Under The Microscope

Corporate Schizophrenia

Two quotes, from the very same article discussing jailbreaking the iPhone and yesterday’s Copyright Office announcement:

According to Apple, the company’s support department already receives “literally millions of reported instances of problems flowing from jailbroken phones.”

Translation: Don’t affirm that jailbreaking is legal. People think it’s illegal now, and it’s a huge problem already!

“As we’ve said before, the vast majority of customers do not jailbreak their iPhones…”

Translation: No one is jailbreaking anyway, so who cares if it’s legal?

4 Responses to “Corporate Schizophrenia”

  1. Steven says:

    I think you’re trying to point out a contradiction that doesn’t exist.

    Assume there are 100 million iOS devices. Assume 10% of those are jailbroken. Of those, 20% have had problems reported to Apple. This makes for millions of reported problems from a small minority.

    Maybe they meant something like “The vast majority of customers don’t jailbreak, but we have millions of reported problems from the minority that do.”

    Sources:
    100 million devices: http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/07/ios/
    10% jailbreak: http://www.saurik.com/id/12


  2. Paul Kafasis says:

    Steven: I have to disagree. 10% of a user base is really not the opposite of “the vast majority”. But without getting into numbers (since we don’t really know them), they are both inflating the severity of this issue, and downplaying it. I find that contradictory.

    I could further dissect the first comment – “literally millions of reported instances of problems flowing from jailbroken phones” is, almost without question, bunk. I’d wager nearly all of those are simply automated sending of crash reports. most of which have 0 to do with the jailbreaking. Few people who jailbreak are going to be contacting Apple manually for help – certainly not millions.

    As for the comments, we don’t pay much attention to moderating, as comments are seldom held. Sorry about that.


  3. LD says:

    You are making a huge logical leap in order to support your preconceived opinion it seems.

    Apple could most certainly have things such as crash reports that show millions of problems on jailbroken iOS devices, and possibly even caused by programs/features enabled by the jailbreak. How could you credibly say their statement is bunk? You even state you don’t know the numbers, so why should you be able to say it’s “without question, bunk”?

    At the same time, it’s very true that the vast majority of users don’t jailbreak. Do you deny that?

    I see no contradiction nor schizophrenia. All I see is someone with an odd love/hate relationship with Apple.


  4. Paul Kafasis says:

    LD: Apple could have crash reports showing problems with jailbroken devices, yes. But knowing a little something about how the OS works, and what jailbreaking actually does and changes (very little), I can credibly state that their claims are at best a poor misdirect and at worst, “almost without question, bunk” (that was some nice selective quoting, by the way)

    And yes, as I clearly expressed, I believe: “10% of a user base is really not the opposite of “the vast majority”.

    Apple is simultaneously playing up the number of people jailbreaking to the government when it serves their purpose there, while playing it down for the press, as it serves their purposes there.

    As far as the love/hate relationship goes, of course, that’s right on the money.


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