Comments on: The Cult of the Mac

By: mac vs windows vs catholics vs protestants « Onwards and Forwards

mac vs windows vs catholics vs protestants « Onwards and Forwards — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 07:29:41 +0000

[...] can find the full transcript over at it.gen.nz » The Cult of the Mac, and at the end of it Colin Jackson quotes a chunk of Umberto Eco’s 1994 article The Holy War: [...]

By: Greenflame

Greenflame — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 05:25:54 +0000

The Cult of the Mac…

As a Protestant Mac user working part-time at a Catholic theological college where everyone uses Windows PCs I found last Thursday’s technology section on Radio New Zealand National : Nine to Noon (Thu, 25 October) fairly amusing.
You can find th…

By: colin

colin — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 05:57:14 +0000

Rumours are unsubstantiated, that's part of the definition of rumours. But it seems a pretty likely explanation for the locking - if I were an Apple shareholder I'd expect Apple to get some revenue from that. I'm hardly the only person to write this - check out http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9747031-7.html for instance - that makes it a rumour in my book. :-) As for the cat and mouse game - hear Steve's words on it:

By: WhiskyPriestSteve

WhiskyPriestSteve — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 23:21:25 +0000

“The rumour is that Apple, not satisfied with the big price of the phone, is taking a cut from all the calling that’s done on iPhone which is why they have locked it down. ”
Unsubstantiated rumour, you should have said, with absolutely no evidence to support it. And Apple has said it will sell unlocked iPhones in France in the new year — as French law requires.

“Various clever people – I don’t like the word hacker, but both senses of it suit quite well – have succeeded in unlocking the phone and people are getting to use it on other networks, like Vodafone’s. Apple hates this and keeps trying to shut down unlocked phones by pushing software updates which kill any that have been unlocked.”
Apple has put out one software update that broke all third party applications and temporarily shut down some unlocked iPhones.

“There’s a game of cat and mouse going on. That’s pretty hardnosed behaviour in my book.”
Yeah, right. One disabling update doesn’t sound like much of a game of cat and mouse to me, particularly not in the light of Steve Jobs’ announcement that a full iPhone SDK will be available in the new year.