The data anarchist in me is very excited about how quickly and easily the iPhone 4 has been hacked to create what seems like an easy, elegant jailbreak process.

And the fact that U.S. government regulators have now said that it’s not illegal to jailbreak your phone is an exciting precedent. Until the tech manufacturers send a billion dollars to legislators to pass some new, even-more-terrifying version of the DMCA, with no such grey areas.

I’m not an iPhone user (on political grounds; my prejudice is towards open-source operating systems and the less restrictive app-market to be found in Android), so I actually have no idea whether this is a big deal or not. And Apple fanboys and fangirls seem to really dig Apple’s limitations. But my gut is to think that all that restrictive software adds up to a cumulatively less-friendly user experience. My partner had to buy an iPod touch for some of his student medical textbooks, and he finds the thing incredibly frustrating and illogical. He refers to it as the iShit.

I’m not anti-Apple. I think their computers offer a robust alternative to Windows hegemony (although by no means the ONLY alternative!). But for me, the iPhone and the iPod represent a fundamentally flawed model of the relationships between user and hardware and software.

And I know it’s gleefully illogical to make the leap from “one piece of hardware has been hacked” to “THE FOUNDATIONS OF APPLE’S EMPIRE ARE COLLAPSING!!”… and I know there will always be a whole lot of folks who will pay a lot of money for tech that’s proprietary, elitist, expensive, and has instant recognition from the people around them every time they whip them out. But I do believe that market pressures and the glorious expansion of hacker culture will ultimately threaten all DRM/proprietary/closed software systems…

Or, maybe, this will only make Apple stronger. Maybe folks like me who hate closed systems will be more willing to spend the money because it’s so easy to jailbreak the thing. Isn’t that the funny/shitty thing about big capital? Every obstacle and problem gets turned into an opportunity to extend market share/hegemony/global supremacy.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 4th, 2010 at 7:11 am and is filed under The Poetry of Technology, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.