So apparently, Apple bricked all the unlocked iPhones

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Re: So apparently, Apple bricked all the unlocked iPhones

Post by pavelbure »

Roofus wrote:
BoneyCork wrote:
APE wrote:why should Apple be able to pull this crap?
So you're saying it is Apple's responsibility to ensure all future firmware upgrades they release function correctly with every hacked/unlocked iphone regardless of method used?
If Apple wanted to keep me from using 3rd party apps on my phone and the firmware deleted them and made it so I couldn't easily reload them, that's fine. If they made it so T-Mobile didn't work and I had to use AT&T, that's also fine. But they did that and broke the phones. It's like if I was stealing cable and the cable company didn't just disconnect me, but also fried my TY.
couldn't apple have looked at the firmware before overwriting and just said "woah, this has been hacked, i cannot update this" ?
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Re: So apparently, Apple bricked all the unlocked iPhones

Post by Roofus »

|darc| wrote:So you're telling me that if you did a TSOP reflash on your Xbox BIOS, and Microsoft then released Halo 2 for Xbox requiring you to install a new version of the dashboard, which doesn't boot from hacked BIOSs, and the upgrade said "DO NOT INSTALL THE UPDATE IF YOU HAVE A HACKED BIOS OR IT WILL BRICK YOUR XBOX," and you did it anyway, and it bricked your Xbox, Microsoft is the bad guy?
Doesn't quite fit. Phone unlocking is a specific exemption to the circumvention law. Also, a Dash update wouldn't render your Xbox unusable. If they flashed the BIOS with zeroes or something then yeah, MS would be a bad guy.
|darc| wrote:It's more along the lines of the kid who was stealing copper from the power lines when the power went out. The power went on and the kid got bricked. Should we call foul on the electric company because they should've just made the copper unstealable, but instead they went and bricked the kid stealing the copper?
The power company can't reasonably expect kids to be stealing cable, but you'd better believe that if a kid was killed that way, there'd be a lawsuit and the power company would lose. Apple knew that people were hacking their iPhones and they hated it. I'm not saying that people should have known better than to update their firmware. What I am saying is that Apple has no right to destroy people's personal property. I honestly don't see how you can defend that.
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Re: So apparently, Apple bricked all the unlocked iPhones

Post by jaredfogle »

Anyone who would rightly call him or her self a hacker of these sort of devices knows never to update the firmware until someone does it exploratively, right?

I just want to make sure of that. Script kiddies got bricked phones because they did a dumbass, untested firmware update.


But still, it just seems so anathema to Jobs' and Apple's spirit to do something like this. That's what bugs me about it. I would expect this behavior from a lot of people, but not Jobs.
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Re: So apparently, Apple bricked all the unlocked iPhones

Post by Specially Cork »

But they did that and broke the phones.
Yeah and that sucks. But it doesn't answer my question.

Please explain to me how Apple are supposed to ensure that all future firmware upgrades will not break hacked phones, regardless of method used.
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Re: So apparently, Apple bricked all the unlocked iPhones

Post by Roofus »

BoneyCork wrote:
But they did that and broke the phones.
Yeah and that sucks. But it doesn't answer my question.

Please explain to me how Apple are supposed to ensure that all future firmware upgrades will not break hacked phones, regardless of method used.
Part of unlocking the phone is replacing the modem's firmware. The updater could easily check the firmware and if it's not what it expected, it could refuse to do the upgrade,

Plus, the altered firmware works just fine with the old software, It's obvious they did this on purpose.
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Re: So apparently, Apple bricked all the unlocked iPhones

Post by Calavera »

I'd be pissed if I owned a $500 paperweight. :x
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Re: So apparently, Apple bricked all the unlocked iPhones

Post by APE »

Roofus wrote:
BoneyCork wrote:
But they did that and broke the phones.
Yeah and that sucks. But it doesn't answer my question.

Please explain to me how Apple are supposed to ensure that all future firmware upgrades will not break hacked phones, regardless of method used.
Part of unlocking the phone is replacing the modem's firmware. The updater could easily check the firmware and if it's not what it expected, it could refuse to do the upgrade,

Plus, the altered firmware works just fine with the old software, It's obvious they did this on purpose.
They also can't guarantee that it won't not brick legit phones either, same goes for every piece of hardware out there on the market that can have it's firmware upgraded. However it does definitely seem that this was a deliberate "fuck you" to the consumer, contract or not.

Further more darc try to defend Apple's doings to people who don't have a contract but just have an iPhone legitimately. They aren't bound contractually to stay on AT&T.
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Re: So apparently, Apple bricked all the unlocked iPhones

Post by |darc| »

pavelbure wrote:couldn't apple have looked at the firmware before overwriting and just said "woah, this has been hacked, i cannot update this" ?
Apple issued a warning beforehand, I don't see why they have to go and make their updater do that. I don't think they should have to keep the checksums of all hacked firmware versions so they can blacklist them in an updater. And whitelisting only certain previous firmware revisions could get messy when they get into multiple updates or possible different versions. But I do agree that they probably should have. But on the other hand they don't really have to go out of their way and they did warn the user.
Roofus wrote:
|darc| wrote:So you're telling me that if you did a TSOP reflash on your Xbox BIOS, and Microsoft then released Halo 2 for Xbox requiring you to install a new version of the dashboard, which doesn't boot from hacked BIOSs, and the upgrade said "DO NOT INSTALL THE UPDATE IF YOU HAVE A HACKED BIOS OR IT WILL BRICK YOUR XBOX," and you did it anyway, and it bricked your Xbox, Microsoft is the bad guy?
Doesn't quite fit. Phone unlocking is a specific exemption to the circumvention law. Also, a Dash update wouldn't render your Xbox unusable. If they flashed the BIOS with zeroes or something then yeah, MS would be a bad guy.
Well, let's assume the Xbox didn't check your DVD-ROM for bootable media before it loaded the dashboard. It would brick it.
|darc| wrote:It's more along the lines of the kid who was stealing copper from the power lines when the power went out. The power went on and the kid got bricked. Should we call foul on the electric company because they should've just made the copper unstealable, but instead they went and bricked the kid stealing the copper?
The power company can't reasonably expect kids to be stealing cable, but you'd better believe that if a kid was killed that way, there'd be a lawsuit and the power company would lose. Apple knew that people were hacking their iPhones and they hated it. I'm not saying that people should have known better than to update their firmware. What I am saying is that Apple has no right to destroy people's personal property. I honestly don't see how you can defend that.[/quote]

Um, it already happened. I can't find the link to the news story, but some kid tried to steal copper from the power lines during a power outage. When the power came on, he got bricked. :lol: I don't see how the power company would lose a lawsuit over that?
Roofus wrote:Plus, the altered firmware works just fine with the old software, It's obvious they did this on purpose.
You didn't read my post, did you? From how I understand it, the hacked software relies on an exploit in the firmware. When the exploit is fixed, the hacked software doesn't work anymore and neither does the phone.
APE wrote:They also can't guarantee that it won't not brick legit phones either, same goes for every piece of hardware out there on the market that can have it's firmware upgraded. However it does definitely seem that this was a deliberate "fuck you" to the consumer, contract or not.

Further more darc try to defend Apple's doings to people who don't have a contract but just have an iPhone legitimately. They aren't bound contractually to stay on AT&T.
Yes they can guarantee it doesn't do this to legit phones because legit phones don't rely on an exploit!

They didn't write if (firmware == hacked) { copy(/dev/zero, firmware)}.

I can defend Apple's doings because they have no reason to go out of their way to protect people who void their warranties.
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Re: So apparently, Apple bricked all the unlocked iPhones

Post by Roofus »

|darc| wrote:They didn't write if (firmware == hacked) { copy(/dev/zero, firmware)}.

They may have. Apple gets $3/month from AT&T for every old customer that buys an iPhone and $11 for every new iPhone customer. I assume Apple gets nothing from T-Mobile.
|darc| wrote:I can defend Apple's doings because they have no reason to go out of their way to protect people who void their warranties.
It's not a rental. You aren't required to sign up for the AT&T contract when you buy it. The phone isn't subsidized and Apple made $300 per phone. This just seems punitive on Apple's part. Especially when you consider that if you hacked the phone to put third-party apps on your phone, but didn't unlock it, the update merely deletes the apps but keeps the phone usable.

I (and I assume many people here) buy electronic devices based not only what they do out of the box, but how hackable they are, I know better than to expect most companies to support hacks (Linksys is a notable exception) and I know better than to apply updates provided by the company but even Sony doesn't go so far as to brick hacked PSPs, and they think everything is piracy.

Oh, and let's not forget that cell phone unlocking is legal.
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Re: So apparently, Apple bricked all the unlocked iPhones

Post by |darc| »

Roofus wrote:
|darc| wrote:They didn't write if (firmware == hacked) { copy(/dev/zero, firmware)}.

They may have. Apple gets $3/month from AT&T for every old customer that buys an iPhone and $11 for every new iPhone customer. I assume Apple gets nothing from T-Mobile.
|darc| wrote:I can defend Apple's doings because they have no reason to go out of their way to protect people who void their warranties.
It's not a rental. You aren't required to sign up for the AT&T contract when you buy it. The phone isn't subsidized and Apple made $300 per phone. This just seems punitive on Apple's part. Especially when you consider that if you hacked the phone to put third-party apps on your phone, but didn't unlock it, the update merely deletes the apps but keeps the phone usable.

I (and I assume many people here) buy electronic devices based not only what they do out of the box, but how hackable they are, I know better than to expect most companies to support hacks (Linksys is a notable exception) and I know better than to apply updates provided by the company but even Sony doesn't go so far as to brick hacked PSPs, and they think everything is piracy.

Oh, and let's not forget that cell phone unlocking is legal.
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Re: So apparently, Apple bricked all the unlocked iPhones

Post by melancholy »

Roofus wrote:but even Sony doesn't go so far as to brick hacked PSPs, and they think everything is piracy.
Updating the firmware on a hacked PSP overwrites the hacked firmware, making the PSP still bootable but no longer hacked. Updating the firmware on a hacked iPhone overwrites the legit firmware, sealing the exploit and subsequently disabling the phone. Bricking the phone was a consequence of the way it was hacked, not the update. Apple simply fixed a bug in their software.
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Re: So apparently, Apple bricked all the unlocked iPhones

Post by JellyWarrior »

Apple would be under huge contractual obligations with the iPhone so it's hardly surprising (infact I expected) that the iPhone might be disabled. No doubt there is a massive tangled web of bureaucracy concerning Apple's obligations to AT&T and there are probably also massive obligations that AT&T owes Apple.

I'd guess that until this point, AT&T has fulfilled their obligations to Apple by providing the service under the terms and conditions that Apple agreed on. By allowing people to use the iPhone on other networks Apple is obviously breaking their obligations to AT&T.

Also, the iPhone is Apple's product and Apple has the right to decide how they're going to sell their product and under what terms that product will be sold under. If someone buys the product, breaks those terms, then what right to they have to complain when the seller tries to enforce those terms? Obviously if they want the best possible experience with the product then they should have abided by the original terms in which the product was sold.

While I am glad these people cheating the system got what they deserved, it wouldn't hurt if Apple did allow more flexibility about how you use the iPhone.
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Re: So apparently, Apple bricked all the unlocked iPhones

Post by Ex-Cyber »

JellyWarrior wrote:Also, the iPhone is Apple's product and Apple has the right to decide how they're going to sell their product and under what terms that product will be sold under.
Yes, that applies up to the point of sale. They do not really have a right to decide how it is used after purchase. They do, however, have the right to decide which modes of use they actively support.
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Re: So apparently, Apple bricked all the unlocked iPhones

Post by mariobro »

As I suspected, Apple is catching a LOT less heat from this issue than any other company would do. The common arguments "But they're entitled to make a profit", "They did give fair warning", "If you don't like it, go back to Russia, you commie bastard!", don't hold water.

The whole point of GSM phones is flexibility. The iPhone behaves a lot like a CDMA phone, being closely tied to the manufacturer and carrier, like those cheesy Sprint phones. Yes, they might be cool, but you're forever tied to using it with the same carrier. If Apple wanted to be assholes about the whole deal, they should just have hard-wired the SIM card inside the phone. No point in making it accesible if you can't swap it.

I'm in the cellphone business, and I just don't reccomend the iPhone to prospective buyers. If you really want to spend that much cash on a phone, and want to get your socks blown off by a phone, I suggest getting a high-end Nokia, or a Windows-based smartphone. Hell, a music lover might be better served by a Sony Ericsson Walkman, or a Nokia slider phone. At least they can do whatever they want with their devices, without fearing revenge from manufacturers and carriers.

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Re: So apparently, Apple bricked all the unlocked iPhones

Post by |darc| »

mariobro wrote:As I suspected, Apple is catching a LOT less heat from this issue than any other company would do. The common arguments "But they're entitled to make a profit", "They did give fair warning", "If you don't like it, go back to Russia, you commie bastard!", don't hold water.

The whole point of GSM phones is flexibility. The iPhone behaves a lot like a CDMA phone, being closely tied to the manufacturer and carrier, like those cheesy Sprint phones. Yes, they might be cool, but you're forever tied to using it with the same carrier. If Apple wanted to be assholes about the whole deal, they should just have hard-wired the SIM card inside the phone. No point in making it accesible if you can't swap it.

I'm in the cellphone business, and I just don't reccomend the iPhone to prospective buyers. If you really want to spend that much cash on a phone, and want to get your socks blown off by a phone, I suggest getting a high-end Nokia, or a Windows-based smartphone. Hell, a music lover might be better served by a Sony Ericsson Walkman, or a Nokia slider phone. At least they can do whatever they want with their devices, without fearing revenge from manufacturers and carriers.

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Re: So apparently, Apple bricked all the unlocked iPhones

Post by Quzar »

If people were doing things to their phones that did not void their warranty and an update were to brick it, Apple should fix it. If you get out of warranty and end up bricking your phone, it's not their fault. The way I see it, it isn't Apple's fault for updating the firmware, it's the owners fault for messing with the phone, then messing with it some more.

My 2c. (yes I know it was said before, just saying that this is the opinion I agree with)
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Re: So apparently, Apple bricked all the unlocked iPhones

Post by Covar »

i side with apple for much the same reason i sided with nintendo when people were being dumbasses and breaking their tv's with the wiimotes.
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Re: So apparently, Apple bricked all the unlocked iPhones

Post by jaredfogle »

Covar wrote:i side with apple for much the same reason i sided with nintendo when people were being dumbasses and breaking their tv's with the wiimotes.
This is different. Nintendo didn't send in a representative to your home and break your television if you weren't using the wriststrap.


Also, I'd like to add that I just saw the worst Apple commercial I've ever seen. Some dude talking about how he traded a bag of 4 devices for his iPhone. It made me think of Maddox's iPhone page.
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Re: So apparently, Apple bricked all the unlocked iPhones

Post by pavelbure »

i really wish this damn phone would just die. i like apple and all, i'm just sick of trying to listen to these supposed "mac podcasts" and all i get is iphone crap. the same goes for the websites too. enough already. :evil:


blah blah iphone blah blah apps for the iphone blah blah hacked iphone blah blah i know i said it was worth $600 3 months ago but now apple owes me $200 because i'm a damn idiot who payed $600 for a phone blah whine blah blah

end rant.
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Re: So apparently, Apple bricked all the unlocked iPhones

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