Thursday, March 27, 2008

Dancing to the jailbreak rock!






I wasnt too keen on an iPhone since I prefer to separate my phone from personal entertainment, and I didnt want to jailbreak it for use in India since its not worth the hassle of worrying about your phone turning into a brick.  However, I was totally blown away by the iPod Touch, which appeared to be something you could use anywhere in the world and so I picked one up last month. Fairly soon enough, I started to hit some challenges.

  • Apple's firmware updates to the iPod can only be downloaded from their iTunes Store. Their 1.1.4 release includes several useful applications like Mail, Notes, Weather, etc -but Apple is charging an additional Rs. 8000 for the update, which is absurd since its bundled in for the iPhone and is just an attempt to separate man and money.
  • To make things more challenging, Apple doesn't have an iTunes store for Asia - India, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc  (Japan however has a store). So, for someone who's bought an iPod or iPhone from an official Apple store in these countries, you cannot get updates.
  • In effect, this is simply pushing buyers to jailbreak their iPods. 
Sorry Steve - I was gone in 45 seconds.  :-)

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