This decision will slow down the “overt” sharing but it’s an impossible battle to win. It’s like Sony when they release new firmware updates for the PSP handheld because hackers keep breaking the previous one. After countless firmware updates, at some point you accept that this battle is going to go on forever. Jail-broken iPhones being another example. It’s actually impressive to last a full 24 hours before the next crack happens.

on a recent macworld podcast i heard, the consensus view was that apple has essentially made peace with the inevitable jailbreaking, accepting that a certain segment of their market is always going to want to bust open the hardware and fiddle with it. instead of cracking down, they’re tolerating it and simply refusing support outside the terms of the warranty. seems like a reasonable compromise: you’d prefer people stick with the original firmware and use their iPhones in ways intended by apple, but you effect the desired behavior by incentivizing it rather than by trying to punish those who behave otherwise. i choose not to jailbreak because, largely thru the app store, they’ve offered me an attractive alternative to total user-control which includes a certain level of support. i’m free to go the other way if i choose, with no hard feelings or retaliation on apple’s part, but then i accept the consequences of my choice, including the possibility of bricking — kind of a sartrean attitude, total freedom equals total responsibility and whatnot. they’re betting that more people will choose option A, which seems smart to me, and perhaps illustrative of the kind of truce content providers are going to have to make with consumers in order to stay viable. who knows? maybe TPB 2.0 will be something along these lines…

Gaikai Technology Demo (JULY 1, 2009) from David Perry on Vimeo.