On Monday Apple unveiled the iPhone 3G. Among its little spoken-of features are that, in order to provide a semblance of background multitasking, while preserving battery life, its new firmware will use special Apple Push Notification server(s) to maintain/ wake up dormant user processes as need arises (the exact functionality of that is under NDA, to which I am not privy, so I may be off the mark here). That alone worries Zibri, the author of a major iPhone unlocking software ZIPhone:
"What can seem a nice feature is something really dangerous. [...] forcing everything to pass thru the Apple Push Notification Server is something Orwell already imagined.
http://i30.tinypic.com/345ebdt.jpg
Think about all your data flowing through Apple and you will start to get the big picture. [...] With the iPhone, Apple is showing they want to keep control of everything. I hope the industry will take a different path and won't emulate them. Every day I'm getting more interested in google android and more open softwares/ firmwares."
http://www.ziphone.org/2008/06/im-worried.html#1806620790861435791
[ Where are the nice Android handsets when we need them rhetorical question] |
How is this any different from RIM and the BlackBerry?
Absolutely everything that you do passes through their servers on both BES and BIS. They have done things this way for as long as there have been BlackBerries in the wild.
Now suddenly that Apple is doing it the author's "hope the industry will take a different path", to where? The RIM way?
This type of system has been in place for a very, very long time. |
Never the less, up to July 11th, when the handset will appear in stores in 22 countries, there is no Apple presence between parties, only that of wireless carrier. I think Zibri is worried mostly that, by in effect monitoring the dataflow, Apple will be able to detect jailbroken, unauthorized iPhones. Detect and/or sever the connection, and/or remotely wipe it (while looking askance at its own EULA ;-))
Yes, RIM could do that too, and probably doesn't. On the other hand I have yet to hear of any sizeable community of Blackberry-firmware hackers. |
