Many theorised what Apple's response might be to those who choose to hack or unlock their iPhones - remote locks, being banned from upcoming feature upgrades and other devious tricks were suggested - but until now there was no real evidence that the Cupertino crew would actually do anything if they came into contact with an obviously tampered handset. Steve Jobs himself pretty much dismissed the matter of unlocked iPhones at the mobile's recent UK launch, commenting that it was simply a game of cat & mouse in which Apple attempted to stay one step ahead of the hackers.
A colleague of ZDNet writer Jason D. O'Grady had an unpleasant experience of being the mouse, however, when he recently took an iPhone displaying the green tinted camera issue back to an Apple store. The handset, less than two weeks old, did not meet with a warm welcome on return to the family home:
"Because it had been “hacked” with some 3rd party apps and was running T-Mobile they refused to service it, said the warranty was voided and “blacklisted” the phone against future service, or return!"
Only after paying a 10-percent "restocking fee" and a number of conversations with the manager did they grudgingly agree to accept it and issue a refund. O'Grady suggests doing a full restore and putting back your original AT&T SIM should you need to take your iPhone back in (let's hope that the issue demanding return doesn't prevent you from doing that!) which seems a sensible course of action.
Apple's Terms & Conditions - already highlighted as being confusing even to legal professionals - do strictly prohibit either tampering with the iPhone or using a carrier other than AT&T, but of course that hasn't stopped the legions of hackers either seeking to release it from the network or add third-party software.
Good for Apple. They had every right to refuse to service the phone.
Of course, the guy who brought it back is just a little less smart than the phone itself. ;)
Way to go Jason ! It took guts to bring it in hacked ! We don’t want no generically monofied Apples !
What’s next, somebody is going to bring in hacked and loaded with pirated games PSP? Jeez….
Too bad they ended up caving in. I’d have told him to get bent! You choose to risk it, you get to live with the consequences.
Easy guys… you obviously don’t have a need to unlock your phone like us up here in Vermont, where AT&T will cut us off after six consistent months of use on their partnered carrier Unicel. Yeah, people make choices, but who doesn’t know that?
Guess some people need to state the obvious and try and make others feel their own pain for whatever it hurting them… so yur just gonna do it any way aren’t you?
if i hacked mean if something happen i will repair it , forget abt i may start repair center call “iRepair” :)