Comments on: Apple iPhone 3G: A Beautiful Jail

By: Linux on the iPhone! Why Should You Care?

Linux on the iPhone! Why Should You Care? — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 21:39:13 +0000

[...] and time again I expressed my disdain for Apple and their anti-competitive tactics by locking down the [...]

By: ????

???? — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:07:20 +0000

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By: spedoinkle

spedoinkle — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 05:21:42 +0000

what the hell are you prople doing?!?!?! there is an open source phone that ahniallates the iphone! go to openmoko.com and check it out.

By: Rami Taibah

Rami Taibah — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:48:29 +0000

@Keon and Faz, well mate not everybody could really break those shackles, not everybody has the technical ability. While Dell and other companies also follow such practices, none of them actually created products like Apple that make consumers salivate. I mean the iPhone seems to be the holy grail of phones. I always get responses like “you don’t have an iPhone?” or “how can you not like the iPhone or Apple”. They brainwashed people with their crap.

By: keon

keon — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 02:03:31 +0000

I’ll first note that I am typing this on an iPhone 3g.

Now that I’ve given that full disclosure on this, I think that you aren’t really thinking through all of your options here. I for one would never own. Computer that doesn’t have some shell, preferably bash or zsh and mind you the iphone is a computer which doesn’t have prompt accesible to the end user. So I took the matter into my own hands and hacked the shit out of it thank you iPhone dev team. Now I have gcc I have javac help I even have a python interpreter. Sure apple doesn’t support it, but I don’t care unless there’s a hardware failure in which case it won’t matter. Plus have you ever even tried to get dell support when you don’t run windows? Large computer companies will always chain down their best products, but it’s up to us, not them, to break the shackles.

By: Faz

Faz — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 16:41:36 +0000

Don’t get me wrong as some apple freak, who would start arguing without thinking.
However according to me, if you have internet and you are plugged in, you have an email, subscribe to a website. Its all being tracked. Every single government is power thirsty. They wanna control the people, rather than people controlling the government. Look at taxes, not necessarily a bad thing, but we pay them b’cuz they control the public.
If you have any cell phone and you’re in trouble. Call 911, tell them you don’t know where you are. They will say just stay where you are and we will come and get you. How come? becuase they can track you. They could track you a decade ago man.
As far as playing free content goes. Apple is a corporate company, with a soul purpose, to make money. Obviously they are not gonna let you play free content. Whats wrong with you.
Look at sony. Anything you buy of sony, you gotta get a whole new shit of sony products just to make it work.
Why do you think telecommunication companies lock the cell phones. So that you can only be with them, meaning “MAKE MORE MONEY”
Thats the world we live in, you can’t run away from it!!!!!!

By: Rami Taibah

Rami Taibah — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:21:06 +0000

Scott thank you for your comment.

While an average person isn’t concerned about this, they usually vent their frustration to their Linux savvy friends. I have got numerous calls since the inception of the iPod/iPhone on why can’t I play this file or can’t do this or that. They probably think they are doing something wrong, where in reality someone in Cupertino decided not to play this OGG or FLAC file. This shouldn’t be the case, it’s my damn hardware that I payed with my hard earned cash and I am entitled to play whatever I deem appropriate, especially if its an open format like OGG.

I for one had an old iPod and it worked beautifully on Linux and Amarok. However when it died, I decided to buy an iPod Touch without giving it much thought or research. Lo and behold, the touch has been locked down, and doesn’t work seamlessly like it’s previous model. How frustrating is that? Again it’s my hardware and I should be able to manage it with whatever OS I deem fit!

About the GPS thingy, yes other phones also can be used to track you down, I never owned a GPS phone, and I don’t know if one can disable it or not. But still it’s a privacy risk that people should be aware of nonetheless.

By: Scott

Scott — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:02:26 +0000

Those are such nice questions but the average person should not be concerned about such non-sense. Everybody has choices to buy any phone they want. If you are a criminal, do not buy a iPhone. However, most phones have GPS’s and the cops can track calls. You can turn off your GPS anytime. Reward a company like Apple for inventing something new or go and buy just a plain phone that 89% of the population uses. Paying a fee to sell software could be a real money maker. If you want to give it away free….go right ahead…give it to Microsoft and let them put it on Vista.

By: Rami Taibah

Rami Taibah — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:31:13 +0000

@Gerald: Fixed! Thanks

By: Gerald Squelart

Gerald Squelart — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:17:17 +0000

The 4th “question” is not a question…