Apple’s Great Escape (nerd alert)

This hasn’t been Steve Jobs’ week.

After all the hullabaloo about the iPhone 4′s teething issues, Stevo looked to be capping the gush of inky black PR  with a snazzy (placebo?) case for free!   I must admit that, despite being Apple user/owner for a long time, the free case did make me snicker a bit.  ‘Well yes we know you spent $200 on your new phone and it doesn’t really make phone calls very well but, er…hey look a chicken!’ <sound of feet running away>.

Now the Library of Congress has dealt a blow to Apple’s ‘Walled Garden’ and ruled that ‘jailbreaking’, long banned by Apple, is legal.  If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, ‘jailbreaking’ is the process of hacking an iPhone to allow direct access to its contents, (rather than going through Apple, AT&T or the App Store).  Jailbreaking allows the user to add unauthorized apps, run their phone through any carrier and well, anything they want.

Apparently, the government via the Librarian of Congress and the Copyright Office, (who knew a librarian could wield so much power), felt that iPhone owners have the right to do so.

Apple has countered and said that jailbreaking still violates the Terms of Service and voids the warranty.  As Apple’s warranty is so good, the threat of being locked out of the Cool Kids’ Club might be enough to keep most iPhone users from tampering with their device.

As you can imagine there is a lot of healthy debate about this decision out there in The Inter Nets.  The main proponents for jailbreaking argue that an iPhone is the property of the user, not Apple, so he is free to modify as he wishes.  Apple counters that the iPhone’s reliability and security suffer if jailbroken, and Jobs and Co can’t guarantee the level of service Apple customers have come to expect, (whatever that may be).

I was previously of the former camp, but am starting to see the rationale for the latter.  After all, an iPhone is part product (the physical phone) and part service, so if you buy the former and sign up for the latter, you are both the owner of a device and a party to a contract and are thus bound to the terms and conditions therein, (not to mention the hefty subsidy the Carrier pays for you when you sign that contract).

An iPhone user is, of course, free do do what she wishes with the phone; use it, abuse it, loose it, grind it up in a blender. However, if the user breaches the contract associated with the unit, it is Apple’s choice to honor the agreement to service it.  After all, you are free to do whatever you wish, as long as you accept the consequences.

RK

Tags: Apple, Bricking, How to Jailbreak, Is jailbreaking legal?, Jailbreaking