The good nerds at Slashdot.com reminded the geek community today of AT&T's "legal policy" regarding service. Those terms include a nebulous provision for damaging the company's "name or reputation".
That's ugly enough for most consumers, but what really hits hard is this basic concept: AT&T and Apple colluded to harm an electronics device they no longer owned by creating software that would render the device inoperable.
Game over. If "do no evil" is Google's mantra and supposed business guideline, perhaps "stop doing harm" should be the case for Apple and AT&T. Folks, you don't own the device. If you don't want it on your network, that's great. You can't sell someone a car, though, and tell them they can't work on it. Doing so might void the warranty, a risk informed consumers may choose to make. Working on your car, however, doesn't mean that someone comes to your house in the middle of the night and offers you an unmarked bag of sugar as a "fuel additive".
Yes, it's a fuel additive. Don't do it to your car. You will cause massive damage to the vehicle.
And that's what happened here. Had AT&T or Apple bothered to tell consumers, "Your download will disable your device if you have not followed the warranty guidelines," then I would be on their side. Instead, they turned iPhones into iBricks, destroying the carefully laid credibility Apple was slowly rebuilding.
At Consumer Help Web, we had made the choice to switch multiple machines from Dells to Macs. Apple's position in this matter has scuttled that idea. Now, we're wondering if iTunes and iPods are still in our future. That is what happens to companies who act in an imperious and harmful manner. Good luck, boys and girls. We hope Pixar works out because your actions this week may have cost you the "nerd influencer" demographic you needed for survival in the computer market. Good luck as a media company (and set aside a nice reserve for the class action suit)
Labels: Apple, ATT, iPhone, Slashdot
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