From iPhone to iBrick?

Since Apple released the iPhone 1.1.1 update last Thursday, some adventurous iPhone users have been treating it with the suspicion usually only seen in gun-shy Windows users contemplating one of Microsoft's more far-reaching Service Pack updates.

That's because iPhone 1.1.1--in addition to providing security fixes and such useful new features as support for the WiFi iTunes Store--also nukes any third-party programs you've installed on an iPhone. And if you've used any of the various hacks available to unlock an iPhone for use with wireless carriers besides AT&T, the 1.1.1 update can nuke the iPhone itself, "bricking" it into an inert, unusable lump of metal and plastic.

That possibility is stressed in the intimidating "Important Information" screen iTunes presents at the start of the update:
IF YOU HAVE MODIFIED YOUR IPHONE'S SOFTWARE, APPLYING THIS SOFTWARE UPDATE MAY RESULT IN YOUR IPHONE BECOMING PERMANENTLY INOPERABLE.

Sure enough, one reader wrote to say that the iPhone he'd modified with third-party software "crashed and could not be recovered" after he installed the 1.1.1 update. (The iPhone I reviewed, which had also been hacked to run additional programs, survived the update fine.) That reader did note that Apple warns against putting third-party applications on iPhones, saying "I learned my lesson here." But he still wasn't happy about the outcome.

The 1.1.1 update also blocks a program, Ambrosia Software's iToner, that merely lets you make ringtones from music you already own and add them to an iPhone--instead of paying 99 cents each for them at the iTunes Store. Ambrosia President Andrew Welch--one of the most prolific Mac developers around, as well as one of the smartest observers of the Apple ecosystem--complained about Apple's conduct in an interview:
We're not putting anything but data on the iPhone, and we're doing it in the right way, and we're putting it in the user area of the iPhone. Apple is intentionally making sure that products like ours don't work.

Apple's defenders say that the iPhone is clearly marketed as a closed platform. If you don't like that, you can buy any other phone. If you insist on tinkering with an iPhone, you have to be prepared to own the consequences of your actions. Further, Apple can't be expected to test its own updates against every random hack out there, not least those that tinker with the deepest guts of the iPhone to let it use other wireless carriers' SIM cards.

True enough. But business isn't a matter of balancing rights and obligations as if you're in court. If the best thing a customer can say about a company is "they were within their rights to do this with me," you don't have a healthy relationship. This isn't Niccolo Machiavelli's politics; in a market populated by customers who can shop around, it is better to be loved than feared.

And the problems with the 1.1.1 update go beyond unfortunate, unavoidable interactions with unauthorized hacks. How else can you explain Apple going out of its way to break a program that just adds ringtones to an iPhone? That is classic cell-phone-industry control freakery. I might expect that from Verizon, but not from the "think different" company.

Apple works against its own long-term interest with this kind of conduct.

In the short term, it encourages users (such as Macworld columnist Rob Griffiths and my colleague Mike Musgrove) to opt out of its updates--which leaves them without important security updates and leaves Apple without the opportunity to sell them more songs through the WiFi iTunes Store.

In the long term, Apple is wasting its employees' time fighting an unwinnable battle. Apple's attempts to lock out third-party developers have about the same odds of success as the movie industry's campaign against DVD-unlocking software. Wouldn't Apple rather keep its programmers occupied with features and tools that customers actually want?

The iPhone's closed nature concerned me when I first reviewed it, and it bothers me even more now. This device is a breakthrough in many ways, but in others it's starting to look no better than any other cell phone. Apple should do better than this.