Hacker News Reader

Comment by htsh | Hacker News Reader

I would think that a more proper boycott of Apple's policy in this case would be to jailbreak the iphone. This way, you're boycotting the app store, not the phone itself.

View on HN

That will really stick it to them--buy their product, pay them cash every month for service, provide advertising by letting people see you use an iPhone, but screw them over by not buying apps.

Its all about the developers (as Ballmer says). You'd be doing your part to channel effort away from this awful system into a third party that does not censor or cripple your hardware's functionality:

Check out this bit from Slashdot yesterday:

"The 4-month-old Cydia store is yielding notably higher sales for a few application developers than Apple's AppStore, and is reportedly running on over 4 million Apple iPhone devices, with perhaps 350,000 connected at any one time. In this store, developers are distributing applications they've written that push the limits of Apple's normal AppStore policies, with software to add file downloads to Safari, trick applications into thinking they're on Wi-Fi (for VoIP), and enhance other types functionality. You'll also find the popular Google Voice application, which was recently rejected by Apple."--http://bit.ly/199gAh

You'll do more to awaken Apple by not using their device at all. Not only is that -1 for them, it's +1 for one of their competitors. Not using the app store deprives them of very little money (even if you spend $100 at the app store they are netting just $30). Not using the device at all is a loss of thousands of dollars (partly AT&T, partly Apple, but both companies will take notice very quickly if people start dropping like flies).

Agreed, but I'd still think jailbroken is the way to go for the many that are stuck in contracts and can't really afford the $200 to break early.

You'll be able to sell your iPhone for more than $200 and will save money every month if you go to a competitor, so money shouldn't be a problem.

It deprives the developers. If developers see the App Store as less desirable, that will put real pressure on Apple to change its ways. The gold rush has to end.

But people enjoy official support and going through the risk of a broken phone is just too much

My friends who have allegedly done this report that restoring the phone to a point where it can get officially serviced has not been a problem. One has allegedly done so multiple times.

And I think if its the type of problem such that you can't even restore it to factory, they're not going to be able to tell either when they fix or replace it.

Everybody was boycotting the (non-existent) app store for the first year of the iPhone's existence. I don't think Steve Jobs was upset about this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com