iOS4 itself is DRM-locked via FairPlay on all of the content -- music, movies, apps and whatnot -- and via RSA signatures on all the firmware and OS bits, to prevent the running of arbitrary code and breaking the DRM locks on the former. Derivatives -- including a hypothetical merger of iOS 4 and Mac OS X -- would certainly share at least some of these restrictions, would they not?

Why do you assume everyone has a PC? Was it assigned at birth? Why can't people just as well have a Mac?

By the simple fact that even Macs are PCs with the switch to x86 architecture and the advent of Boot Camp (plus whatever other solutions are out there for Mac OS multi-boot).

So OS X would totally run without those open source parts, right?

I'm a GPL advocate and actually, I'd be ecstatic if a major corporation decided to use GPL code -- as long as they adhered to the terms of the license and released the code along with the binary.

Other than that, yeah, if a company's not going to adhere to the license, I really would not want them using the code.

Hey, if it causes those upper managements to stop trying to sell the hard work of others (who don't even work for them!) for their own profit, more power to it. Any legal department would be able to tell you quite simply that the only thing you have to do when you release the product is release the source code you've modified (and not even that if it's a BSD-type license).

Eventually Apple just bought all the Apple-related trademarks and is now licensing them back to Apple Corps (their name's not Apple Records).

AT&T may not have reason to do so, but I think it's safe to say that there are a far greater number of customers available to Apple if they ditched their exclusivity. Couple that with distribution deals with each company and Apple would make some huge gains. The opportunity will be open to them soon enough and it may not necessarily matter what AT&T wants by then, since ultimately Apple is the one holding the cards when it comes to potentially renewing an agreement.

I think he was approaching it from the "why is this a good business decision" angle, not "how does it benefit the consumer." There's a case for both and it mostly involves moving the risk around (maybe eliminating, possibly not) in the former.

Why should they, besides the fact that you want them to do so? Your statement boils down to "They should do this because that is what I want them to do because it benefits me and not them."

The entire practice of subsidizing the phone with a contract is designed with the purpose of making back the money lost on the phone in customer payments for continued service. That is to say:

- Customer wants to buy a phone.
- Provider sells the phone at a loss of about $100 (we'll say) but ties it to a contract binding the customer to pay $70 a month for, let's say, 24 months. Let's say only about $10 of that is markup or somesuch. They make their loss back after the first 12 and continue to make a profit for the next 12.

In this way, there was no real loss on the phone since it ends up making them more than they lost, just over a significant period of time. This is also why they're hesitant to allow an unlock and provider switch with the phone, and why the cost of premature termination is so freakin' high -- they're making their loss back on the phone at least, just not for your business. However, there is the risk that a customer will terminate early, eat the loss for the provider and then just take their business elsewhere.

HOWEVER, were the same company to sell unlocked phones at full price, it could go like this:

- Customer wants to buy a phone, unlocked.
- Provider sells the phone at zero loss, doesn't tie to a contract necessarily (but the customer can opt into one if they so choose -- there could be some incentive for doing so) but already is looking good out of the gate with one new customer and zero loss.

In that second instance, there's very little risk (if any) involved for the cell phone company besides the omnipresent one that the customer may choose to switch at any time -- which is still true for the first instance, it's just pricier.

tl;dr: all selling the phone unsubsidized and unlocked does is change who's paying for the phone and how much gain the provider actually makes in the end.

Consider even further: you do play by the rules and use the product as specified by AT&T and their contract for that two whole years. The way the iPhone is currently set up you still can't "legitimately" unlock it even though both sides have fulfilled all contractual obligations. So what happens when this is the case and you end up hacking a phone that is your property... only to have the phone bricked and totally useless (in theory) by the next software upgrade (yes, even if you should know better).

iTunes is not all DRM-free -- only the music is, and if you purchased DRM-encumbered music they charged you some fee per song.

Apple's doing that same old thing with their iPhone software that they do with Mac OS X -- it's getting ridiculous by this point.

What same old thing? Artificial limitation. The reason XPostFacto exists. It's not that the old hardware (in this case, iPhone 2G; in Mac's case, things like the iBook G3) isn't capable of running the OS; it's that Apple doesn't want it to, because that cuts into their hardware sales. So they force upgrades via their software, which is presumably the only software that will run on that machine (except of course for Linux, which still runs perfectly well on old PowerPC's, just with no Flash or proprietary codecs).

iPhone OS 3.0 adds MMS and A2DP Bluetooth -- but only for that new iPhone 3G gadget! Get this straight: there were a grand total of two hardware changes between the iPhone 3G and the original iPhone, the GPS chip and the 3G chip. There is absolutely no way in hell any hardware difference would have prevented new Bluetooth accessories from being used nor is there any way you couldn't do MMS over EDGE. Hell, there's a jailbroken app -- SwirlyMMS -- written specifically for the purpose! Was that developer just made of magic for being able to do that on an original iPhone?

Take this recommendation and don't be stupid like me: get a better phone. For me, that's the T-Mobile G1 or any other Android phone. For you, it might be Windows Mobile. I'm still aggravated about this artificial limitation bullcrap Apple pulls with everything, and figured it'd be different with the iPhone. How foolish I was.

*wears the flame-retardant suit*

Or iFuse and libiphone on Linux. http://matt.colyer.name/projects/iphone-linux/

If I had mod points, they would all be going to you right now.

The most common pirate argument I seem to hear is that no one actually incurs a loss due to piracy.

The fact is, a copyright owner controls many facets of his or her work, including -- but not limited to -- distribution. Once it's in the recipient's hands through the distribution medium(s) the copyright owner dictates (for pay or not), the recipient can enjoy, modify or use the work as the recipient sees fit. DRM is wrong because it restricts the recipient's ability to do much of anything with the work they legitimately acquired while not doing anything at all to punish the "bad eggs" who get copyrighted works by other means. But I digress.

Torrents are an alternate distribution medium. In many -- and possibly most -- cases, they are unauthorized by the copyright owner. In essence, you've stripped some control over the product of the artist's (however loosely that term will be used) work.

The economic argument is "they wouldn't have gotten my money anyway! therefore I haven't hurt anyone!" Well, sort of. Think of it this way: even if you strip out all the other costly parts (studio equipment, instruments, etc.), time and labor are considered to have value in and of themselves -- this is why we are paid to work. Artists, too, are (or should be!) paid, because they have put time and labor into a product.

So: because the time and effort has been put into the product, and both of these things in and of themselves have value, we can assume then that there is a cost involved in production. Money has been lost. Standard business sense dictates that you need to get that money back, or you're in the hole. Colloquially, "there is no such thing as a free lunch." Being in the hole is not a good thing for finances, so there generally tends to be a cost involved with the product that comes somewhere in the distribution. And the way it generally works is:

1 product = $13 (based on the percentage of costs of the original production (master CD), the production of the 1 product, and a markup to cover miscellaneous business expenses)
Customer provides $13, receives 1 product, as the two are considered equal in value by a standard set by the artist and/or the business.
$13 is returned to the artist/business to recoup costs and turn a profit.

But when you go outside of this distribution method and receive 1 product for 0 cost, then, effectively, what you have done is:

1 product = $0
Customer doesn't provide anything in exchange for the valued item, money does not go back to company, costs are not recouped and there is no profit.

Therefore, you got something for free that has value and cost the artist/business to make. You have forced the artist/business to incur a cost. As insignificant as you may make it out to be, a cost is a cost is a cost. You have taken a product that cost money to make and did not recoup the costs for the company -- this results in a loss, because, and I hate to be repetitious, your product cost money to make but you just got it for free. I do not personally see how that is not a loss of money for the company, even disregarding the fact that the company didn't have to necessarily pay for the distribution in that case (which would only cut a few dollars out). Distribution is not the entire cost of product.

Put another way... if there are more products out there than the company has been paid for, the company has effectively lost whatever money went into that product. Copyright infringement is not strictly theft by definition, but the concept still holds very much true that there is economic impact to the company having more products "in the wild" than they were paid for, whether by theft or copying. You may not think the company deserves the money, but you cannot by any means say that you haven't hurt them economically, even if it's just "minor." Costs add up, too.

Sorry for the long-windedness, I'm just tired of seeing this same argument trotted out over and over again.