UPDATED: ZDNet retorts, and says to chill.

ORIGINAL: iLounge (via Engadget) is reporting that the new iPod shuffle ships with headsets that not only include advanced (read: complicated) on-wire controls, but with lock-down chips that may prevent third parties from making compatible alternatives without ponying up licensing fees to Apple. Whether this is a money grab in exchange for technology Apple has patented and feels they deserve compensation for, or just another internet controversy that ultimately goes nowhere isn’t fully understood yet (least not by me!). iLounge says:

This is, in short, a nightmare scenario for long-time iPod fans: are we entering a world in which Apple controls and taxes literally every piece of the iPod purchase from headphones to chargers, jacking up their prices, forcing customers to re-purchase things they already own, while making only marginal improvements in their functionality? It’s a shame, and one that consumers should feel empowered to fight.

When the iPhone 3G came out, there was some noise that the new component and composite video cables that came along with it contained proprietary chips that would prevent 3rd parties from creating cheaper alternatives to the Apple-proper cables.

Launched along with the 2nd generation iPod touch was Apple’s new in-ear headset with mic and remote control, allowing music to be started, stopped, and skipped, along with volume to be controlled right on the headset. They worked not only with the iPod touch, but with the new aluminum unibody MacBook family, and to a lesser degree with the iPhone 3G. Was there a proprietary lock-down chip in those headsets?

Either way, are we sharpening our pitchforks and lighting our torches, or waiting to see how this develops before storming the streets of Cupertino?

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UPDATED: iPod shuffle Signaling Apple Switch to Locked-Down Headphones?

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.

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NBC Universal Wanted iPod & iPhone Take

‘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.

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Class Action Lawsuit vs. Apple

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Magnuson Moss May Not Apply

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.

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Lawyers: Read Up on Magnuson-Moss

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.

Phil Schiller went on the record today, saying that some of the software unlocks can cause damage to the iPhone software. Quoth Schiller, #2 Executive at Apple, in an interview with the New York Times:

“This has nothing to do with proactively disabling a phone that is unlocked or hacked. It’s unfortunate that some of these programs have caused damage to the iPhone software, but Apple cannot be responsible for … those consequences”

Apple’s own press release warns of doom and gloom as well, noting that updates could render an unlocked phone “permanently inoperable.” Their press release is small, so here it is in all of its glory.

Monday September 24, 4:40 pm ET

CUPERTINO, Calif., Sept. 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple has discovered that many of the unauthorized iPhone unlocking programs available on the Internet cause irreparable damage to the iPhone’s software, which will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed. Apple plans to release the next iPhone software update, containing many new features including the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store (www.itunes.com), later this week. Apple strongly discourages users from installing unauthorized unlocking programs on their iPhones. Users who make unauthorized modifications to the software on their iPhone violate their iPhone software license agreement and void their warranty. The permanent inability to use an iPhone due to installing unlocking software is not covered under the iPhone’s warranty.

And it goes without saying that anyone that has applied 3rd party tools (including Installer.app and unlocking tools) will have rendered their warranty null and void. Thankfully, avoiding this issue shouldn’t be difficult. If all you’ve done is 3rd party tools, all you need to do for Apple to not find about your dirty little hacking habit is to restore your Phone.

And, as John McLaughlin of UniquePhones.com notes, reversing the unlock is not out of the realm of possibility; indeed, it’s fairly simple.

“We have reviewed the source code of a number of these applications and to the best of our knowledge any changes made to the software can easily be reversed. After unlocking the iPhone, minimal effort is required to get it in to its previously locked state.”

As noted in this article by Ars Technica, your iPhone could be bricked by an update. Why would you have to worry about that? Well, it turns out that there are two firmwares for your iPhone.

The first firmware is for the computer side of the iPhone. This part is for the computer portion of your iPhone; it’s responsible for putting pictures on the screen, running Safari, or Mail, or the iPod, and a bunch of other stuff. Apple has said that they encourage 3rd party development on this firmware. They’re happy to have apps here, and they don’t have any intention to destroy this happy ecosystem. They acknowledged that they might break it in the future, but it would be out of necessity instead of malice.

The other firmware is for the modem or radio chip. This radio firmware is responsible for doing the heavy lifting on the phone side; it does stuff like contacting cell towers, determining which cell tower gives the best reception, keeping your iPhone connected to the EDGE network, and the like. This firmware is also responsible for determining if the iPhone has been unlocked or not. Apple’s comments with regards to folks playing with this firmware are chilling:

“This is constant cat-and-mouse game. We try to stay ahead. People will try to break in, and it’s our job to stop them breaking in.”

Jobs’ quote indicates to me that Apple is either protecting the revenue stream they get from AT&T subscribers, or that they have a contractual obligation with AT&T to keep the iPhone locked (or both). While we have a legal right to unlock our phones, there’s no law that says Apple can’t re-lock phones with an update. Still, re-locking a phone that someone has unlocked within their legal rights could bring down the wrath of regulators.

It’s true that one way to stop folks from mucking around with their radio firmware is to brick their phone. That would be very heavy-handed (ham-fisted, even); it probably befits Apple much more to simply re-upload locked firmware on unlocked iPhones, or to just let unlocked iPhones slide for the current update, but the method of their response may depend on their contractual obligations with other parties, like AT&T.

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Unlockers: Be Careful With Updates

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.

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Starbucks to Give Away Free iTunes Tracks

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.

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Unlocking Drama: Is it over? (No)

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]

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NBC the Loser in iTunes Spat?

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Video Out on New iPods Now Restricted