The cost of a show was not enough for NBC Universal. No, NBC Universal wanted a cut of the hardware sales for iPods and iPhones. I really don’t get this. Would they bother Apple for a cut of computer sales? Do they get a cut of television sales? Would they bother TiVo for a cut of hardware sales? No, no, and no. I think they were just looking for publicity for their two new video sharing sites in taking their Apple spat public. I think one of them is called Whatever and maybe the other one is IDon’tCare.
There’s a class action lawsuit brewing over the price cut and the discontinuance of the 4GB iPhone. I have no idea if this class action lawsuit has merit or not, but it looks like Dongmei Lee want to be a millionaire:
‘For those claims which the Court is still likely to take into account, Li is requesting compensatory damages in the amount of $1 million, punitive damages in the amount to be determined at trial, and a court order that she is entitled to “threefold her damages, the costs involved in maintaining this action, and attorney’s fees.”‘
Dongmei Lee’s class-action lawsuit doesn’t address the bricking of iPhones with the recent update, so maybe iPhoneClassActionLawsuitVille will be a two-horse town sooner rather than later.
Wired talked to lawyers about the implications of Apple dumping the warranty on unlocked iPhones as it pertains to the Magnuson Moss act, and came out with some unfortunate news. It’s likely that Apple is within their rights to deny warranty claims to bricked iPhones if they were unlocked, as the onus is on the consumer to prove that Apple intentionally bricked iPhones. We wouldn’t be able to figure that out without an inside source or a court order.
figure 1: Magnuson Moss Esq., lawyer extraordinaire and warranty expert. He drafted the language of the Magnuson Moss act of 1975.
As far as I can tell, this article was written by someone that understands the Magnuson-Moss Act very well. I’ve never even heard of it, but it governs the aspects of a limited warranty and sets what you can and cannot do in terms of legally limiting a warranty and for what purposes. The legal mumbo-jumbo is strong in this one — the phrase “I am not a lawyer” really hits home trying to read this, but if you’ve got an eye for the law-talkin’ boilerplate, then it’s worth a read.
To the best of my understanding, the iPhone unlocking situation is analogous to using 3rd party ink cartridges in printers. Or buying a 3rd party garage-door opener for your garage door. Also, Apple could require you to re-lock your iPhone before they’d provide any kind of warranty service.
Otherwise, there could be a bit of trouble for Apple if they ditch warranties on iPhone unlockers:
The conclusion here is simple: Apple has, at least in a minor and reversible way, violated the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. Apple should take action to correct their policy, and require that iPhone customers seeking warranty service, return their iPhone’s to locked condition. Apple could also release a software tool that aides in this process, though legally they are not required to… it would make the job of the Genius Bar easier to have such a tool in-house.
Everybody hold your breath for the next iPhone lawsuit.
A bit of friendly advice — if you’ve unlocked your iPhone, you should be careful with the next firmware update — don’t apply it immediately. Check with news sites and forums to see if the update works fine with unlocks first. Apple released a press release that noted that the current methods of unlock can cause “irreparable damage to the iPhone’s software.” And as such, they’re going to void the warranty of anyone that unlocks their phone, and they’ll mark your phone as ineligible for warranty service. There are some reports of people that have been “blacklisted.” There’s a full rundown of this story after the cut.
Read the rest of this entry »
Short weeks after Apple and Starbucks initially announced their partnership, Starbucks announced today that they’ll be giving away 1.5 million tracks per day for over a month. Their giveaway begins October 2nd and lasts until November 7th.
““Song of the Day” will offer hand-picked songs from top artists including Bob Dylan, Joss Stone, Dave Matthews, Bebel Gilberto, John Mayer, KT Tunstall, John Legend, Annie Lennox, Joni Mitchell, Keith Urban and Paul McCartney plus great music from up-and-coming artists such as Sia, Band of Horses, Hilary McRae, Frederico Aubele and Sara Bareilles.”
The downloads are given away by means of cards that you get when you go to Starbucks and buy coffee, which you can then redeem for the free song of the day. Supplies are limited — the deal begins “each morning and while supplies last,” so get up and grab some coffee before you, uh, go to Starbucks for your coffee.
Starbucks was in the news for other reasons today too — they’re being taken to task by the National Labor Relations Board for illegal union-busting and myriad other labor-related woes. Full disclosure: I’ll take tea over coffee pretty much any day.
figure 1: Erica Sadun and HaRRo
Apparently the Harro fellow I linked to yesterday has a penchant for scams and has caused a bunch of drama in the iPhone hacking community. There’s allegations of stolen code, misappropriations of intellectual property, and the intent to sell the GUI unlock program code. HaRRo also removed the direct download link, so I’ll direct you now to the instructions page if you’d like download the IP-tainted GUI unlock. Erica Sadun of TUAW notes that though her code has been misappropriated, the code has been given back to the hacking community and they’ll continue to work on it:
“we should be very, very close to the holy grail: a completely free and open source, completely GUI, one click unlock for the iPhone.”
Once they get that GUI app written, it should take them little to no time to get it installed on AppTapp Installer.app, or to make an AppTapp-like installer for it.
In related news, I cancelled my order for the iPhoneSimFree unlock solution, and Wireless Imports was very pleasant about it. It appears that they were having very serious difficulties with the Windows platform; they intend to get the unlock.app installable via AppTapp Installer.app. I guess iPhoneSimFree has been unresponsive in the past few days, which makes the other folks reselling their software look bad.
There’s a great article over at the Salt Lake Tribune, titled “NBC is loser in spat with Apple.” It’s a good article, insightful in most of its points, but the title makes me feel left out. What about my suffering? I lost something too, eh? At any rate, it’s well worth the read. It appears the only language that Vince Horiuchi speaks is “money quote.”
Finally, NBC, which is in fourth place in the ratings, needs iTunes to drum up interest in its series.
[...]
It also doesn’t help that this deal went sour just before the start of the fall TV season, when millions will be turning to iTunes to get episodes of new shows.
[...]
NBC, like all the other television networks, doesn’t understand why downloadable content is going to change the face of TV. They just want to make money off it.
[via]
iLounge reports that the video out functionality of the new iPods has been restricted — 4G or 5G iPod video out accessories don’t function with the new iPods. If you want video out with them, you need cables that have a special chip inside, like the $49 Apple cables. I wonder if this is the basis of this dock connector exclusivity lockout rumor I heard about a while back.
figure 1: now is that free as in “free” or free as in “beer”?
Sorry for the spam font, but an enterprising user using the alias Cleverboy has discovered the easiest and cheapest way to get ringtones on the iPhone — to rename files. Simply duplicate the file, add an ‘m4r’ extension to it, and add your new file to iTunes. You can then sync the file over, and presto! You’re done. This method works with both protected AAC files and normal AAC files. If you need more instructions, head over to MacRumors to get them.
I will try it out "
