Let’s start with few quotes:
…last week’s iPhone firmware update. This not only plugged a bunch of security holes, it wiped out users’ unapproved applications, and “bricked” some phones hacked to unlock them from AT&T.
Nokia has even stopped calling them phones. In its press releases, it says things like “the Nokia N95 is an all-in-one multimedia computer”. Nokia also makes clear that: “Because multimedia computers have a programmable operating system, people can download and install software applications.”
Yes, it still sells Mac Pro tower systems that can be expanded at will, but the bulk of Apple’s computer sales are of relatively closed portables and the iMac, which is basically a large portable with the keyboard detached. The Mac mini and Apple TV designs, all the iPods and the iPhone show a company increasingly in love with sealed boxes designed for consumers, not for geeks.
-quotes from this article by Jack Schofield on The Guardian
I don’t think Apple was aiming to ‘brick’ their customers iPhones. It was just something that happened to happen with the changes they had to make. It would be too big of an support issue if tried to screw with the phone. Of course AT&T would like them to do it, as they don’t get any money from customers who moved to another carrier (and I’m quite surprised how many actually did this, what if you had had your contract for more than two weeks? Could you still cancel it or keep paying AT&T).
Also I’m absolutely certain that at WWDC 08 will see an SDK for the iPhone. It need to happen. We’ve already seen many applications made for the phone that shows that there is a real need for it (and even if it already had every conceivable app on it, we’d still see proof of concept apps). There’s, I think, two reasons for that we haven’t seen the SDK yet:
1: iPhone’s OS; even as it’s running OS X it’s still really young of an OS. They want to keep tweeking a bit longer to make sure they’ve build it as solid as they can without worrying about breaking hooks for the apps.
2: They want to see what type of apps people are ready to install even if it means they might break their phone. This will then show direction on what might worth adding to the iPhone 2. You could say: ‘just look at computers and see what apps people use on those’. But must remember that it is a very different platform, a mobile phone.
It’s easy for Nokia to allow third party apps on their Symbian based phones as they’ve been running and developing Symbian for a decade.
As for the last quote. Has anyone ever changed the hard drive on an iBook? That is frigging geeky.
–kristian
