Live from Austin!

Metasploit on the iPhone:

Every process runs as root. MobileSafari, MobileMail, even the Calculator, all run with full root privileges. Any security flaw in any iPhone application can lead to a complete system compromise.

I really thought Apple had better software developers than that. I guess that explains Steve Jobs’ comments about it being impossible to provide a 3rd party SDK safely.

Yeah, if you made the incredibly dumb decision to have no security whatsoever in your mobile OS, then it’s impossible to support 3rd party applications safely.

More to the point, as soon as someone finds a security hole in Safari or Mail, that’s it—they will be able to pwn the entire system. I’d place bets that someone will find such a bug, sooner or later; and then we’ll see iPhone viruses and trojans spreading by e-mail or web.

I’m an iPhone skeptic. While I appreciate good UI design considerably more than the average person, a good UI alone is not enough to make me accept a crippled and overpriced product.

At WWDC today, Steve Jobs has announced that the third party SDK for the iPhone is…make all your applications web applications, and access them from the Safari browser. Which means the user has to pay network bandwidth charges to run the application, and can’t make or receive any calls while it’s running. And of course, no service means your applications all stop working.

So basically, the iPhone is a closed platform, a very pretty but underpowered cellphone. It’s not a smartphone. It lacks even the capabilities of many low-end handsets offered by GSM networks, but it’s going to be sold at a premium price.

Let’s see how it compares with my current 2-year-old phone, for example:

To me, that’s a hell of a tough sell.

You may point out that my tiny phone’s screen isn’t great for browsing the web, but that’s just tradeoff I made because I like a phone that’s truly pocketable. If you prefer a big screen, you can get a Blackberry or Treo for $150 or less. Right now, Cingular has refurb 8525 devices for $99.

I prefer the hybrid solution: pair a small phone with my Nokia N800, and browse the web at triple the resolution of the iPhone. You can get an N800 plus a small Bluetooth phone and you’ve still saved $200 over buying an iPhone.

In addition, most of today’s phones take SD cards for memory expansion. I can dump movies onto a 4GB SD card and stick it in the Nokia. If I need more space, I’ve got a couple of extra 1GB cards floating around. What happens when you use up all the memory in your iPhone? You’re stuck, there’s no expansion option.

If the iPhone was $99, or even $199 at the most, I might be interested. At $599, it ought to sell like the similarly-priced PlayStation 3. It’s the most overpriced Apple product since the Mac Cube. (Which I loved the design of, but didn’t buy because it was overpriced.) It’s the most overhyped since the first Newton.

Oh, I’m sure Apple will sell some. I mean, the Motorola RAZR sucked, but plenty of people had to have it because it looked so cool. But then, the RAZR wasn’t $600…

I’ll keep this brief, as you’re a busy man.

You recently wrote that you would drop DRM from the iTunes music store “in a heartbeat” if you could.

Well, as you’ll see if you check the iTunes purchase logs, I bought quite a few tunes from the iTunes music store. You’ll notice that I stopped as soon as you fixed the flaw that allowed Hymn to remove the DRM. Since then I’ve bought music from places like bleep.com that sell DRM-free music. I still use the iTunes music store, but only as an easy way to preview tracks that I then buy elsewhere.

Clearly, there are plenty of music labels (such as most indie labels) that are willing to license their music DRM-free. Clearly there are people like me who won’t buy music if it has DRM they can’t remove. So, here’s a proposal:

Allow record companies and artists who elect to do so, to sell their music DRM-free on the iTunes music store. Indicate the DRM status with a small icon in the download views in iTunes, like you indicate explicit lyrics. I’ve put together a quick mock-up. As you can see, the padlock icon is very discreet and unobjectionable. I don’t think it would cause user confusion; the people who don’t care about DRM will probably never notice it.

Once you’ve offered DRM-free music on the iTunes store, you just sit back and watch. If I’m right, the non-DRM music sales will surge. Then you’ll have some real ammo with which to approach the major labels. Because frankly, they don’t listen to consumers like me. I know, because this year I wrote to EMI listing a bunch of CDs I didn’t buy because they had DRM warnings on the packaging. I didn’t even get a reply.

Yours sincerely,

mathew

I was kinda enthusiastic about the iPhone…then I found out from Macintouch that it’s a closed, locked down unit.

Forget about installing software to use it as an e-book reader, or reading Word documents or PDFs. You’re not going to be using it to give business presentations. Forget about downloading music via the WiFi connection. Forget about writing your own neat applications and running them. There’s no Xcode iPhone developer kit, and Apple apparently has no plans to produce one for public use.

So basically, it’s a phone that does exactly the same stuff my current phone does, but with a much prettier interface. I’m sure Apple will sell a boatload of them to the same people who bought the Motorola RAZR because it looked cool. But to me, it’s not that interesting unless it’s open.

The fact that you need to sign a 2 year contract with Cingular makes it even less attractive. Cingular’s SMS is flaky to the point of near uselessness, and their Internet connectivity is expensive compared to any other carrier. I’m sure their iPhone contract will require a monthly reaming that will make my current unpleasant cellphone bill look like a bargain.

If you like the idea of what the iPhone could have been, though, there are a couple of upcoming alternatives worth considering.

OpenMoko is a Linux-based phone with an iPhone-like touch interface. It’ll be about half the price of the iPhone, and not locked to Cingular. It’s also going to be open to developers.

The Greenphone is a more traditional phone design (i.e. one with buttons). Again, it runs Linux and is open to third party developers.

Also, since it seems it isn’t common knowledge: Apple didn’t invent the multitouch technology as Steve Jobs claimed. It was actually developed by a company called Fingerworks. Said company mysteriously shut down, and the owners refused to say who had purchased their operation, citing confidentiality agreements. However, one of the founders of the company was subsequently confirmed to be working for Apple.

Moved to my work-related web site.

Five Admirable Billionaires

1. Steve Jobs, founder and CEO of Apple Computer.

   C’mon, you knew I was going to pick Steve, didn’t you?

   It’s not that he doesn’t have his faults. He’s notoriously egotistical, can be breathtakingly rude, and allegedly cheated Woz on the payments for the design of Breakout. (Still, Woz seems to have forgiven him.)

   I’m not sure I’d want to work for Steve Jobs, and I’m still angry that he destroyed the Newton for no good reason, but it can’t be denied that he has turned Apple’s product designs from lackluster to stunning, and brought back a wonderful OS that may yet save the company in the long run.

2. Michael Dell, founder of Dell Computer.

   His PCs may suck, but that’s just because they run Windows. He managed to turn a dorm-room business selling cheap PC clones into one of the biggest computer corporations in the world, and did it by playing fair. I just wish they’d sell more Linux boxes.

3. Gordon Moore, founder of Intel.

   I’ve never liked Intel’s instruction sets or processor architectures, but you can’t deny that Gordon Moore was a hard working state-educated engineer who changed the world with his semiconductor designs. Furthermore, in recent years he has given away half his fortune to charity, without begging for press attention the way Bill Gates has for his meager handouts.

4. George Soros.

   Let’s be up-front about it: George Soros makes his wealth playing the elaborate game of poker that we call the international stock and currency markets; he doesn’t really produce anything, per se, he’s just a middleman. It’s how he uses that wealth that makes him different.

   Soros is a Hungarian Jew who escaped the Nazis and fled to America. He’s been an outspoken philanthropist since the early 70s, and isn’t afraid to take a strong reformist political position. How can you not respect a billionaire prepared to lash out at the Bush administration?

5. Ted Turner, founder of the Turner media empire.

   Another mouthy billionaire is Ted Turner. Sure, he can be tactless, but he speaks from the heart and has a sense of humor. When he began CNN, it was viewed as a joke by everyone in the industry, yet he built it into a global news presence… and then sold it, at which point it slowly turned into a joke again, but never mind.

   Turner is one of the biggest landowners in the USA, something which seems to bother Michael Moore. I’m not sure why, as Turner isn’t using his land for factories, strip malls or luxury homes. Instead, he’s using it for conservation. He has received many awards for the billions he has spent trying to advance mankind’s practical knowledge of nature conservation practices, and he has also been a major donor to other charitable causes.

The universe is actually beige. Steve Jobs must be furious.