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Comment by jammur | Hacker News Reader

As another person commented, it may be your hardware, but it's not your OS. You license the right to use iOS, but you don't own it. The app distribution channel is tied to the OS, not the device. If you want to install a different firmware on the device, and can figure out how to do it, there's nothing Apple can do about that.

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Have EULAs been upheld in court? The idea that I need special permission to use software that I've purchased seems a bit ridiculous. Kind of like a EULA on a car that restricts my driving to Ford toll roads.

You didn't purchase the software. You purchased a license to use it, which included agreeing to Apple's terms. To use your car analogy, it would be more like renting a car, and the rental company saying you have to stay in your state/province/country/etc., which is perfectly legal and pretty standard. You didn't buy the car, but instead purchased the right to use it.

That's not true. Before you rent a car, you sign a long contract agreeing to all the various restrictions. When you buy software, you typically don't agree to anything until you run the software. At that point, you already own the software, and as far as I know, no court has held that you must abide by the license in order to use the software.

That's correct, when you run the software, you agree to the license. But before that, you still don't own the software. At no point do you ever own the software. You simply pay for a license to use it. This is the same with OSX, Windows 7, etc.

You are correct that consumer EULAs haven't really been tested in court, but that is irrelevant to this discussion. This isn't about the EULA. Apple is not stopping you from putting a third party app store on the device. They are stopping you from putting a third party app store on the stock iOS. If you jailbreak, then you can put Cydia on it.

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