You just bought a new MacBook Pro. You can't wait to pull it out of the box and sync it with your shiny new iPhone. Perhaps you travel abroad a lot, and you can't afford to pay AT&T's insane international roaming rates (Who can?). Or perhaps you have an application that Apple won't provide you through its App Store but that can be installed on a jailbroken phone.
If you have a new MacBook, you may be out of luck. If you have Windows, however, you should be fine. The irony is stifling.
Gizmodo is reporting that Apple has found a novel way to prevent the jailbreaking of its iPhones, one that no cracking of the iPhone firmware is going to fix. This time, Apple apparently is using a custom build of iTunes in the newest MacBook line to stymie attempts to jailbreak iPhones:
The new aluminum MacBooks...don't seem to be able to recognize an iPhone or iPod Touch when it is booted into DFU mode, a vital requirement for jailbreaking...Though the hardware is where one sees the most conspicuous changes in the new MacBook, this problem most likely stems from a subtle software modification. It's not clear what specifically changed, but a new build of iTunes, unique to the new MacBooks, seems like a likely culprit.
In this iPhone cat-and-mouse game, Apple seems to be turning to ever more ingenious methods to keep cash rolling in the door. Customers? Well, their best bet for circumventing Apple's wily ways is to jailbreak the iPhone using Windows-based iTunes.
How ironic (and sad) is that? The more we buy into Apple, the less freedom. Sounds like Microsoft, doesn't it? This time, however, it's worse, because Apple also controls the hardware.
Within hours of Nullriver releasing its NetShare application through Apple's iTunes Store, Apple apparently put the kabosh on the application, which allows users to turn the iPhone into a modem. Users can, of course, still use the application on a jailbroken iPhone, if they can find it. Nullriver doesn't have the application available for download from its website.
Why bother? Though it could be argued that this may be AT&T protecting bandwidth on its new 3G network, I've got to think the prohibition is coming from Apple, as it had the same policy for the original iPhone. Given how easy it is to set up phones-as-modems on AT&T's slower network, and AT&T's acceptance of the practice, why not the iPhone/iPhone 3G, too?
Regardless of the reason, this sort of effort to control is simply going to drive more people to jailbreak their phones and buy fewer applications directly from Apple. When you can get many applications for free outside Apple's App Store, why bother paying?
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