NYT on unlocking phones

Here's a quick link over to today's New York Times article on phone unlocking, which raises a couple of interesting (not to say off-base) points. First, Nokia claims that the current "Open to Anything" ad campaign is not directly aimed at the iPhone... right.

Second, writer Cyrus Farivar characterizes the 1.11 bricking situation thusly:

Apple has tried to thwart the practice [of unlocking] by updating the operating system software, which rendered any updated and unlocked phone useless. But rogue programmers were quickly back at it, and they say they have created software that makes it possible to break the newly updated software lock on the iPhone...

This has been discussed in various venues, but in my humble opinion the 1.11 update was in all likelihood not a deliberate attempt to disable phones; rather, the brickage was an unfortunate side effect. Farivar's phrasing implies an intent on Apple's part to "render phones useless" that may not have been there.