5 ms·

Sounds a lot like the Magnuson-Moss act. From Wikipedia: "Warrantors cannot require that only branded parts be used with the product in order to retain the war

by lutorm 17y ago

Sounds a lot like the Magnuson-Moss act. From Wikipedia: "Warrantors cannot require that only branded parts be used with the product in order to retain the warranty.[2] This is commonly referred to as the "tie-in sales" provisions[3], and is frequently mentioned in the context of third-party computer parts, such as memory and hard drives."

stcredzero 17y ago
However, there are reasons outside of branding to require an unbroken iPhone 3.2 OS to be on the device. The OS is obviously necessary for the proper functioning of the iPad. Apple doesn't test the iPad with Cydia and various modifications available through jailbreaking. What's more, they are demonstrably less stable. I know this for a fact, because I have a jailbroken iPhone OS device. Another tack: I am thinking of writing an App which would enable DRM for the user (as opposed to DRM against the user) so that people could share pictures and documents, and be assured that the shared copy is erased at a certain point in time and never present in an unencrypted form, except in RAM at the time the data is being used. This would work fine on non-jailbroken iPads. (Not strong enough for espoinage work, but enough to establish a CYA audit trail with corporate documents with an NDA.) Unfortunately, there can be no expectation of this working for jailbroken devices. (I'm also going to put in the FAQ, that this is not a safe way to share pictures and assure they won't wind up on the Internet. The iPad's screen is high resolution and people can just photograph it.)
- lutorm 17y ago
  It's up to me as the owner to determine what "proper functioning" means. Clearly you can't ask Apple to fix it if it's crashing because it's jailbroken. But if the display fails, that's not reasonably caused by running another OS.
  - stcredzero 17y ago
    The parts I listed in another thread that I thought could be "broken" by software: the radio, flash RAM, and the battery. And the 1st one wouldn't be physically affected, but wouldn't work correctly. Everything else, AFAIK, Apple should honor the warranty on. The flash RAM and the li-ion battery can actually be physically harmed by incorrectly functioning software!
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      > The flash RAM and the li-ion battery can actually be physically harmed by incorrectly functioning software! Long ago, there was a computer that had its databus wired up in such a way that reading from a '0' location in the ROM eventually fried the processor. They saved on a single buffer chip that would have avoided this and the design was 'fixed' in the next release. Software should not ever be able to 'damage' hardware beyond slightly accelerated wear, such as when ordering a harddrive to repeatedly seek across the whole drive and so on. Tricks like that should not result in stuff burning up or dying, if it does that is just bad design. The wear on the flash ram is just whatever it would be if you packed that number of writes in to a much longer amount of time and the li-ion battery discharge would simply mean that you get the same number of cycles but over a shorter life-span. That doesn't count as 'physical harm', after all, then normal use also causes 'physical harm', it just takes longer.
      - protomyth 17y ago
        If your old enough, you remember software that could damage the monitor on the IBM PC.
        jacquesm 17y ago
        Yes, another nice example of bad hardware design. The reason that happened was because they didn't have a 'safe range' on the frequency that drove the CRT, driving it too slow would burn up one of the coils in the high voltage circuitry that drives the coils to do the deflection. Never monitors have been designed to shut down when presented with an out-of-range synch signal, and digital ones will display a message to that effect.
    - krschultz 17y ago
      They actually can be physically harmed by a lot of things - heat being the primary way (in fact, that is the only way the software can damage them), and they will honor the warranty for other forms of damage that involved overheating.
  - doki_pen 17y ago
    Not true. Poorly written device drivers can damage hardware. I'm a freetard and apple hater, but I think apple has every right to void the warrenty on stuff like this, for the most part. It would be a support nightmare for them to cover modified devices.
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      Not true, poorly written device drivers can only damage poorly designed hardware. Hardware should be designed with software failure in mind, and in fact should survive being attacked by software deliberately written for the purpose of damaging the hardware. Assuming the software is going to play 'nice' is assuming that there will be no bugs, that there never will be a successful exploit and so on.
      - swombat 17y ago
        Simple counter-example: 1) I buy a macbook pro (covered under warranty, etc) 2) I install software that disables the fans 3) I update the firmware to disable the automatic shut-down when overheating (or move it so it only happens at an even higher temperature) 4) I run high-cpu software until the machine crashes 5) I repeatedly do this for months on end I'm pretty sure that machine will be toast soon enough. Is it fair that I should then take it to Apple and ask for a new machine "because it's under warranty"?
        jacquesm 17y ago
        If you update the firmware you're at a different level altogether (above it said 'device drivers', not 'firmware', they're definitely not the same), but still, the hardware hopefully has a failsafe that will shut down the motherboard as soon as you reach a critical temperature over the one where the fans would have normally come on, and past the highest setting for the automated shut-down in software in case of overheating (that's a 'nice' shutdown), presumably that one is one that you can still recover from without any damage. Designing good hardware is hard, but it definitely can be done and a few ntcs and a crowbar are not going to break the bank. You make a great point about why passively cooled systems are better though :)
- ggruschow 17y ago
  3rd party hardware can screw things up every bit as much as 3rd party software.
illumin8 17y ago
I'm not sure why Apple gets so much hate for this. I can think of at least 3 other companies that do exactly the same thing and have done for years: - Microsoft - Xbox and Xbox360 - Sony - PS1, PS2, PS3, and PSP - Nintendo - NES, SNES, GC, Wii, DS Why should Apple be treated any differently than any game console manufacturer? Every one of those game console manufacturers void your warranty if you mod them. Every one of them restricts which development tools you can use to develop on them, and has very stringent application approval processes. Why is it that Apple all of a sudden deserves special anti-trust attention? Is it because they developed a game console that also happens to be a phone? Or maybe it's because they developed the first phone that doesn't suck.
- scott_s 17y ago
  Modding a console requires physically changing the hardware. I think it's reasonable to void the warranty if there's a good chance the customer accidentally broke it while trying to physically change its function. The situation with the iPhone/iPad is different because it's just a wipe of the software; no physical modding.
  - illumin8 17y ago
    Not true. There are many software only mods for consoles available.
    - scott_s 17y ago
      And do these software mods also void the warranty? I know you're no longer allowed to use such things as XBox Live (which I think is a legitimate way to prevent cheating).
      - illumin8 17y ago
        Yes.
        krschultz 17y ago

by lutorm 17y ago

stcredzero 17y ago

However, there are reasons outside of branding to require an unbroken iPhone 3.2 OS to be on the device. The OS is obviously necessary for the proper functioning of the iPad. Apple doesn't test the iPad with Cydia and various modifications available through jailbreaking. What's more, they are demonstrably less stable. I know this for a fact, because I have a jailbroken iPhone OS device. Another tack: I am thinking of writing an App which would enable DRM for the user (as opposed to DRM against the user) so that people could share pictures and documents, and be assured that the shared copy is erased at a certain point in time and never present in an unencrypted form, except in RAM at the time the data is being used. This would work fine on non-jailbroken iPads. (Not strong enough for espoinage work, but enough to establish a CYA audit trail with corporate documents with an NDA.) Unfortunately, there can be no expectation of this working for jailbroken devices. (I'm also going to put in the FAQ, that this is not a safe way to share pictures and assure they won't wind up on the Internet. The iPad's screen is high resolution and people can just photograph it.)

lutorm 17y ago
It's up to me as the owner to determine what "proper functioning" means. Clearly you can't ask Apple to fix it if it's crashing because it's jailbroken. But if the display fails, that's not reasonably caused by running another OS.
- stcredzero 17y ago
  The parts I listed in another thread that I thought could be "broken" by software: the radio, flash RAM, and the battery. And the 1st one wouldn't be physically affected, but wouldn't work correctly. Everything else, AFAIK, Apple should honor the warranty on. The flash RAM and the li-ion battery can actually be physically harmed by incorrectly functioning software!
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    > The flash RAM and the li-ion battery can actually be physically harmed by incorrectly functioning software! Long ago, there was a computer that had its databus wired up in such a way that reading from a '0' location in the ROM eventually fried the processor. They saved on a single buffer chip that would have avoided this and the design was 'fixed' in the next release. Software should not ever be able to 'damage' hardware beyond slightly accelerated wear, such as when ordering a harddrive to repeatedly seek across the whole drive and so on. Tricks like that should not result in stuff burning up or dying, if it does that is just bad design. The wear on the flash ram is just whatever it would be if you packed that number of writes in to a much longer amount of time and the li-ion battery discharge would simply mean that you get the same number of cycles but over a shorter life-span. That doesn't count as 'physical harm', after all, then normal use also causes 'physical harm', it just takes longer.
    - protomyth 17y ago
      If your old enough, you remember software that could damage the monitor on the IBM PC.
      - jacquesm 17y ago
        Yes, another nice example of bad hardware design. The reason that happened was because they didn't have a 'safe range' on the frequency that drove the CRT, driving it too slow would burn up one of the coils in the high voltage circuitry that drives the coils to do the deflection. Never monitors have been designed to shut down when presented with an out-of-range synch signal, and digital ones will display a message to that effect.
  - krschultz 17y ago
    They actually can be physically harmed by a lot of things - heat being the primary way (in fact, that is the only way the software can damage them), and they will honor the warranty for other forms of damage that involved overheating.
- doki_pen 17y ago
  Not true. Poorly written device drivers can damage hardware. I'm a freetard and apple hater, but I think apple has every right to void the warrenty on stuff like this, for the most part. It would be a support nightmare for them to cover modified devices.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    Not true, poorly written device drivers can only damage poorly designed hardware. Hardware should be designed with software failure in mind, and in fact should survive being attacked by software deliberately written for the purpose of damaging the hardware. Assuming the software is going to play 'nice' is assuming that there will be no bugs, that there never will be a successful exploit and so on.
    - swombat 17y ago
      Simple counter-example: 1) I buy a macbook pro (covered under warranty, etc) 2) I install software that disables the fans 3) I update the firmware to disable the automatic shut-down when overheating (or move it so it only happens at an even higher temperature) 4) I run high-cpu software until the machine crashes 5) I repeatedly do this for months on end I'm pretty sure that machine will be toast soon enough. Is it fair that I should then take it to Apple and ask for a new machine "because it's under warranty"?
      - jacquesm 17y ago
        If you update the firmware you're at a different level altogether (above it said 'device drivers', not 'firmware', they're definitely not the same), but still, the hardware hopefully has a failsafe that will shut down the motherboard as soon as you reach a critical temperature over the one where the fans would have normally come on, and past the highest setting for the automated shut-down in software in case of overheating (that's a 'nice' shutdown), presumably that one is one that you can still recover from without any damage. Designing good hardware is hard, but it definitely can be done and a few ntcs and a crowbar are not going to break the bank. You make a great point about why passively cooled systems are better though :)
ggruschow 17y ago
3rd party hardware can screw things up every bit as much as 3rd party software.

illumin8 17y ago

I'm not sure why Apple gets so much hate for this. I can think of at least 3 other companies that do exactly the same thing and have done for years: - Microsoft - Xbox and Xbox360 - Sony - PS1, PS2, PS3, and PSP - Nintendo - NES, SNES, GC, Wii, DS Why should Apple be treated any differently than any game console manufacturer? Every one of those game console manufacturers void your warranty if you mod them. Every one of them restricts which development tools you can use to develop on them, and has very stringent application approval processes. Why is it that Apple all of a sudden deserves special anti-trust attention? Is it because they developed a game console that also happens to be a phone? Or maybe it's because they developed the first phone that doesn't suck.

scott_s 17y ago
Modding a console requires physically changing the hardware. I think it's reasonable to void the warranty if there's a good chance the customer accidentally broke it while trying to physically change its function. The situation with the iPhone/iPad is different because it's just a wipe of the software; no physical modding.
- illumin8 17y ago
  Not true. There are many software only mods for consoles available.
  - scott_s 17y ago
    And do these software mods also void the warranty? I know you're no longer allowed to use such things as XBox Live (which I think is a legitimate way to prevent cheating).
    - illumin8 17y ago
      Yes.
      - krschultz 17y ago