Apple's War Against Jailbreaking Now Makes Perfect Sense 321
An anonymous reader writes "Apple has always been extremely anti jailbreaking, but it might now have a good reason to plug up the exploits. As Hardware 2.0 argues, Apple's new iOS 7 Activation Lock anti-theft mechanism which renders stolen handsets useless (even after wiping) unless the owner's Apple ID is entered relies on having a secure, locked-down OS. Are the days of jailbreaking iOS coming to a close?" I can see a whole new variety of phone-based ransom-ware based on this capability, too.
It's always made sense (Score:5, Informative)
They want to prevent anyone else from starting an app store in competition with theirs.
Re:IMEI (Score:2, Informative)
1) Only enforced by a few countries in this world
2) Can be easily bypassed even in those countries
3) Even in the countries that enforce it, not all phones that are stolen are in fact blocked at all.. They'll lose money if they do...
I speak from personal experience working in a telecoms company that rhymes with JIM that sold their phones through 2 phone providers in UK that rhyme with Citrus sinensis and Carbon Dioxide respectively, and after checking the devices that customers report as stolen directly to them providers - by personal DB access and even phoning their customer service pretending to buy these phones from eBay and wanting to check their IMEI's - even after a year, can see first hand that they are not only still unblocked but in use by customers within UK with the same mentioned providers and unmodified IMEI numbers.
That is a Lie (Score:4, Informative)
Apple's view towards jailbreaking can likely be summed up thus: Anyone is free to do whatever they want with their devices. Just don't expect support for unsupported things if it breaks. Found a security exploit in the OS? Thanks, we'll fix that right up.
Apples view is your a criminal breaking DMCA http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2008/responses/apple-inc-31.pdf [copyright.gov]