Tonight, there's gonna be a (legal) jailbreak!

Overheard at a session of Dungeons and Dragons in the past week:
Guy 1: "Ok, can I take the voluptuous tavern maid to bed?"
Guy 2: "Wait, check for traps!"
(Guy 1 rolls a 17 on a trap check)
DM: "You find a chastity belt."
Guy 1: "Dammit!"
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It was announced yesterday that jailbreaking an iPhone is legal under federal copyright law.

And I bet Apple's pretty pissed.

If you aren't familiar with the term, jailbreaking is the act of hacking an iPhone to gain access to apps that aren't approved by Apple, through the underground appstore Cydia.  A similar practice can be used on video game consoles, or the iPhone, to play pirated games

Apple's discouraged the practice ever since someone thought of doing it, since the practice can undermine the closed system that Apple has laid down in the same format since 2007.  Of course, it hasn't been the best system:

Not Invented Here is property of Bill Barnes and Paul Southworth

Of course, if someone were to pirate apps using their jailbroken iPhones, authorities could take action against the perpetrators.  But, the act of jailbreaking is not considered a crime, and neither is the use of Cydia, as long as all developers get credit and/or money for their work.  The system is similar to the system in Canada with respect to BitTorrent: The act of torrenting isn't illegal, since it can be used for freeware.  Pirating is illegal, however.

While Apple can still take action against jailbreakers available to them with their business rights, such as denial of service or refusing warranties, people who jailbreak their iPhones cannot be legally charged.

Of course, Apple doesn't like this one bit.  They think that they're entitled to the regulation of their own system.  However, with all the attention Apple's getting now, you have to wonder how long it might take for them to seriously mess up.

Urghhh

Insomnia sucks.  True story.  Especially when you're looking for a job the next day.

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It's been a week since Apple announced their "fix" for the iPhone 4, in the latest development in what Apple has dubbed "antennagate" - a pretty appropriate name.  The reception for Apple's fix, as with the rest of the debacle, has been generally cool - at best.

Ever since the iPhone 4 came out, there have been complaints about the reception it gets.  Apple claims that only 0.55% of people phoned in complaining about this - some snarky critics shot back that the other 99.45% couldn't get reception.  What really tore it for Apple was when Consumer Reports magazine said that they couldn't recommend the iPhone 4 because of this problem.  So Stevie announced that they were giving everybody with an iPhone 4 free cases - or a full refund for people who still aren't happy.

Apple did what it had to do, true.  Consumer Reports did mention that you could get a reception fix through an iPhone case.  While some people praise the fix, many people comment that it isn't permanent.  Jobs didn't mention any work on getting a fix, and I can only assume that the phones being shipped up here to Canada are going to have the same problem.  There are some theories that phones are getting delayed to fix the problem, but I somewhat doubt it.  Apple is pretty notorious for being slow with updating their products.

At this point, I'm wondering if Apple would have even bothered with the cases if Consumer Reports didn't say anything.

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