iSurrender
Apple's new iPhone augurs the inevitable return of the Bell
telephone monopoly.

By Tim Wu
Slate Magazine
Posted Tuesday, June 10, 2008, at 3:13 PM ET

If my iPhone were a motorcycle, she'd be a chopper. I'm the owner of
an unlocked, jail-broken iPhone 1.3 that runs on the T-Mobile
network, fortified with third-party apps (like Tap Tap Revolution),
adorned with Death Star wall paper, and running a natty customized
interface named "Manhattan." Sure, not everything works perfectly
(recently, the clock went off by an hour or so, for no apparent
reason). But that's part of the fun of iPhone-modding, a vibrant
scene that resembles the Apple II culture of the 1980s.

Unfortunately, for me at least, it may all be coming to an end. After
Monday's iPhone 2.0 debut, it's just a matter of time before I trade
in my chopper phone for Apple's new 3G phone-and swallow that AT&T
contract.

On Jun 11, 8:52 pm, Monty Solomon roscom.com> wrote:

I have some problems with this article.

When I pick up a phone I want a dial tone and the ability to simply
dial my desired party's number. If someone calls me the phone should
ring.

I, and I suspect the vast majority of consumers, have little interest
in "modding" their telephone sets, especially if it screws up basic
features. Clocks were invented how long ago, weren't they? I think
by now they should have it right and reliable. If your tinkering
messed up the clock, you don't know what you're doing and shouldn't be
messing with the internals.

hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

... except that governments (by which I mean primarily the U.S. Congress)
decided that time should change on certain dates and then, after much
technology was deployed with that exception hard-coded into it, changed the
dates on which time changed. The original author said "recently, the clock
went off by an hour or so, for no apparent reason" without noting whether
"recently" meant the first Sunday in April, which one might be forgiven for
not remembering as the date on which DST used to commence. While the iPhone
itself may be new, there are probably bits of code in it which pre-date the
change to DST.

On Jun 15, 8:53 pm, "Geoffrey Welsh" wrote:

To me, that automated change to DST was bad planning and design.
Every automatic function should have a manual backup.