Apple’s Joswiak: We’re not out to get hackers

Apple’s Greg “Joz” Joswiak met with PC Magazine writers yesterday to talk iPods and iPhone, and Sascha Segan of PC Mag’s Gearlog blog has some tidbits, including some vaguely encouraging words about the state of the cold war between Apple and iPhone hackers. (Namely, that there isn’t one.)

I asked him about independent, native software development for the iPhone. He said Apple doesn’t oppose native application development, which was new to me. Rather, Apple takes a neutral stance - they’re not going to stop anyone from writing apps, and they’re not going to maliciously design software updates to break the native apps, but they’re not going to care if their software updates accidentally break the native apps either.

This is actually quite refreshing to hear — it’s that Apple has taken the same attitude toward iPhone hacking at TiVo has toward the hacking of its DVRs. Namely, that while the company isn’t going to worry about maintaining compatibility with the crazy things that hackers are doing on their product, they’re also not going to launch an all-out war on the hackers in an attempt to stop them from doing what they’re doing.

Of course, the best solution would be for Apple to roll out an official developer kit for the iPhone (and for iPod touch as well, of course). I think that day is coming, but until then the hacking community is doing a great job. (These days you can hack your iPhone with a simple, safe Mac installer program: get the details here.)

Category: Hacking

Posted by Jason Snell on Sep 11 2007, 2:52 PM ET

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