Until Friday morning, Sadun had a contract with the publishing firm Addison-Wesley to write a book about creating applications for the iPhone. After the news of Apple’s crackdown spread, she received a note from her editor that suggested that they think of a different topic.
It was not unexpected that Apple would try to stop people from unlocking the phones, as this threatened to cause problems for AT&T, Apple’s exclusive United States partner for the iPhone.
"I don’t blame them for fighting the unlocks," said Brian Lam, editor of Gizmodo, a blog devoted to gadgets. "They are trying to make money, as a business. I get that."
Still, he said, that disabling someone’s phone, "instead of just relocking it and to wipe out the apps, it seems like Apple is going way too far; I’d call it uncharacteristically evil."
In some cases, the apparent punishment for installing unapproved software was harsh. Ross Good, a student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, had added several programs, including one for instant messaging. After the upgrade, the phone went into a semifrozen state.
When Good called Apple, the reception was cool. "They said I put third-party software on my phone, and so it was my fault no matter what."
Joel Robison, a systems network engineer near Seattle, said his phone stopped working immediately after he installed the upgrade. He said that when he took it to an Apple store, he was accused of having unlocked the phone. But he said that with the exception of one aborted attempt to install a piece of outside software, he had made no modifications to the phone.
"Their accusation was very damaging to my opinion of Apple’s service," Robison said.
J. Noah Funderburg, an assistant dean at the University of Alabama School of Law in Tuscaloosa and a longtime Mac user, had little sympathy for iPhone hot-rodders.
"Anyone who hacks must know that they are taking certain risks," Funderburg said. "If they aren’t willing to assume the risks upfront--like a brick iPhone--then maybe they should not hack the device.
"We have a free marketplace," he said. "Buy a product, including using it on the terms accompanying the purchase, or don’t buy it. And learn to live with not always getting everything you want."
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