Sounds a little Orwellian, and a little hard to believe, but it seems true. Jobs and Co. (aka Apple) can reach out and touch your iPhone - disabling any application that HQ Central deems no good for society or whatever other reason they can think of. Jobs calls this a Kill Switch. Wow...
So let me get this right. You pay $300 for the phone, you pay $xxx per month to use it on AT&T's network, or wherever, then you go and pay say $5 for app 'xyz' - then Apple can come along and just disable that app, for whatever reason they want? What is wrong with this picture? Is Apple's behaviour ok with you? Do you not own the phone and can do whatever you want with it? Even if it means installing app's they don't like. Seems the answer is NO. They own the phone, and they own what app's you can use on it. This is lunacy.
I continue to be an Apple lover - I have several iPods and Mac's littered throughout the house, but I won't be getting an iPhone anytime soon. This just adds to the list of reasons of why not.
Will rather wait for several open platform choices coming out in the near future, and my BB does a great job now as it is. OpenMoko (locally built i might add) looks great.
iPhone has remote Kill Switch?
Monday, August 11, 2008 | Posted by Daniel Brum at 8:08 AM
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didn't know ... and pretty crappy, yes.
I guess the restraint on that would be the public outcry of such a move.
The SDK and confidentiality it requires is an issue, too.
Over time, I think Apple will have to show more restraint and give more power to users / developers. For now, they have a very popular technology and they can draw the balance in their direction. It's sort of like proprietary vendors of yesteryears -- they could charge an arm and a leg up front and the value equation worked. But no longer. Same thing will happen to Apple on this kind of thing.
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