Following on Tyler’s post from yesterday - there’s a lot of noise about that iPhone update.

According to the BBC, the Scobleizer, and a host of others, Apple’s v. 1.1.1, which was coded to render altered iPhones inoperable, may be causing a lot of problems for the unaltered ones as well.

The alterations they were targeting make the iPhones compatible with any mobile carrier.

Originally, the gadgets came hard-wired to work only on the AT&T mobile network as part of an exclusive deal.

But not everyone who wanted an iPhone wanted to get in bed with AT&T. Some, including a lot of techies (who, despite the bureaucratization of the field, still hang onto a cowboy mentality) were just plain outraged at being told what mobile carrier they had to use.

So the moment the iPhone went into distribution, software wizards around the world began ripping them apart to find a way to make iPhones compatible with any mobile carrier.

This, by the way, was perfectly legal. Farhad Manjoo at Salon wrote clearly on the particulars, which boil down to this: Apple does not have the right, once you legally purchase their gadget, to force you to use it with AT&T.

Soon, dozens of ‘SIM unlocks’ were available - for free and purchase. And thousands took advantage of them.

Apple reacted by voiding the warranties of anyone who used one of the unlocks. This move opened them up to lawsuits, because the laws around a company’s right to void their warranties pretty much says Apple can’t do that.

But then Apple went a step farther and announced that a planned update (”v 1.1.1″) would leave unlocked iPhones “permanently inoperable” in other words, ‘Bricked‘. Or, forever turned into pretty-looking paperweights.

The update was pushed last week, and true enough - thousands of iPhones immediately died.

This included many that were never altered - both Scoble and the New York Times are carrying accounts of customers whose pristine iPhones were also bricked in the recent update. Which is what many are pointing to as the big deal.

But the heart of the matter is really how these actions have revealed Apple to be both retaliatory and uncompromising against their own customers.From a brand that made its reputation as being counter-culture and ‘Not Microsoft’, the trail of decisions has been a blow to their loyal fans and their image.

Incubated in the days when they cheekily named one of their error noises ‘So-Su-Mi’ because it sounded something like a competitor’s ding, Apple has worked hard to be round in a world of square and organic in a world of finite choices.

This was shattered with the launch of the iPhone. The gadget itself is everything Apple - sleek, bright, and intuitive. The marketing and management, however, has been practically Orwellian.

The long-term will tell us if this is just a cultural mis-step in the corporation’s growth or a more enduring change in attitude.

Back in the immediate future, Apple is working to put out the fires of bricked unaltered phones. The legality of update v 1.1.1 and subsequent bricking is still being debated, leaving many mainstream techno-sites sitting uncomfortably on the fence. And hackers are hard at work at polishing a counter agent software, some versions of which are already available.

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I’m going to start off this post admitting something:  I am not a woman.  I have never been a woman, and I have absolutely no plans on becoming one at a later date.  That said, I’m going to need all you women to chime in on this one, tell me if what I found is true, false, blasphemy or pretty darn accurate.

That said, I just found an interesting article via Gizmodo and the New York Times that claims that in order for all these new, high-tech gadgets to truly appeal to female customers they need to go beyond “cute,” and “pink” and become not only much easier to use, but smaller as well.  That’s right, they (in this case a marketing group) found that to truly appeal to women, the gadgets have to be easy to figure out, accessible immediately, and smaller in size.  All that’s going on in the back of my brainpan while I’m reading this is, “Man, MoGo is genius,” because not only are the gadgets small, they are extraordinarily easy to use, they work right out of the box, and they make life as simple as possible by erasing the wires, the cords and the bulky accessories to tote around with them.

Personally, I’m going to agree with Gizmodo on this one, sex has nothing to do with people wanting products that are easier to use.  Who wants to sit around and read 300 pages of a manual written in 30 languages just to figure out how to connect your mouse to your computer, or your headset to your cell phone?  Yeah, no one, that’s who.

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