iPhone Background Calls Home..
7 August, 2008 Posted by
SolSie As
iPhone,News
(2) Comment
This should raise some eyebrows, Apple has apparently included a mechanism in iPhone OS 2.x through which the device can phone home, check for unauthorized applications, and eventually disable them.
Apple actually posted a list of these “unauthorized applications” HERE!.
According to Jonathan Zdziarski, author of the book iPhone Open Application Development and an iPhone forensics manual:
“This suggests that the iPhone calls home once in a while to find out what applications it should turn off. At the moment, no apps have been blacklisted, but by all appearances, this has been added to disable applications that the user has already downloaded and paid for, if Apple so chooses to shut them down.” [Via Cnet]
So does this mean that if a software house doesn’t pay Apple their due commission the iPhone will kill the app?
Or if Apple gets a better deal with one developer than another for – say – a PIM program, they’ll kill the first one?
Frightening. That 1984 Mac ad during the Super Bowl was, evidently, fairly prescient.
Although evidence of the capability is present, Apple has not shown clearly its intention.
This could be just a deterrent measure