Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 13th Feb 2009 20:25 UTC, submitted by Moulinneuf
Apple The iPhone, Apple's current cash cow and best selling cellular phone in the United States, is a completely closed phone in that only applications from the App Store can be installed on the phone. However, by jailbreaking the iPhone you can install applications from whatever source you want, which might be desirable if an application you want isn't allowed into the App Store by Apple. The Cupertino company has never had an official stance on jailbeaking, but this has now changed: according to them, it's a breach of copyright.
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RE: Perspective
by marbiol on Sat 14th Feb 2009 11:33 UTC in reply to "Perspective"
marbiol
Member since:
2006-01-20

As elsewhere said, there's no way that Apple would remain silent if an explicit request to allow jailbreaking was requested. They've remained silent on it until now presumably as it's been a primarily non-profit core of developers working on the project (ignoring that some developers have used jailbroken phones as a way to get their paid apps on). In the same way, they (from a legal standpoint), allowed a community of developers to hack OS X on to commodity hardware, but are now embroiled in litigation with Psystar for directly profiting from the same process.

Apple could afford to allow this to happen as long as it was low key and most importantly unofficial, but they cannot allow the possibility of a formal legal opening to any profit-making companies to provide hacked versions of their software. I don't see this as an 'Apple is now big-corporate evil' shift, it's merely a necessary response to protect their code (ie. copyright and IP), prevent brand dilution and also legal threats to themselves from various partners.

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