Apple says iPhone unlocking may cause permanent damage - Page 3

Talk about nonsensable comparisons!

No. this is more like trying to make your car work on water, rather than on land, and you had to mod it to do so, then it sank.


No one is saying that the law is being broken.


while there is no such thing as requiring the customer to pay damages, the rest of that it correct.

Look at what it says in my camera manual:

"Do not make any changes or modifications to the equipment unless otherwise specified in the manual. If such changes or modifications should be made, you could be required to stop operation of the equipment."

This isn't even saying that it might not work. Canon might REQUIRE you to stop using it! There are two pages about danger from modifications or improper use, but this one is different.

In the case of your camera, that's asolutely not enforcable. Canon can't require you to do anything. It's all bluster and FUD, on their part.

They can certainly refuse to service the camera but, beyond that, they have zero influence.

Servicing the camera is obviously what they are talking about.

Are they, though? It's such a non-specific paragraph.

I'm not sure that 'we may refuse to service your camera' got messed up in the translation from Japanese to English to read 'you could be required to stop operation of the equipment'.

Just sayin'.

All this BS about unlocking the iPhone... wHACK!

Unless I can unlock it and use it on Verizon... its useless to me!! THERE'S ONLY TWO CARRIERS THAT CAN USE THE PHONE. UNLOCKED OR NOT!

Yeah, well people, I have my iPhone unlocked and I am very happy about it. I did it myself and that is not illegal actually. It is illegal to unlock phones and sell them in the US, however in the UK and Europe even that is not illegal. You can buy unlocked phones all over Europe in regular shops.

So with the introduction of iPhone to EU what you think will happen? I'll tell you.. you will see iPhones all over the place, even in the US so Mr Steve Jobs.. please do not bull and try to scare us, you know all this!!

On the other side though, I don't care much about the multi-billion dollar business of At&T and Apple. I only care about their product - iPhone. Ask yourself few questions:

- Why the iPhone is restricted only to At&T? (They should get antitrust suit as Microsoft did as they're actually forcing me to go with AT&T, Why should I do that? Maybe I don't like their customer care, maybe I don't like their salesman or their service altogether. Why you forcing me Mr. Jobs?)
- It was not an Apple thing to make things exclusive and obviously that spark the hackers to hack the dam thing.
- The same thing happened with P2P. They were trying to stop it but hey cannot control the world. People are still downloading stuff using KDX, Hotline, LimeWire, etc and will continue to do so with much faster and encrypted clients.
- Do they think they'll stop the revolution by making headlines and trying to scare people? - Well yeah, the ordinary American will not buy unlocked but most of the European will do so...
- Why should some product and especially phone be "exclusive" in the 21st century - it is ridiculous.

I wouldn't call this a monopoly since the iPhone is one of hundreds of cell phones you can choose to buy. Unlike say Microsoft Windows, which for the average person was the only operating system that you could use on a PC, basically forcing you to have it. That's not even close to the case here.

But you're right. iPhones are bought. And the owner has every right to tinker with it all he wants. But like every device in the history of electronics, if you open it up and mess with the hardware/software/whatever, you void your warranty. The company has no obligation, nor should it have any obligation, to offer you support after that. And if an update from that company happens to render your "hacked" phone useless should you choose to update, so be it. You brought that on yourself.


You are only locked into a specific provider if you buy an iPhone. You literally had hundreds of phones to choose from. You CHOSE an iPhone. You also knew that it had to be used with AT&T when you bought it. I don't see a lawsuit holding up with the fact that every single person who bought an iPhone KNEW that it had to be used with AT&T, and that the only way of getting around it was through methods that would void your warranty. Apple shouldn't have to spend money to accomodate every jerk that wanted to use a different provider.

If you didn't want to use AT&T you shouldn't have bought an iPhone. You weren't forced into anything.

It's an English written manual. Well done.

I've seen similar things in other manuals, or warrantees.

Obviously, they can't monitor what you've done unless you send it in for repair, or as most pro's do, for adjustment. But, they reserve the rights.

I agree totally.

However, the tone of your original message, as I understood it, conveyed the implication that users were compelled to use the iPhone on AT&T. If they wanted to do anything else, their only legal alternative would be to refrain from using it at all. That's nonsense.

No official support? Sure. Unexpected side effects resulting in a bricked phone? I'll accept that too.

That was the implication I got when I was reading the post I was responding to. If I got the wrong impression, I apologise.


The jury's still out on that one.

I was referring to the possibility that, upon entering into the 2nd layer of the user agreement -- activating your phone on the AT&T network -- you may use it for a month or so before deciding that it sucks.

At that point, if you modify the phone to work on a different network, you will still have early termination fees from the AT&T contract to deal with, and so far those early termination fees have been successfully enforced more often than they've failed under legal challenges.

Yes, that's a fishy question that I have been wondering about myself. If you get a month to try out the network, then why don't you get a month to return the phone? The two should coincide.


Yes, that agrees what many of us have been saying.

But, you see, while it's legal to unlock your own phone, there isn't any obligation to the manufacturer to fix it for you if that unauthorized software (or hardware) is responsible for "bricking" the phone when legitimate updates from the manufacturer are applied.

No one here has the right to assume that Apple will deliberately do something to destroy your phone, when they explicitly said that they won't. And don't forget that they said that some of these methods might cause this to happen, not all of them.

It's up to the hackers to ensure their software will not do that.

At any rate, there is a right to unlock the phone, but it must be done properly.

I'm sure that this episode will encourage these writers to upgrade their software to do what it should have done in the first place, which is to allow the user to temporarily reset their phone so that they can safely update it.

Then there is nothing Apple, or ATT can do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GgG2rrTkC8

...bricking iphones....itunes only music....2 year phone contract...

The truth can be hidden no longer....

Very poorly done.