Is Apple Evil?
As someone who unlocked his iPhone (living, as I do, in the Czech Republic), I’ve been observing carefully the brouhaha surrounding Apple’s statement that unlocked phones might be “bricked” by the next firmware update. A CNet blog entry is typical of the commentary spewed forth by the chattering classes. As I’ve noted, every hype wave has an equal and opposite antihype backlash, and the iPhone is about as hyped as a story can be without somehow involving Paris Hilton. Some degree of bellyaching was inevitable.
Nonetheless, Don Reisinger , the author of the piece, misses the point entirely. Apple isn’t being a mean jerk just because it likes to stomp on its customers and make them cry. Ask yourself why Apple locked up the iPhone in the first place. How could a company that is so obviously consumer ubersavvy be so consumer unfriendly? The reason is simple: Apple locked up the iPhone so it wouldn’t have to check the compatibility of a zillion third-party applications every time it updated the firmware. (Note to self: use more bold face and you might become an A-list blogger like Marc Andreessen.)
So now Apple is in a bind. It didn’t want to have to deal with all this crap, but a bunch of hackers went ahead and cracked the phone, and now it has two choices. Either it can try to test all the infinite permutations of apps that people might have illicitly installed (the same process that caused Vista to arrive years late while still sucking) or issue a statement that warns people that the next firmware update might break their phones. You can’t really blame them for choosing the latter.
I will blame Apple for getting a bit fat and arrogant lately. Like that talented and self-absorbed friend who stopped talking to us once they finally hit the big time (confirming what their ego always believed), Apple is following in the footsteps of Microsoft, Netscape, Google and every other technology superstar in getting more difficult to deal with the higher its star climbs. Don absolutely has a point that it is losing out to the likes of Amazon in negotiations with the music majors because it’s gotten just a little too big for its britches. This is hardly the end of the world, however, for Apple or for us. A bit of serious competition is exactly what the doctor ordered to bring them back to earth.
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Let’s wait for the big G to show what they have in pipes for us. Hope, they’ll maintain they motto with the much speculated/anticipated Gphone.
Comment by funTomas — 9/26/2007 @ 8:51 pm