How Apple is Breaking The Law With The App Store
whydoeseverythingsuck.com
whydoeseverythingsuck.com
"Warrantors cannot require that only branded parts be used with the product in order to retain the warranty.[2] This is commonly referred to as the "tie-in sales" provisions[3], and is frequently mentioned in the context of third-party computer parts, such as memory and hard drives."
Another tack: I am thinking of writing an App which would enable DRM for the user (as opposed to DRM against the user) so that people could share pictures and documents, and be assured that the shared copy is erased at a certain point in time and never present in an unencrypted form, except in RAM at the time the data is being used. This would work fine on non-jailbroken iPads. (Not strong enough for espoinage work, but enough to establish a CYA audit trail with corporate documents with an NDA.) Unfortunately, there can be no expectation of this working for jailbroken devices.
(I'm also going to put in the FAQ, that this is not a safe way to share pictures and assure they won't wind up on the Internet. The iPad's screen is high resolution and people can just photograph it.)
The flash RAM and the li-ion battery can actually be physically harmed by incorrectly functioning software!
Long ago, there was a computer that had its databus wired up in such a way that reading from a '0' location in the ROM eventually fried the processor. They saved on a single buffer chip that would have avoided this and the design was 'fixed' in the next release.
Software should not ever be able to 'damage' hardware beyond slightly accelerated wear, such as when ordering a harddrive to repeatedly seek across the whole drive and so on. Tricks like that should not result in stuff burning up or dying, if it does that is just bad design.
The wear on the flash ram is just whatever it would be if you packed that number of writes in to a much longer amount of time and the li-ion battery discharge would simply mean that you get the same number of cycles but over a shorter life-span.
That doesn't count as 'physical harm', after all, then normal use also causes 'physical harm', it just takes longer.
The reason that happened was because they didn't have a 'safe range' on the frequency that drove the CRT, driving it too slow would burn up one of the coils in the high voltage circuitry that drives the coils to do the deflection.
Never monitors have been designed to shut down when presented with an out-of-range synch signal, and digital ones will display a message to that effect.
Hardware should be designed with software failure in mind, and in fact should survive being attacked by software deliberately written for the purpose of damaging the hardware.
Assuming the software is going to play 'nice' is assuming that there will be no bugs, that there never will be a successful exploit and so on.
1) I buy a macbook pro (covered under warranty, etc)
2) I install software that disables the fans
3) I update the firmware to disable the automatic shut-down when overheating (or move it so it only happens at an even higher temperature)
4) I run high-cpu software until the machine crashes
5) I repeatedly do this for months on end
I'm pretty sure that machine will be toast soon enough. Is it fair that I should then take it to Apple and ask for a new machine "because it's under warranty"?
Designing good hardware is hard, but it definitely can be done and a few ntcs and a crowbar are not going to break the bank.
You make a great point about why passively cooled systems are better though :)
Just my 2c.
Q: How many programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: It can't be done, it's a hardware problem.
The implication of the joke is that if anything is 'hardware' you are not supposed to be either able to 'fix' it or 'break' it using just software.
Hardware is taken as a 'given', no matter how crappy the software you run on it, no matter how malicious your intent, the hardware is supposed to survive.
If you decided to try all possible pieces of software you could possibly run on your machine by simply enumerating them (yes, that's going to take a while) then you should not have to do a full hardware integrity test after every run.
Most devices you can render into useful bricks if you mess up their software.
At least like this you have the option to go back to 'factory settings' (ie, a blank start) and you can expect to get your device back to the way it was when you bought it.
In fact, back in the day it was possible to damage your keyboard through software. That must have been fun. Not.
Leaving it in the sun where it gets really hot can cause hardware damage.
Sitting on your phone can cause hardware damage.
Leaving headphones plugged in and in your pocket causes hardware damage (learned that firsthand).
They still warranty all of that stuff, and they are far more likely to cause damage than the "this driver is so bad it actually fried my CPU" idea.
- Microsoft - Xbox and Xbox360 - Sony - PS1, PS2, PS3, and PSP - Nintendo - NES, SNES, GC, Wii, DS
Why should Apple be treated any differently than any game console manufacturer? Every one of those game console manufacturers void your warranty if you mod them. Every one of them restricts which development tools you can use to develop on them, and has very stringent application approval processes.
Why is it that Apple all of a sudden deserves special anti-trust attention? Is it because they developed a game console that also happens to be a phone? Or maybe it's because they developed the first phone that doesn't suck.
The way I understand it is this: Softmodding might not void your warranty, but it might as well, because if your hardware ever breaks and needs repair, you're not going to be able to "put it back the way it was" before taking it into the shop. So, you take it in, they fix your Xbox, boot it, see a hacked dashboard, and say "you modded it so we're going to bill you for the repair."
Software mistakes cannot always be fixed.
I love modding my computers, consoles, smartphones, and various electronic devices, but I do so full well knowing that if I fuck up, it's my fault and not Apple's.
Sure, an iPhone is usually recoverable, but if for some reason it isn't, I take full responsibility and don't expect Apple to provide me with another guinea pig free of charge.
If Microsoft and Sony were like Apple, you wouldn't have titles like Call of Duty on both platforms. Everything would have to have been created originally for one console, and one console only. Otherwise it wouldn't have been "originally" created for it.
Is that what we see in the console world? Of course not. Sometimes the console makers compete for exclusives, but they are exclusive because the company writing the game is doing it that way, not because the console makers are forcing them to.
Apple specifically tries to prevent that kind of cross platform thing from happening on the iPhone.
Now imagine if you took Call of Duty on PS3, and did a hacky port where you stubbed DirectX code for the PSGL calls, and used some common denominator between PS3's online service and XBox Live. I'd highly doubt Microsoft would let this go to market, given how poorly it'd perform. Now imagine if these ports were all automated by a third party layer.
In fact, I'm curious to see how many successful games out there use something like Unity to allow PS3/XBox/Wii ports without any code changes.
Oh wait, the baseband has a direct bearing on the functioning of the 3G or mobile telephony hardware. Hmmm. I guess we'd have to waive the hardware warranty on that part too for jailbreaks.
For example, if you "chip" your car and then blow a head gasket, they can justifiably argue that this was caused by running the engine at higher power. If the catalytic converter or the suspension breaks, they can't.
So if they can establish a case that the radio broke because the jailbroken software ran it at too high power or whatnot, then they might have a case. If it just fails, on the other hand, I don't think they can.
In the case of flash RAM or the battery: software can clearly break those.
I can get a Maemo (or MeGo) phone and there's a documented process to grant myself root privileges.
I get a warning that I may seriously bork the phone, but that doesn't void the warranty on the hardware.
What if you flash it with a new boot-up image, will they still honour the warranty then ?
Then again I don't need to pull such stunts in order to install (any) userland software on my phone.
To actually prove that the chipped ECU was the cause is still going to be pretty tricky though, but the catalytic converter is for this purpose still very much part of the engine.
The seat upholstery, the window glass, accessories and so on are likely to be unaffected, they are literally along for the ride, but almost every other part in the car, even including the suspension and the chassis would be operating at higher stress levels when you increase the engine power.
If the manufacturer pleads its case well they might be able to make that stick. If they sell the same model with a higher powered engine but all the rest of the drive components identical they're out of luck.
And while in principle you are correct about the suspension, suspension wear is not based on available power but on speed and road conditions. Since my warranty wasn't voided by driving in Boston (which has horrific road conditions compared to the Bay Area) or by speeding, it shouldn't based on increasing power either.
- If I mod a car such that it performs better, but violates emmissions and safety laws, is such a modification legal for street use? The law says no.
Similarly:
- If I mod the baseband firmware in my iPhone such that it lets me use it on other carriers, but isn't approved by the FCC and might cause interference with approved devices, is it legal to use it on the airwaves? The law also says no.
Also, flashing the baseband firmware on a radio could definitely cause permanent, irreversible damage. How can you legitimately expect any hardware vendor to honor a warranty after this?
Sometimes, just by putting a different antenna and hardware configuration on the same radio, you can cause interference, harmonics, etc, that were not present on a past model. This is why every new model of iPhone/iPad needs FCC approval before it can be sold to the public.
Telling the general public that they can load whatever firmware they want on their radio ignores the fact that these radios have highly complex software algorithms affecting frequency hopping, collision detection, etc. It would be like saying "anyone on our network can modify their Ethernet firmware" and then wondering why someone took down the entire LAN because their custom firmware did a broadcast storm.
According to Sherman's Act, restrain of trade is only illegal when it can serve to create or further a monopoly. You and I can agree to never deal with particular Joe Shmoe, but as long as Joe has plenty of other choices in his life it's ok.
The crucial point in defining monopoly is defining "the market". Apple is nowhere close to monopoly in cell phones, so it's not possible no nail them from restrain of trade in e.g. accessories using Sherman's act. Magnuson-Moss act is another story, though (the same act makes illegal for car manufacturer to void warranty if you use alien spare parts in repairing your car).
It gets a lot more interesting if you consider digital download music to be it's own market - a clear near-monopoly and any anti-competitive tactics will serve "to create or further a monopoly". Now would the court decide that "digital music download" is a separate market from "plain old music retailing"? This question is impossible to answer without litigation. Similarly, "application software for mobile phones" may or may not be a separate market from "plain old computer software". Apple is a near-monopoly in the first and a blip on the radar in the second. Another interesting area is "mobile internet access" - Apple is a near-monopoly in that "market" as well.
Under this definition, Apple is actually a monopoly (and they're not in the phone market, they're in the smartphone one). They lock me out of every process they take, and I'm their customer (and if a developer, a business customer).
EDIT: As a response to those who claim that the antitrust case should apply to Wii/Xbox/PS/etc (and I'm okay with that, but): iPhone/iPad are computers/devices that enable personal productivity, and it's a different story since different uses are involved.
EDIT: Consider instead of buying it (which involves choosing), that it was gifted to you.
In the UK the manufacturer's warranty is a nice bonus, but we have a legal right from the _retailer_ the item was bought from to a repair/replacement/refund.
If the act of you jailbreaking the phone caused it to stop functioning, you'd have no claim.
But if the issue is a hardware issue, and the phone happens to be jailbroken, the retailer would still have their obligations. You haven't damaged the hardware, it's broken, you have a right to a repair.
UK consumer law also dictates that any product you buy should last for a reasonable length of time, which can be up to 6 years. I think it'd be reasonable to expect luxury electronics to last several years.
So the 1 year warranty? Sure, Apple can give you it, but it's in addition to your consumer rights, which it can't change.
If jailbreaking didn't void your warranty would more people do it? I suspect not a huge amount more.
Also; while this is well argued it is essentially wrangling a legal point - this kind of thing ends up getting stuck in court for years being decided.
It would be exceptionally difficult to write software that manages to physically damage a hard drive.
The only thing I could think of would be constantly writing to the SSD, using up the write cycles, but that's a long shot too.
But by damage I meant all sorts of things - corrupted backups, viruses, inability to restore the phone. Etc.
1. Section 3.3.1 enforces monopoly in app development tools (GM won't allow parts made using CNC milling, only hand-milled parts)
2. App Store policies enforce monopoly over 175k+ apps/$1 billion+ iPhone App market (can only buy 3rd-party parts for your car at a GM dealership, and nowhere else)
3. Apple approval needed to get on devices (GM has to approve all parts before they go in your car)
4. Apple takes 30% of developer revenues (non-OEM part manufacturers have to pay GM to sell parts for your car)
5. Using a payment mechanism other than iTunes is prohibited - e.g. a free app that you pay for with paypal (can only use GMAC credit card to pay for your car parts)
6. Apple doesn't approve applications that compete with Apple's apps - "duplicate existing functionality" (can't put aftermarket rims on your car)
7. Installation of non-Apple-Approved software voids warranty (installing a 3rd-party part voids entire warranty)
(Many of these claims could, and should, apply equally to game console manufacturers. The homebrew scene just lacks a public profile like Adobe, a public enemy like Steve Jobs, and attorneys.)
Not sure if this is a valid legal heuristic, but as an exercise, imagine what would happen should each of these restrictions be lifted. Would there be many entrants into that market? Would innovation and value creation result? The answer is unequivocally yes.
I still don't see a legitimate reason why people want to hang on to their iPhones so badly, in light of this policy. Sure, the App Store has some good apps, but obviously they don't have everything wanted since everyone wants to jailbreak ...
This is problematic because if there were no fear of voiding warranty,
undoubtedly many customers would jailbreak their iPhone, There would be
alternate markets for iPhone software, and there would be a truly
competitive marketplace.
Nope, didn't think so.
Blame IP law, and blame the DMCA, but don't blame Apple for being diligent.