iPhones not bricked by Apple, but by bad code?

Seems like the rush to judgment against Apple for bricking hacked iPhones with the latest iTunes update may have been premature and, well, completely inaccurate.

Some now disenchanted former members of the iPhone Dev Team (the team that created the hacks that unlocked the iPhone in the first place) are saying:

AnySIM and iUnlock were patched to make a routine exit with 0 (successful) to unlock the phone. Only problem was that that routine is NOT only called by NCK but rather by about six routines total. The other five didn't expect 00 to be there and were therefore spammed across your BB during upgrade. In short, the wrong bytes were patched and now you're all bricked. No, it wasn't Apple's fault. Rather than figure out how to fix this themselves, the iPhone Dev Team would rather work on jailbreaking the new 1.1.1 and keep accepting your donations. We want this fixed -- we want them to take responsibility for their bunk code.

Unfortunately if you want something done you've got to do it yourself. That's why we're here. We've got the 1.1.1 jailbreak and are actively trying to reverse the Dev Team's damage.

Hat tip: Finis Price, who summarizes the jargon thusly: "it means the original team's poor programming created the broken iPhones when Apple's 1.1.1 upgrade was installed and not Apple's upgrade itself. It also means there is hope for any[one] out there who unlocked his iPhone and cannot use it. ... So all of those 3rd party applications you previously had on your hacked iPhone are about to come back."

While I certainly understand that folks may want to use an iPhone on some other non-AT&T network, I don't have a lot of sympathy for folks who hacked their iPhones who might have bricks now.  The iPhone End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) seems to pretty clearly prohibit that kind of activity.  And, you signed on for it, so suck it up.

[NOTE: Second-to-last paragraph added by Brendan.]

Comments

[JO]

The iPhone End User Licensing Agreement (EULA)

Whatever. How many of those EULAs have you even read??? They contain language so servere and restrictive that no sane person should ever install or use the product. We still do anyway.

For the record: I don't have an iPhone, don't want one, don't really care about them. EULAs on the other hand are the devil's handiwork.

[ndlaw2006]

JO -- they may be the devil's handiwork, but if I dropped $600 on an effing cell phone that I knew wouldn't work with my service provider, I think I'd read the fine print.

[David K.]

JO, while that may be true of many EULA's, Apple has been pretty clear in every public statement about the fact that the iPhone was not designed (so far) to be an open platform. They in fact included a very visible warning with the latest patch that told you if you had hacked your phone and installed this update you could be in for BIG trouble. I have no problem with people who want to tinker with their purchased products, but no sympathy for them if they break it and the company says "sorry your out of luck".

Is it so very hard to run a checksum on the code you're going to be replacing to see if it is still the code that can be replaced without ruining the phone, and refuse to run the update if it's not? Obviously not, and obviously Apple couldn't be troubled to do it. Why bother, when they have so many people willing to make endless excuses for them and keep buying their stuff?

[Brendan Loy]

Anon @ 2:32, please forgive my ignorance of the techie jargon, because it's entirely possible I'm misunderstanding something here... but when you talk about "the code you're going to be replacing," are you referring to the unauthorized code that had been inserted by the original iPhone Dev Team hackers? That is, are you suggesting that Apple was somehow obligated to check its updated, official code against the unofficial, unauthorized (indeed, explicitly forbidden) hacked code that had been downloaded onto some iPhones? I'm no blind fanboy -- I was prepared to pretty well crucify Apple if they had deliberately bricked their own phones -- but I don't think it's reasonable to suggest that they're under some sort of affirmative obligation to "checksum" their lines of code against flawed lines of hacked code created by someone else despite Apple's explicit warnings to the contrary.

But as I said, maybe I'm missing something here.

[David K.]

There was an article on Daring Fireball recently (still trying to find it) that explained in good technical but understandable terms how the method used to hack the phones basically set them up for bricking. Basically it causes the bios to panic because of changes that were made and it just doesn't have a clue what to do next because the state its in doesn't match any of the states it SHOULD be in.

Just to be clear, using iPhone on another network is only one reason to hack the iPhone. Another, much more common reason is to open up the ability run 3rd party apps. These 3rd party apps fill the functionality gaps that are left by iPhone's native applications.

[Finis Price]

Hacks aren't what caused the bricking of the iPhone however, only unlocking. If you hacked your iPhone, as we did here at TechnoEsq, all you had to do was restore it to factory settings, install the firmware upgrade and no problems.

Those who had problems obviously hadn't dealt with hacks before and tried to upgrade with the hacks installed...ALWAYS a big no no.