irreparably. Although more than 1 million iPhones have been sold since June 29th, no one knows how many of the first wave of purchasers unlocked their phones. The iPhone Dev Team, which created one of the initial cracks, speculates that the number of people who potentially assumed that Apple would eventually expand the number of compatible connectivity providers is in the “several hundred thousand.”
While an official expansion of providers may or may not come to be in time, what is certain, according to Apple, is that “many of the unauthorized iPhone unlocking programs available on the internet cause irreparable damage to the iPhone’s software, which will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed,” a company statement explains.
Unsurprisingly, the company isn’t wild about the fact that early adopters have been tinkering with the iPhone’s delicate inner workings and insists that “Apple strongly discourages users from installing unauthorized unlocking programs on their iPhones. Users who make unauthorized modifications to the software on their iPhone violate their iPhone software license agreement and void their warrenty. The permanent inability to use an iPhone due to installing unlocking software is not covered under the iPhone’s warranty.”
Although potentially disgruntled consumers determined to gain access to the newly launched Wi-Fi Music Store might conceivably be able to restore their iPhones to their original factory default settings, the iPhone Dev Team would prefer that they hang tight until a relock is developed.
A save by the iPhone Dev Team would be fitting, given its roll in cracking the locking code and thus making it possible for developers to create unauthorized apps and for users to connect to providers other than AT&T. According to a statement on the The Unofficial Apple Weblog and attributed to the group, a fix is scheduled to appear next week.
Meanwhile, some question whether Apple can actually refuse to honor the warranties associated with the code cracked iPhones, thanks to the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. According to the Act, Apple cannot legally void a warranty just because a purchaser has installed third-party enhancements or changes unless they directly harm the product. Pundits propose that Apple may be able to bring itself back into compliance with the Act by allowing users to re-flash their firmware and re-lock the iPhone, thus returning it to AT&T service and Apple’s profit share plan.
In the meantime, the iPhone Dev Team rages against the status quo in libertarian language, referring to the Apple statement’s comments about the crack, combined with the impending upgrade. “Apple now announces that the next firmware update, expected later this week, will possibly break the handset of all of us free users in the World. It speaks of ‘damage’ done to the firmware and ‘unauthorized access’ to our own property.”
Regardless of how things play out, chances are good that as soon as Apple releases its update, the iPhone Dev Team or another independent developer collective will be hard at work on an equally new unlock solution.
