Léoville - Latest Comments in What if…

Re: What if…

xaotica — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 15:32:19 -0000

i totally agree with you, but simultaneously don't see why it matters. i've had a smartphone for 2 years which has all the features of the iphone with the exception of the aesthetically pleasing interface. it cost me $200, works on wifi, works on any carrier, and lets me install whatever i want. i could see how this would be a big issue if the iphone was the only option available, but it's just one of many smartphones with similar features.

it seems to me like most of the people who are frustrated with the iphone situation are just not aware of all the other pdaphone options out there. many of people's complaints about the iphone make me wonder how much research they did prior to purchasing it. and that in turn provokes a lack of sympathy in me. i don't have the kind of money to buy an item that costs that much without researching it, and i feel like people who drop that amount of cash and only later on down the line research what they are buying deserve what they get to some extent.

(note: i say this as someone who owns and enjoys many of apple's other products, so this isn't me hating on apple in general.)

Re: What if…

Greg Rise — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 03:01:48 -0000

1st... apple lovers need to realize that apple doesn't care about apple geeks. If you mod it/hack it/whatever it, you are such a small apple % that they could care less.... cry as you may... no one cares about the < 1%.
I'm normally a PC user and most PC users don't even know what CMOS is... I'd be surprised if most Apple users knew that they pay 2 twice as much for hardware just so they can run a better OS.

If you hacked your iphone and you update to 1.1.1 you = stupid. If you hacked your iphone and didn't update to 1.1.1 you = smart geek. Either way apple does not care. Most people will buy the phone... use it with ATT and think it is great.

Sure PC users know that all the software they use has issues... even XP, surely VISTA, maybe not Linux, but guess what... it is cheap... and geek friendly. You can do whatever you want with it and get a way with it.

Summary if you are a Geek... don't buy APPLE they are for the brain dead... wow this looks pretty... don't care what it costs... love how simple it is... fan boys!.

However, if you are a geek... buy geek... buy a PC that you can do anything you can imagine on... buy a regular cell phone that you can hack and get free apps on... 3rd party or whatever... but don't ever think apple is for GEEKS... After all STEVE JOBS hates Bill Gates and therefore hates GEEKS... he will always be that way... so don't cry about your dam iphone... wait until you can get it the way APPL wants to give it to you.

NO MORE NO LESS!

PS... I'm a PC USER... this was written on an AMD system... fully hacked and still works... I also talk on an enV Version cell phone... fully hacked and still fully works!

Re: What if…

sputnikzygote — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 19:51:38 -0000

i'll still buy apple stuff... well, to be specific 3rd, 4th, 5th gen apple stuff per usual.

although it's looking like a LONG while before the phone evolves into something i'll drop cash on, but whatever, i can wait it out.

*as long as it's t-mobile friendly. F the ilecs!

Re: What if…

DKWfan — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 19:27:11 -0000

I work for a major telecomm equipment manufacturer. One of my jobs is to program our cellphones for fellow staffers so they have the latest version of the phone software to perform their duties.

I can't tell you how many times I have updated phones with the approved software, exactly as the software release notes described how to do it, with the latest software designed to install the software, and yet the phone got bricked.

Now, imagine you have software written by someone who has disassembled/reverse-engineered the phone's firmware, without full knowledge of how the phone works, but want to use it to modify key parts of the phone operating system.

How can you, in all fairness, expect this rogue software to perform flawlessly, and, more to the point, expect it to continue to perform flawlessly when necessary manufacturer's software updates are performed?

Understanding that the phone OS is probably not the most stable in the world, can you honestly expect a phone to be able to work properly after mutant code that the original phone manufacturer can't certify or test, has been installed, and then gets overwritten with code that has been tested and certified by the manufacturer during a periodic update?

I probably didn't quite say that right, but it seems to me that Apple is blameless in this situation. Apple can't be responsible for third party phone OS patches and how the phone may behave when approved software is installed over the third party software.

The third party applications are another story entirely. That was pretty crummy...

Re: What if…

kersmackflat — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 18:27:10 -0000

Stupid article. Computers are way different than cell phones. You don't NEED the internet for a computer (to make a movie, organize pictures, etc.) but you do need service for a cell phone. Besides, look at all the other cell phone service providers, they don't want Apple to work as close with their customers. ei. Verizon.

BTW Joe Heathen, your cow story is perfect.

Re: What if…

Joe Heathen — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 10:56:36 -0000

There once was a man who bought a cow. Not just any cow, but a rare and exotic breed that "just works" better than other cows. The company the man bought the cow from instructed him that this cow requires a special feed and care plan that matches its' unique metabolism and insures the cow stays happy and healthy. The man decides it would make sense to use the recommended feed, as he wants to take good care of his very expensive new cow, and decides to follow the company's care plan.

One day, a hack....ummm, salesman arrives at his door. He's offering a miracle product that makes cows create chocolate milk and crap cheddar cheese. All it takes is a simple operation that reroutes the cow's intestinal tract, and a special recombinant chocolate producing growth hormone injection.

At first the man is hesitant, as his expensive cow is "just working" pretty darn good. But he can't resist the idea of a cheese crapping chocolate milk producing uber cow, and agrees to the plan.

At first the man is gleeful, bragging and blogging to his friends that he has a special cow that does things cow's just weren't designed to do. He happily nibbles on his ass cheese, not really thinking to much about the condition of his cow's health and what he has done to the cow's intestinal tract.

Eventually, the feed truck arrives with the specially formulated feed, and the delivery driver happily announces that the feed will not only help keep the cow healthy, but will actually make the cow stronger and "just work" better.

"Now, before I can unload this feed", says the driver, "I need to make sure you've been following our care plan."

"Um, yeah" says the man, wiping the chocolate milk moustache from his lip, "I've done everything you said."

"Okay, just sign here", and the driver unloads the feed.

The cow dives into the specially formulated feed and happily chows down. Suddenly, the cow's eyes open wide, it projectile farts a gallon of yogurt, and drops dead on the spot. Apparantly, the feed hit an intestinal blockage in the cow's customized plumbing and caused it to die.

The man is appaled. His ridiculously expensive customized uber cow is now just a useless carcass.

He glares at the delivery guy. "How could you do this to my cow? This is all YOUR fault!!! That feed you brought me is POISON! You owe me a NEW COW!!!"

The delivery guy looks at the carcass, and then at the puddle of ass yogurt the cow left behind, and let's out a sigh. "Hmph, that's the third one today, that ass cheese salesman has been getting around." He hops back in his truck and begins to pull away.

"Wait!" screams the man "what are you going to do about this?! You killed my cow! You should have made a special feed for ass cheese customized bovine! I've been wronged! Waaaaahhhh!"

The delivery driver leaves the man whining in the distance, shaking his head and muttering to himself as he drives. "If that clown wanted ass cheese and chocolate milk so bad, he should have bought a different breed. Why do these idiots keep messing with our cows?"

He passes another farm, and lets out a wave to one of his regular customers. In his field is a big, strong, healthy cow, producing the finest milk in the county. "How's Old Bossie working out for ya?" he yells to the man.

"Working out great!" he yells back. "Been following your care plan, and that new feed is awesome! Been getting the sweetest milk every from that cow!"

The driver smiles. "Glad we could be of service".

Re: What if…

UniBoy — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 10:08:53 -0000

There's an interesting post on Symmetry in Tech (which references this post and one from Daring Fireball) that agrees with a lot of what Leo says above. Basically accusing Apple of playing too "fast and lose" with the term "smartphone." You can read it here:
http://www.brianholdsworth....

Re: What if…

Fred Hamranhansenhansen — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 00:30:38 -0000

The iPhone is not a computer, it's a phone that has its own computer. The computer inside is for the iPhone to use the same as your PC is a computer for YOU to use.

Re: What if…

Mike C — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 20:10:14 -0000

Are you saying that Apple is promoting the iPhone as a computer? I'm not sure that I ever heard Apple say that or promote the iPhone as anything more than a "smart phone" and many "smart phones" do not allow the installation of 3rd party apps.

As a result, I don't think your computer analogy really fits.

Re: What if…

Super Duh — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 19:01:58 -0000

Further, it is entirely possible to purchase, activate, unlock, install your own software, and use an iPhone without EVER agreeing to any of Apple's terms. There is not even any "click here to agree with the terms" on the iPhone itself, the legalese is in iTunes which doesn't even come with the phone! In fact, if you buy the phone in the box, it comes with no terms inside, so does apple expect me to agree to whatever terms the decided to push down into iTunes before I happen to open my box containing my iPhone that i bought?

Re: What if…

Koen van Hees — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 17:59:47 -0000

To add to the car analogy, those guys fixing their TR7, when their car breaks down - and in their case it is almost always the car's fault, they really knew how to not make cars then - the first thing they DON'T do is whine. They sit down, think, call a friend... if needs be, they make their own parts to get their machine up and running again. If the above doesn't turn you on, relax. It just means you are part of the 99,9% of people who should never ever buy a TR7 - or open up the hood, for that matter...

Re: What if…

Koen van Hees — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 17:31:56 -0000

I drive a Volvo. I know next to nothing about cars. Every year or so I go to a garage. A Volvo garage. The car drives. That's what we expect from it. It does it in a most satisfying fashion.
Now, I know there are car freaks around. I kind of admire them. And about one day a year I actually envy them. When they get their beautiful British job driving (from gas station to gas station, but still, look at it go).
Now to the iPhone. Apple appliances (not the same thing as computers, eh?) are very hackable. But you don't hack em and then do their updates blindly. Especially when they tell you what will happen to your hacks if you do. If you still go ahead, and think your contraption will work as advertised and then some... well, you're like me and you should have been driving a Volvo.

Re: What if…

owen-b — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 17:14:42 -0000

Everyone should read the following link and see what a lot of hot air (ie, melodramatic sh*t) this article actually is.

http://daringfireball.net/2...

Re: What if…

JGowan — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 16:21:58 -0000

Your story just receive a sound beating, being pummeled by the Great John Gruber on Daringfireball: A lambasting both tasty, satisfying and richly seasoned. You have been officially handed your ass, good sir.

To quote Gruber from a very recent headline of his: "If I could figure out a way to agree with this more than 100 percent, I would, but 100 percent will have to do."

Well, I agree with him 1,000%, possible or not.

http://daringfireball.net/2...

I'm so fed up with the iBrick whiners. No one put a gun to your collective heads. You wanted to have it all. You figured Apple was bluffing and you'd soon have all of your neat 3rd party gizmos a-whirling, all the while, making calls with a T-Mobile sim, sipping lattÃ©s at Starbucks and downloading the latest Britney.

Problem was, Apple didn't bluff -- your greediness cost many of you the use of something that 3 months, mint out-of-box, was very, very cool. I have no tears for you or any that think that somehow Apple is at fault.

Re: What if…

Random Hacker — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 15:57:00 -0000

Sorry, but you're dead wrong on this.

I work for a company that sells a "computer" -- it is a NAS device on top of an embedded Linux system -- and it's really very easy for someone to install third-party applications on this device, and we overwrite the entire root filesystem on software updates. No one cries foul over this; it's a sensible way to handle and *extremely complicated system update.* It's what we're capable of doing, and we have the right to do it -- we don't prohibit you from installing more software, but we also absolutely don't have the resources to support you if you do.

What would happen if you also flashed the ROM and the bootloader on said device, then tried to install an official update? Unless you did it carefully, you'd "brick" your NAS. Same deal with the iPhone; you flash some part of the ROM, you are doing something unrecoverable and dangerous.

I'm a Free Software advocate, and I would really love to be able to install anything I wanted on my iPhone, use it with a different carrier, etc. But crying foul because Apple (or any software company) doesn't invest the manpower in helping you do this is just stupid.

Re: What if…

macacanadian — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 15:54:36 -0000

I'm so freaking tired of this argument.

I live in Canada. I have an iPhone. Obviously, it is hacked.

I did not update it. Natch. If you did and are surprised that you do not have the 3rd party apps anymore or now own a brick, you are an idiot.

There is one reason and one reason only that third party apps are not allowed on the iPhone.

Hint: it's not freaking Jobs' vanity.

The very first app out there would have been VOIP and destroyed the relationship with AT&T. Apple neeeeeeded to partner with a mobile provider. If they didn't partner up, it would have been nothing more than an internet appliance sitting in the margins. That would have made you geeks happy, but is a big waste of time for Apple.

The iPhone is the wedge. VOIP is the future - VOIP is not now. All of this is the beginning of the end for mobile telcos. It's inevitable.

In two years or so, when all of this has shaken out and you have your VOIP iPhone or Google phone or whatever, all of the stupid bleating you're doing now is going to sound retarded.

Just shut up - especially with the lamest analogy ever (cows? what are you, stupid?) - already and wait for the movie to start.

Re: What if…

Catatonic — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 15:33:14 -0000

I feel your pain, Leo. But, I don't think the computer analogy holds. It's a phone. Rather, it is, as Jobs-o stated, an iPod/phone/Internet communications device. He never called it a computing platform. As you guys said on this week's MBW, they never should have let it out of the door in its hackable state if they knew they were going to lock it down and possibly brick it later. Personally, I think they were caught off-guard by the resourcefulness and ingenuity of the hacker community. (Sidebar: Erica Sadun is a Coding Goddess.)

Speaking of hackers, I do think they should be held at least partially accountable for releasing an unlock procedure that could not be fully reversed. If people knew beforehand that it was a one-way trip, they might have been more wary.

Re: What if…

rjf — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 15:29:08 -0000

John Gruber at Daring Fireball just took Leo's arguments (and his analogy) and blew it apart. Sorry Leo I think John is spot-on. Has there ever been an issue that has caused such division on both ends of the apple-fan aisle?

Re: What if…

Will F — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 15:28:34 -0000

I don't get your point, and your analogies are quite poor.

Apple explicitly stated it's not making the iPhone a platform for development. Just because you can hack it and develop on it doesn't mean this is something Apple should support or feel obligated to work around.

You feel entitled to the hackable iPhone, but Apple does not sell a hackable iPhone.

If you hack your version of Word, adding code to it as you like, and then you install an update from Microsoft that overwrites your hacks, who is to blame for that? Microsoft can be blamed for a lot of nasty things out there, but in the above situation, their "guilt" is dubious.

And, let's be clear about this: if Apple releases and update and says this update makes changes to the OS that will damage a hacked iPhone, and you install that update on your hacked iPhone - it is you who have damaged your phone.

You weren't under any obligation to update it. Apple didn't automatically install it. If you hadn't updated your iPhone it would still work the same way.

The issue amounts to this: you feel entitled to have Apple work around a miscellany of hacks that Apple has explicitly not supported; Apple, on the other hand, has clearly said you're not.

Since Apple's been very clear about unsupported hacks from the start, and they didn't force anyone to accept the update, the premise and reasoning of your article is erroneous.

Apple should never have said the iPhone runs OSX. People have interpreted that as an invitation to treat the iPhone as a computer.

Re: What if…

Brian — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 14:42:13 -0000

One small comment to add to this argument -- before the iPhone was released I remember Leo talking about his (old?) phone (maybe an N95?) and how neat it was to put all this 3rd party software on, but it would crash all the time. Maybe the idea behind "locking down" the iPhone is to avoid just that. And, if you do want 3rd party software, buy another phone that allows you to risk the core function of the phone (making phone calls) in exchange for the ability for 3rd party software to exist on it.

Re: What if…

Patrick — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:33:22 -0000

What if it really had nothing to do with Apple doing anything intentional in the update? What if the software installed by the hackers caused their own problems? You FCUK with the firmware, you break your phone. Too bad. All you stupid SHTIs who broke your phones deserve what happened (even if you can't read a EULA).

Re: What if…

Jeff — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 09:06:58 -0000

How about this, you buy a cow with the expresses purpose of making Milk, the farmer supplies you with a vaccine to keep the milk that comes out of the cow pure and tasty, but that vaccine has a side affect if you try to make cheese. you choose to make cheese so you have to stop using the vaccine or the cow will suffer from the side affect.

Re: What if…

FSW — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 07:01:03 -0000

Would you like some cheese with that whine? :-/

Re: What if…

yet another steve — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 05:10:12 -0000

It's EXACTLY what they said it was.
It's a freaking phone.
It is not a computer.
Like your car, which is also not a computer.

I've really had it with all this BS.
Apple delivered EXACTLY what they said they would. EXACTLY. They could not have been any clearer.

It's not an evil conspiracy. It's a cellphone.

Apple makes wonderful computers that run Unix and Windows and Mac OS and thus just about any application ever created on this planet.

The mac is not a phone. The iphone is not a computer. Doh!

The value proposition of the phone was that it would be SIMPLE. Simple means automatically updated/managed by Apple. How did you read into this that it was a computer? And what part of "exclusive to AT&T; 2 year contract required" did you not understand?

And Apple didn't brick your phone YOU did. The cell network didn't reach out and lock up your phone. You ignored EVERYTHING the company told you at every step of the way bout what the product was and was not and how it worked and then whine all over the internet because my f'ing God it is exactly what they said it would be.

Now yes it is your phone and no one stops you from taking it apart and doing things it wasn't intended to do. Happy hobby science project. You can also put it in a blender.

Personally I wanted the iPhone to have a real SDK/API. Then I realized I cared little about the phone, I just want a programmable pocket sized touchscreen MacOS X based computer.

Apple made it crystal clear that this was not such a device. They could not have been any clearer. I didn't buy one. I love Apple products. I do not have Stockholm syndrome. Apple delivers what they promise. When it's what I want, I buy.

I can't help think of Fake Steve talking about how stupid people weren't spozed to get iphones. He was right. And the most stupid are not the celebs who got it because it looked cool, it's the people who were too arrogant or illiterate to read/comprehend the simple message of what it was.

My analogy would be something about wanting a computer, so you buy a pickup truck, hack the dashboard to be the display and expect the dealer to fix it without making the speedometer back into a speedmeter.

IT'S A FREAKING PHONE.
Jebus...

Re: What if…

Hutch — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 04:15:56 -0000

So Leo, you stupidly applied the update and bricked your own phone, despite the warnings otherwise. Your fault nobody elses. Of course this is the same Leo who passes his Skype password onto to some nomark voip company - who keys in all his bank account details to a third party website - Leo Leo Leo, there is no saving you from yourself it seems. ;-)