Beyond the vaguely amusing "Let's stick it to Apple!" shtick that's been going on for a while, what the fuck is the point of this?

Oh no! Some kid did stupid shit and posted it online! Huzzah?

What next? Are we gonna go out and watch as the kids giggle as they smoke pot outside the police department?

What is even more fun is that Apple users praise this as something that allows them to jailbreak their phone. The "jailbreak" is a PDF exploit that roots your whole phone. I would be a little bit worried if someone could completely take over my phone if I just visited a random website. Apple products don't have exploits or malware, huh? Of course Apple just keeps telling their users they are secure. It's a disaster waiting to happen.

Wrong? Probably. Infantile? Absolutely. Legal? Absolutely not. It's called vandalism which is still illegal.

Destruction? He was improving it!

What is even more fun is that Apple users praise this as something that allows them to jailbreak their phone. The "jailbreak" is a PDF exploit that roots your whole phone. I would be a little bit worried if someone could completely take over my phone if I just visited a random website. Apple products don't have exploits or malware, huh? Of course Apple just keeps telling their users they are secure. It's a disaster waiting to happen.

Well, you should have bought a blackberry if you were concerned about your data. Instead, fanbois decided to give all their data to big brother Steve.

Note that the United Arab Emirates & Saudi Arabia aren't concerned about iphones, android or nokia.

If you care about the security of your data, there is only one choice.

That's because those phones route their data through the carrier. RIM's phones route it through RIM's internal servers.

Nothing is stopping you from sending out encrypted data on the iPhone/Android/Nokia phones.

What is even more fun is that Apple users praise this as something that allows them to jailbreak their phone.

Indeed. On a related note, I'm reminded of two standard arguments:

* "There's no viruses/malware on the Iphone. That only applies to people who have jailbroken their phones. They deserve what they get."

* "What do you mean I can't do [insert basic task] on an Iphone? Of course it can, you just have to jailbreak it." (Apple, it Just Works - you Just have to jailbreak it to get it to Work.)

...doesn't mean it's necessarily the right thing to do.

He was obviously occupied, and needed no help. If he wanted to talk to a member of staff, he had only to look up.

Nothing personal, just an off-topic rant.

Modifying something without the owners consent is vandalism. I can modify your car with a brick or with a new engine. You may dislike both of those options as your old engine got you 40mpg while the new one is so much more awesome (your opinion) at 500hp and 15mpg (yay for car analogies!).

Same thing is happening here. Apple wants things a certain way and it makes no difference what your (or anybodies besides Apple's) opinion is about what is being done to the phone. No matter how much "better" _you_ think it is, it is theirs and they don't want you mucking with it in that way. I'm no Apple fan, far from it, but even I can see this isn't something you want to make a habit out of as the police will eventually make their presence known when Apple catches on.

(I know you're trying to be funny and not entirely serious, but I thought it still needed to be said).

Actually, as an iPhone owner, I hope, no, expect apple to patch this in the next release. No one (sane) claims apple products don't have exploits or malware... Doesn't stop them being desirable products.

The fact that you allow USB devices to be connected to your display machines is, well shocking really.

Its pretty easy to disable USB devices on Windows. I've had to do it for all sorts of kiosk and public use machines. You should be glad whoever is doing management there doesn't know what they are doing. If it were me, someone's job would be on the line if a display machine was configured to allow someone to plug in a USB device and copy god knows what onto the machine.

True, but that won't stop the foaming-at-the-mouth hatebois from setting up & knocking over that straw man ad nauseum.

That's not what vandalism is. Vandalism is (quoting wikipedia because they summarize it rather succinctly) "private citizens commit vandalism when they willfully damage or deface the property of others or the commons."

You don't think that jailbreaking an Apple store display device if vandalism? Fine - I'll issue a challenge to you then. Put your money where your mouth is. Go get a cop, go into an Apple store, get the manager, tell them both what you're about to do and then jailbreak one of their devices. If the store manager doesn't have the cop arrest you for vandalism, then you're right and I will apologize for erroneously calling it vandalism.

I bet you won't accept the challenge, however, because you know you'll get arrested. Because it's a pretty clear-cut case of a private citizen willfully damaging or defacing the property of another. But, hey, feel free to prove me wrong.

So when I see your car parked with the window open, I'll be happy toss stuff into it--after all, I'm adding features to it. And when I pass your house, I'll try the door knob. If it's unlocked, then I'll come in and rearrange things to make them more efficient and I'll re-paint several rooms, adding to the aesthetic.

agreed. slashdot is just a souped up rss reader that thinks it somehow adds value. laughable isn't it.

You missed a bit:

"There's no viruses/malware on the Iphone. That only applies to people who have jailbroken their phones by running the viruses/malware that's available on the iphone"

But hey, at least children can't run educational intro-to-programming software on it.

There is a lot of stuff of questionable quality available but a few very useful tools or modifications not available otherwise. Add to that the carrier unlock possibility, I think you strongly under evaluate the importance of this procedure. You may also want to be more restrictive on the modification you install. If you start installing all the available modifications that look interesting on any OS, you will have stability issues.

If you want to play outside of Apple's "Eden", you'll have to treat and understand your device as a computer running a Unix based OS... not a cellphone on which you install apps.

Also, Cydia is mostly a graphical front end for the Debian package manager with a repository browser. You can install your packages yourself using command line. You can also add your own sources to Cydia. Not sure I understand where the problem lies regarding the jailbreak process installing Cydia. What other mechanism do you expect to install packages once the device is jailbroken?

And blaming your poor user experience on open source or open devices, that's just wrong.

I think most people only go to the apple store to play with the hardware anyway. I know people who do that as a form of entertainment.

Huh? Did you miss the whole "I'm a Mac / I'm a PC" line of commercials?

Well, this is apple.slashdot.org so everybody has taken sides. You are either a suckup or a hater here.