Apple iPhone’s Deeper Problem
It’s been nearly a week since Apple (AAPL) issued its controversial iPhone 1.1.1 firmware update, but the full repercussions are only now being felt.
At first, the loudest cries came from users who had unlocked their phones to work with other carriers and found that the devices had been rendered inoperable — a loud but relatively small minority.
But Apple’s deeper problem is that the update also disabled all native (i.e. unauthorized) third-party applications — a development that will ultimately affect every iPhone user. Third-party applications are the secret sauce that have made every computer — from the Apple II on — infinitely more powerful than its designers imagined. Who besides a programmer on Apple’s payroll is going to write software for the iPhone now?
The move was especially surprising because an Apple executive — VP of hardware product marketing Greg Joswiak — only a few weeks earlier had signaled in an interview with PC Magazine editors that the company wasn’t hostile toward native iPhone apps. The money quote from the magazine’s GearLog blog:
Rather, Apple takes a neutral stance - they’re not going to stop anyone from writing apps, and they’re not going to maliciously design software updates to break the native apps, but they’re not going to care if their software updates accidentally break the native apps either. He very carefully left the door open to a further change in this policy, too, saying that Apple is always re-examining its perspective on these sorts of things. (link)
Not surprisingly, many developers saw that as a green light to start their business plans. One company, Mexens Technologies, maker of the popular Navizon software that triangulates your position and displays it on your cellphone, is now offering $25 refunds to anyone who bought the version it had just started selling for the iPhone.
Mexens execs might well wonder why Apple went out of its way to warn unlockers that last week’s firmware update might wreck havoc with their hacks but didn’t offer the same courtesy to the purveyors — or users — of third-party apps. It’s also a mystery why, as the New York Times reported, Apple is treating some iPhone owners with third-party app problems with the same contemptuous no-help-from-us policy they are using for users who tried to break the iPhone’s lock-in with AT&T (T).
Apple spokeswoman Jennifer Bowcock certainly won no friends for Apple when she told the Times’ Katie Hafner:
“If the damage was due to use of an unauthorized software application, voiding their warranty, they should purchase a new iPhone.” (link)
Little wonder that Nokia is going after Apple with its “phones should be open to anything” advertising campaign, or that Gizmodo changed its iPhone recommendation from “wait” to “don’t buy,” or that there is a movement afoot to punish Apple with a class-action lawsuit.
Below the fold, the devastating YouTube video, available here, that uses Apple’s own “Think Different” soundtrack to memorialize the end — perhaps permanent — of the era of native third-party iPhone apps. As usual, Danny Lyons has the last word on that subject here, in The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.
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