Technology, Culture, Commentary on the Internet Revolution

Apple Bricks Unlocked iPhones. LOL @ Fanboys.

by Mike Abundo on September 28th, 2007

As always, Steve Jobs doesn’t like you fiddling with your (his?) stuff. With its latest iPhone update (1.1.1), Apple makes good on its threat to brick SIM-unlocked iPhones. Upon restart after the update, SIM-unlocked iPhone users are greeted with this message: “Insert an unlocked and valid SIM to activate iPhone.” Even reinserting the AT&T SIM card doesn’t revive the phone. Even if you didn’t SIM-unlock the phone, all third-party apps are wiped out.

As much as I love the iPhone’s browser (now replicable on many other phones through Opera Mini), I am so glad I didn’t buy one of these overpriced overhyped locked-down GPRS bricks. People who unlocked their iPhones are probably the same tech-savvy peer reviewers who lined up on launch day to overpay $600 for them. Watch their collective compounded rage explode in the next few hours. I can’t wait to hear John C. Dvorak chide Leo Laporte on this in the next TWiT. Let’s hear the oh-so-charismatic Steve Jobs talk his way out of this one.

Yes, fanboys, Apple is no longer that pair of hippies named Steve who got their start cracking AT&T. They’re now a wannabe monopoly brutally protecting their cut of AT&T iPhone service fees — and they’re not above screwing over the Cult of the Mac to do it. The iPhone just went from the sexiest gadget ever to the next Newton — in under three months.

As for me, I’ll just sit back, laugh out loud as I read all the betrayed fanboys’ angry blog posts in the wonderfully cross-platform Opera Mini, and wait for the blissfully open OEM Gphone.

(Image via Miles Evans.)

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POSTED IN: Apple, Hardware, Mobile