iPhone iNsecurities…
When Steve Jobs claimed that there would not be an iPhone SDK in early 2007, citing security as the main reason behind Apple’s decision, a considerable part of the IT press, bloggers, and engineers dismissed his claims as ludicrous. After all, this was 2007, and Apple had Mac OS X, a relatively secure OS and had demonstrated a policy of aggressively fixing bugs in its operating system and application software in recent years. Then it became known that the iPhone software was running with superuser privileges on the device, the iPhone was very quickly hacked into and Jobs announced an upcoming SDK for February 2008. With 1.2 million iPhones sold in three months, and about 250,000 of them already ‘unlocked’, this is starting to look like a security nightmare. One would think that Apple knew better…
I don’t believe that the locking effort was big enoug to avoid this. I believe that Apple knew that this would happen and although apparently dislike it, it did not realy wanted to avoid this. Because an unlocked iPhone is “illegal” (nobody knows what apple aggred and signed with AT&T in their contract) but on the other hand is a device with real potential. Of course as your already wrote in a previous article, the N810 made Apple’s decision to release an SDK a one-way street. But then again, that’s better for us.
I’ve heard that the Sony PS2 and PS1 were cracked by Sony and not by hackers. Sony, wanted to win more market share, by providing “cheap games” to it’s users.
You’ve completely missed the point of the post, atma. This is all about Jobs citing security as the reason behind Apple’s decision to keep the iPhone closed and at the same time having all application software on the device run as root, which is — to put it mildly — utterly stupid, dangerous and, last but not least, somewhat hypocritical on behalf of Apple.
Regarding Sony, I think this is nonsense. If Sony wants to provide cheap games, Sony makes a deal with a small game developer.
Uh, I think you completely missed atma’s point re: Sony.
He’s saying that Sony supposedly ‘leaked’ hacks of the PS1 and PS2, which allowed for the use of pirated games, so that low-income or low-willingness-to-pay consumers would have a use for the console despite high prevailing prices for its games.
Which might make sense now, but didn’t at all when it was first introduced, as these consoles make a loss (with the exception of the Wii) for quite a while, and the whole point is that the manufacturer makes money off the games.
Errr no I didn’t. Yet you’re right, my comment was confusing. If Sony wants to, they can control the prices for the games on the PS. They always could. When PS1 came out, a large part of the games were either developed or distributed by Sony. The same thing more or less happened with PS2 in 2000. The game development industry is very competitive and Sony more or less cut its own niche from it. It had both the money and the clout that would allow it to market high quality games cheaper. It didn’t have the will. I remember than when PS1 came out the title prices were much higher than the competition. This was a conscious decision by Sony. Even at the beginning. Leaking ‘hacks’ to allow for game copying would be stupid and somewhat pointless, given that both consoles dominated the market relatively soon after their release. Now with the PS3, I don’t know. I might be willing to accept something like this, but a) atma’s comment referred to PS1 and 2, b) it would be a sign of desperation, not a sane marketing move. Anyway that’s getting a bit off-topic.
Actually it’s called price discrimination. Think first class/economy. It could very well make tons of sense, but as I said, i doubt it happened in that case.
Heh, I think you’re exaggerating here Kosti. It’s not price discrimination, and it definitely isn’t anything like First class/economy. If anything, it’d be something like passenger/stowaway. Nevertheless, one thing’s for sure: Sony wouldn’t do this for the reasons I explained above. It’d go against their corporate culture/image and makes no sense given their pricing strategy. You, of all people, should know this, given the GBs of rants at spitaki :D