Hah! Shanzhai technology laughs at your deliberately restrictive devices!

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Un programmeur chinois de 22 ans et son grand frère défient le géant technologique américain Apple. Pan Yong et Pan Lei, installés à Shenzhen dans le sud-est du pays, ont inventé un accessoire transformant l'iPod Touch, lecteur multimédia permettant aussi de naviguer sur Internet, en un iPhone. L'Apple Peel - "épluchure de pomme" - comporte une batterie et un port pour carte SIM. Il s'installe sur l'iPod Touch aussi simplement qu'un étui de protection et ajoute les fonctions d'appel et d'envoi de textos. Déjà, sur la populaire plate-forme de commerce en ligne Taobao, des vendeurs proposent l'adaptateur à la réservation, sans donner de délai de livraison. Le prix annoncé est de 388 yuans (environ 45 euros). En Chine, un tel produit a tout pour séduire. L'iPod Touch est vendu officiellement à un peu moins de 1 600 yuans (183 euros), tandis que les prix de l'iPhone commencent à 4 500 yuans (515 euros), une fortune pour la plupart des consommateurs. "Je ne pouvais pas me payer un iPhone, alors j'ai essayé d'utiliser mon iPod pour passer des appels et envoyer des textos, c'est tout", a confié Pan Yong au quotidien de Hongkong South China Morning Post. L'entreprise que lui et son frère ont créée, Yosion Technology, devra composer avec le droit de la propriété intellectuelle, à défaut d'avoir une licence de la firme de Steve Jobs. Pour Apple, la Chine, premier marché de téléphonie mobile mondial avec 800 millions d'utilisateurs, est un casse-tête. L'iPad n'est pas sorti officiellement et, si elle pourrait être distribuée prochainement, la tablette a déjà fait son entrée sur le marché gris. L'iPhone n'a été lancé qu'en septembre 2009, soit deux ans après sa sortie américaine, après de laborieuses négociations avec les opérateurs, dépourvu de WiFi et alors que de nombreux intéressés s'étaient déjà fournis via Hongkong. L'invention de Pan Yong est, elle, compatible avec les normes de téléphonie occidentales et dispose du WiFi. CONTREFAÇON INNOVANTE L'Apple Peel est le dernier-né de la culture du "Shanzhai", la contrefaçon innovante, et du "hack", le détournement technologique, répandu en Chine auprès de consommateurs ne pouvant s'offrir les produits vantés par la publicité. Cette sous-culture peut à son tour être source de créativité. "Beaucoup d'entreprises observent cette "innovation à la base" car elles se rendent bien compte que leurs produits, qui sont de grande consommation dans les pays riches, sont des produits de luxe dans les pays émergents. C'est le cas de l'iPhone. A défaut de se l'offrir, les gens essayent d'avoir le produit le plus proche", constate Benjamin Joffe, fondateur de Plus Eight Star, société de conseil stratégique sur les innovations numériques en Asie. "Cette histoire est intéressante car c'est l'une des rares fois où les consommateurs occidentaux se sentent aussi concernés par une innovation initialement destinée au marché émergent chinois pour répondre à un besoin de réduction des coûts", poursuit M. Joffe. Les frères Pan n'ont pour le moment sorti qu'un millier d'unités de leur Apple Peel mais songent à accélérer la production de masse. Car leur innovation est déjà copiée sur le marché chinois.

L'iPod transformé en iPhone : le casse-tête chinois d'Apple - LeMonde.fr

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Heuh? What about IP? I guess it's OK in China. Who's going to be able to do anything about it? But if Western customers buy counterfeited goods from China, I suspect Steve Jobs would be delighted in sending in the dogs...

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I was wondering whether there was an IP issue here. I mean it's just an add-on. If you want you can recharge your i-pod with a non-Apple-produced charger or whatever (though I wouldn't recommend it - if you tell the sales people that they look at you like you slapped a monkey abortion on the counter). I guess the real problem would be the apps that make it function.

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Apple has applied for a patent covering an elaborate series of measures to automatically protect iPhone owners from thieves and other unauthorized users. But please withhold the applause. The patent, titled “Systems and Methods for Identifying Unauthorized Users of an Electronic Device,” would also protect Apple against jailbreaks and other unauthorized hacks to the device, which were recently excepted from copyright enforcement. The application, which was filed in February and published Thursday, specifically describes the identification of “hacking, jailbreaking, unlocking, or removal of a SIM card” so that measures can be taken to counter the user. Possible responses include surreptitiously activating the iPhone's camera, geotagging the image and uploading it to a server and transmitting sensitive data to a server and then wiping it from the device. Rest assured that this jailbreaking identification, the application would have us believe, is simply a means of protecting owners from unauthorized users. “Access to sensitive information such as credit card information, social security numbers, banking information, home addresses, or any other delicate information can be prohibited,” the application states. “In some embodiments, the sensitive information can be erased from the electronic device. For example, the sensitive information can be erased directly after an unauthorized user is detected.” But elsewhere, the patent betrays ulterior motives that are considerably more self serving. “An activity that can detect an unauthorized user can be any action that may indicate the electronic device is being tampered with by being, for example, hacked, jailbroken, or unlocked,” the patent continues. “For example, a sudden increase in memory usage of the electronic device can indicate that a hacking program is being run and that an unauthorized user may be using the electronic device. “'Jailbreaking' of an electronic device can generally refer to tampering with the device to allow a user to gain access to digital resources that are normally hidden and protected from users. 'Unlocking' of a cellular phone can generally refer to removing a restriction that 'locks' a cellular phone so it may only be used in specific countries or with specific network providers. Thus, in some embodiments, an unauthorized user can be detected if it is determined that the electronic device is being jailbroken or unlocked.” The application describes plenty of bells and whistles. They include voice-printing of the owner to detect unauthorized users (what could possibly go wrong with that?), activating the accelerometer to detect if thieves are in transit – even a “heartbeat sensor.” Ignoring the possibility that a false positive in Apple's proposed theft protection might activate the spy cam while the user is in the bath, or in the middle of some other intimate moment, this technology seems Orwellian for another reason: It gives Steve jobs and Co. the means to retaliate when iPhones aren't being used in ways Cupertino doesn't expressly permit. But remember, it's for your own good. ®

Apple eyes kill switch for jailbroken iPhones ? The Register

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Rest assured that this jailbreaking identification, the application would have us believe, is simply a means of protecting owners from unauthorized users.

And if the owner is the unauthorized user? Protecting you from yourself?

I really don't see why apple care about JailBreaking, it makes there product better at no additional cost to them. And at any rate, if they were better at developing there product there'd be no need for jailbreaking in the first place.

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