There is an article over at Macnn that gives a few good reasons why the bricking may not have been intentional. First they start with a pretty good previous example of Apple’s possible intentions with the iPhone from Apple’s original Mac that had no expansion slots because they wanted to avoid the lockups caused by adding random expansion hardware.

They even have a quote of good old Steve saying that “The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn’t work anymore. These are more like iPods than they are like computers.” That’s a pretty good point, I mean packing so much functionality into a device already increases the chances of the function you need most at a given time not working due to use of another, like the battery being dead when you try to make a phone call because you were listening to music all day.

There are several quotes from Erica Sadun at TUAW too where she states that she doesn’t think the bricking was intentional and then gives evidence why, primarily the similar effects the update had on some un-hacked iPhones. It’s a good read, I recommend you hit it up whether you agree that it wasn’t intentional or not.

Article: iPhones not ‘bricked’ out of spite [via macnn]