Linked List: August 30, 2010

Last Call on DF T-Shirts 

Tomorrow (Tuesday) afternoon, I’m going to pull the plug on this round of new t-shirts. Order now if you want one, because we’re only going to print as many shirts as there are orders. This is your last chance to order a DF t-shirt for at least the next few months.

And where by “we”, I mean my friend Brian Jaramillo, who handles the screen-printing and shipping for all DF shirt orders. (Brian is the guy who prints great shirts like Andy Versus Apple and Exploded iPhone.)

Thom Holwerda on Apple’s Stance on Jailbreaking 

Thom Holwerda:

Apple fought hard to maintain jailbreaking as an illegal activity, and now Gruber is seriously arguing that all this was, well, just a joke? Didn’t happen? A figment of our collective imagination? I guess we’re seeing revisionist history in the making here. Fascinating.

I didn’t say Apple doesn’t have a stance regarding jailbreaking. But judging by their actions to date, they’re treating it as nuisance, not a significant problem. The context for all this, recall, is Colin Gibbs’s argument that Apple is wasting significant effort fighting jailbreaking. They might, someday. That wouldn’t surprise me in the least. But they haven’t to date.

The Talk Show, Episode #5 

This is actually last week’s show, but we didn’t record it until over the weekend and so it didn’t hit the airwaves until today. We’re still set for a show this week, after Wednesday’s Apple event. You should subscribe to the show’s podcast RSS feed, and you’ll stay up to date automatically.

The show is sponsored by Battery Go Plus, a neat little battery management iPhone app from 9magnets.

Bing App for Android 

Andy Chu, from Microsoft’s Bing for Mobile team:

Today we are happy to announce the first official Bing for Mobile Android App available to Verizon customers. You can now download the free Bing App from your Verizon Wireless Android phones’ Marketplace.

Does that mean there’s no Bing app for Android users on AT&T? Or anywhere outside the U.S.?

Nope 

“Chpwn” — a young developer of apps for jailbroken iPhones — says I’m wrong that Apple is not fighting jailbreaking:

If that was actually how Apple felt, they would not block downgrading to 4.0.1. They would continue to sign the SHSH hashes required for a downgrade. Their SHSH system — which prevents any unapproved firmware installation — is direct proof that they are strongly against jailbreaking. There is not other benefit to the server-side firmware signing mechanism they are using except preventing us from freeing our phones. […]

I also want to point out that a jailbroken 4.0.1 with saurik’s PDF fix is no less secure than 4.0.2 from Apple.

It’s not about jailbreaking. It’s about security and support. Once 4.0.2 was released, it became the only supported version of iOS 4. Apple isn’t going to support downgrading to an older version of the OS with known security vulnerabilities. And they’re certainly not going to support or trust a fix for the vulnerability from a jailbreak developer.

Put another way: I know that many App Store developers wish that Apple were “fighting jailbreaking”, because App Store piracy depends upon it.

‘Color, Photos, and One Fuzzy Little Boy in a Field’ 

Merlin Mann, on old color photographs:

When done well, these images help repudiate the implicit modern reading that pre-color photography realistically captured the simple but alien lives of people who were neither as complex, interesting, nor sophisticated as we CMYK people are.

Apple Isn’t ‘Fighting’ Jailbreaking 

Colin Gibbs, in a piece headlined “Why Apple Should End Its Fight Against iPhone Jailbreaking”:

The Register reported last week that Apple is looking to fire back at iPhone jailbreakers with an application to patent a system designed to identify the “hacking, jailbreaking, unlocking or removal of a SIM card” from a phone so the device can be located and its data erased. The company has released a new firmware update for the sole purpose of patching a hole that was being used to jailbreak handsets running iOS 4 as well, according to the group of developers that created the first iPhone 4 jailbreak.

As I write in my weekly column over at GigaOM Pro, it makes no sense for Apple to pour efforts to these kinds of things; allowing jailbreaking — even implicitly — could actually help move iPhones off the shelves.

A few points. First, patent applications aren’t necessarily indicative of actual product plans. Apple files for patents on any idea or design deemed patentable, whether they intend to actually bring it to market or not. Second, the point of such a system as described in the patent depends on your perspective. If you want to jailbreak your iPhone, then yes, such a system would seem like “anti jailbreaking”. But if you don’t want to jailbreak your iPhone, such a system would be a useful security feature — reassurance that your device’s OS has not been tampered with by malware.

Last, Apple isn’t “fighting” jailbreaking. They simply don’t support it. iOS 4.0.2 fixed a serious security vulnerability. By arguing that Apple shouldn’t have bothered doing so, Gibbs is implicitly arguing that Apple shouldn’t fix security vulnerabilities. It’s that simple. A more apt headline for Gibbs’s piece would be “Apple Shouldn’t Fix Security Vulnerabilities in iOS”.

Boston Globe Tailors Print Edition for Three Remaining Subscribers 

News you can use.

More on the TechCrunch/JooJoo Ruling 

Nilay Patel:

The court didn’t buy most of those arguments and dismissed everything but the breach of fiduciary duty claim in this latest ruling, which is both a significant loss and a significant win for TechCrunch: breach of fiduciary duty has always struck us as TechCrunch’s strongest argument, and the court’s now effectively ruled that Fusion Garage and TechCrunch were indeed involved in a joint business venture with legal obligations to protect each others’ interests. That’s not a bad position from which to proceed — although TechCrunch now has to prove that Fusion Garage actually violated its duty by releasing the Joojoo on its own, which is a whole new fight.

Other analysis of the ruling: Hank Williams says I’ve got it all wrong, and there’s a good thread on Hacker News. As Patel points out, though, perhaps the most curious aspect of the suit is that anyone is willing to pay for it — the JooJoo has been a total, utter bust. Surely this suit is costing more to litigate than the JooJoo has generated in revenue (let alone profits, which I’m guessing are non-existent).

Building a Nation of Know-Nothings 

Timothy Egan:

Take a look at Tuesday night’s box score in the baseball game between New York and Toronto. The Yankees won, 11-5. Now look at the weather summary, showing a high of 71 for New York. The score and temperature are not subject to debate.

Yet a president’s birthday or whether he was even in the White House on the day TARP was passed are apparently open questions. A growing segment of the party poised to take control of Congress has bought into denial of the basic truths of Barack Obama’s life. What’s more, this astonishing level of willful ignorance has come about largely by design, and has been aided by a press afraid to call out the primary architects of the lies.

As the saying goes, you’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts. I’m not so sure, though, that all the conservatives professing to believe that Obama is a Muslim, or wasn’t born a U.S. citizen, or any of these other fabrications, truly believe them. I think they know they’re spreading lies. See, for example, this story of a confrontation in an Oklahoma Starbucks.