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The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed yet.
Apologies for mentioning the iPhone thing. I’m getting sick of all the discussion too. Just one counter-point I need to make.
Certain negative comments I’ve seen on posts like the NY Times Bits blog disturb me deeply. The gist of the bad comments are “quit crying, baby, you took the risk and voided you’re warranty”. On them I call bullshit.
But the question is: where do people get the idea that one shouldn’t hack your own computer? My conjecture is that if you consider the iPhone as a fancy phone then it’s way cooler than anything LG is selling. But seeing it as a computer that happens to make calls and fit in your pocket, I’m offended and dismayed by Apple’s stance.
There is a reason Free Software advocates mean “free as in freedom” and to anyone who has been exposed to those ideas, any device which is essentially a computer, but which is actively hostile to its users, is deeply troubling. Computing (communications) and freedom go hand-in-hand, as we’ve seen time and again.
The enemies of freedom are scared by the widespread adoption of general purpose computing (it threatens their business model) and are trying as hard as they can to lock the doors. Should the new iPhone prove unhackable, it will show tyrants (and freedom fighters) that freedom and computing do not necessarily go hand in hand.
If Apple keeps this up much longer, they’ll go on my list of companies to put out of business. Freedom to compute as you wish is rapidly becoming as fundamental as freedom of speech, thought, and assembly. An enemy of freedom is an enemy of mine.
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