2010-03-17 » Apple is awesome (and sucks)

Yesterday Fido and Apple conspired to break my phone (for now). I’ve got a 3GS and I was happy with the 3.1.2 firmware and my old baseband since I could jailbreak/unlock whenever I want to in case I’m tired of what’s in the Apple store or want to write my own apps. Anyway, I tried installing some Fido app and my phone crashed. I figured all I’d have to do was restore since I’d rejected all the updates to firmware 3.1.3 previously.

Unfortunately I found out that’s no longer so easy. Apple decided to stop signing 3.1.2 for the 3GS so that I can only restore to the newer 3.1.3 firmware. This newer firmware also forces an update of the baseband which so far is not jailbreakable and not unlockable. Technically my phone’s not broken, it’s just less flexible now than it used to be.

There’s a lot of good stuff in the App Store, so this is not really the end of the world. I just like to have the choice to install stuff Apple doesn’t like. I also appreciate the right to free speech even when I don’t have anything offencive to say. That’s why I was so disheartened when I found out that Apple was going to force me to upgrade. All of this made me start thinking more seriously about the ipad, which I was previously thinking would be a pretty cool device to have.

I really enjoy using Apple products generally and at first glance the ipad is pretty attractive. It’s a beautiful looking device and seems like it will be a pretty powerful machine for a number of tasks. With the ipad though, apps are going to be controlled in the same draconian fashion as they are for the iphone. This means Apple decides which apps I can and can’t use and I have to pay Apple for the privilege of writing apps if I want to put them on my phone. Webapps have some ability to bridge the gap here I think. Especially with things like JQTouch. But I don’t think that’s a full solution.

The end result of my thinking on this issue so far is that I’ll probably hold out on getting an ipad until either I get one for free (or really cheap) or until Apple fixes the issues surrounding app distribution. I’m hoping that someone else comes out with a decent tablet computer that’s close to being as cool, but much more open. Hopefully that would eventually put Apple in the position where they need to be more open to compete. I’m hoping Android does the same thing on the phone front. Especially if that can happen by the time my contract is up for this phone.

Until then, I’ll just have to hope someone comes up with a “fix” for the 3.1.3 firmware and the new baseband and that Apple doesn’t remove Cows in Space from the App Store.