Apple’s worst nightmare or all part of the plan?

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Tuesday, 30 October 2007

Page 1 of 2 ! Apple’s major new products are all under hack attack with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard now hacked to run on PCs, while the iPhone and the iPod Touch can be hacked to run third party apps just by visiting a web page – can Apple’s secret sauce be put back in the bottle? Articles all over the web (such as this one from PC World ) are pointing to the recent spate of hack attacks that are opening up Apple’s platforms wide open, in strict contravention of Apple’s policies and wishes to keep OS X running only on authorized hardware, and the iPhone and iPod Touch only running existing web based apps and third party authorized apps to come from Feb 2008. The same article links to Jailbreakme.com, a website that is designed to be accessed directly through Safari loaded onto the iPhone and iPod Touch, which exploits Safari’s TIFF vulnerability to allow jailbreaking of either gadget, and when then allows users to easily install a range of the third party apps now available. Apple’s policy of keeping things relatively closed, despite the effectively open platform that is OS X running on authorized Mac hardware, came about because of Apple’s original success with the Apple ][ computer, which was copied left, right and centre by just about everyone. It was an attack of the clones, eating into Apple’s profit margins while simultaneously causing Apple to become the most popular computer company at the time, with plenty of third party software fuelling the Apple ][ boom. When the Mac was launched, clones were not allowed, as Apple had learned its lesson. But as history has shown, the next platform to become popularly cloned was the PC, at first running CP/M, then DOS, and later Windows, Linux and a number of other operating systems here and there along the line. Apple tried clones for a while under the leadership of Gil Amelio, but when Steve Jobs came back, the practice was stopped as competitors selling Mac OS compatible computers were doing what competitors do and undercutting Apple with cheaper prices and better hardware. Over the past few years, Apple’s fortunes have gone from near death to today transforming itself into a consumer electronics giant, with the most popular portable music and media devices out there, now upgraded with the most stylish user interface seen yet on Planet Earth. But with the wide experience and expertise of many of today’s tech savvy global citizens, Apple’s most advanced devices – and now its operating system – are under massive attack, and so far, Apple has won by releasing the best devices, but lost each battle – so far – to keep them free from outside interference, as users fight to do with technology what they want to do, and not what the technology’s creators only had in mind. The effect of the efforts of hackers and third party developers to write applications for the iPhone (and by extension the iPod Touch) has been enormous, as has the iPhone’s effectively limited availability, despite having sold 1.4m units with 250,000 estimated to be unlocked. With millions more iPhones yet to be sold, plenty of users will be buying them next year at a time when third party apps are likely commonplace and growing fast, but Apple’s actions to limit the iPhone’s availability to the US only (at first) caused even more fervour among Apple’s fans than ever before, especially those really wanting to program for the device. Apple’s moves to limit the iPhone to a single carrier in each country had carriers fighting amongst each other to be Apple’s suitor. An Apple with an MVNO – like Disney had, and like Disney ditched after a year through being unable to be competitive – would have seen all other carriers sworn enemies of Apple. But with carriers falling over themselves to sell the iPhone and to give Apple a cut from each iPhone sold, Apple did the ‘impossible’ and launched a phone with the biggest bang an electronics launch has ever seen, a bang that still hasn’t stopped reverberating. And what’s going to happen with Mac OS X 10.5 running on PCs? Could all of this part of some crazy cool plan from Steve Jobs? Please read onto page 2 for the conclusion... << First page <   1 2 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

< Next story in category		Previous story in the category >

Visitors last 30 days Suscribers

904,266 13,751