In article <slrnh4nck5.c30.jon+usenet@snowy.squish.net>, Jon Ribbens
<jon+usenet@unequivocal.co.uk> wrote:

> > other devices can certainly access the music but apple could make it
> > very difficult to access the itunes library which contains playlists,
> > song ratings, etc.
>
> They could, but they don't - it seems to be a simple XML file
> "iTunes Music Library.xml". In fact, not only do they not try and
> hide this information - they deliberately make it easy to get at!

right now it's easy, but if they really wanted to shut people down,
they could encrypt it, for example

> >> Ah, OK, I haven't tried jailbreaking my phone. I just haven't heard of
> >> any complaints from jailbreak users due to Apple going out of their
> >> way to stop them. At the very least, for example, when updating the
> >> iPhone OS iTunes could detect the jailbreak and refuse to update
> >> ("phone in non-standard state, warranty voided, cannot upgrade").
> >
> > but you could put the device into recovery mode and install a stock
> > firmware, so it's not worth bothering to do that.
>
> Only because Apple let you. They could have made it so that the
> "recovery mode" could be disabled, if they'd wanted to.

right, but there's no point in disabling a normal firmware upgrade
unless you also disable the recovery mode, and that would make fixing
them harder. updates do reset the jailbreak, and with the 3gs, they've
made some changes that might potentially affect the ability to
jailbreak in the future. it would not surprise me at all that one day
you won't be able to jailbreak right away, if at all.

> >> With other phones, unlocking them was always a rather nervous affair
> >> as there was the possibility of bricking the phone or causing some
> >> other hard-to-undo problem, but with the iPhone as far as I'm aware it
> >> doesn't matter what you do, you can always just reset and restore from
> >> backup. It practically encourages hacking! ;-)
> >
> > early unlock attempts did sometimes brick the phones,
>
> Do you mean "brick" as in it simply made the phone not work anymore
> until you wiped it and restored it, or do you really mean the proper
> meaning of the word, i.e. it became permanently unusable unless
> returned to the manufacturer (or similar)?

some of the phones could be fixed with a restore but apple did warn
that the possibility existed that unlocking could cause 'irreparable
damage'. i don't know how many phones actually were bricked (any
definition), but early unlock attempts were rather buggy. later unlock
schemes were not as fragile.

<http://www.macworld.com/article/60181/2007/09/iphoneunlock.html>