Rampant reports of bricked iPhones may be just typical start-up product issues instead of intentional deactivations by Apple.
In fact, it may be less painful for Apple to let people believe the bricking is purposeful rather than admit the software under that capacitive touch screen is not quite perfect yet.
According to an article at wired ...
beautiful as it is, the iPhone isn't finished -- its OS is a hack, rushed out to meet Jobs' demanding product deadlines.
... Erica Sadun, a technical writer and blogger at TUAW.com who contributed to an iPhone unlocking application, said Apple's update wasn't designed to disable hacked devices. Just the opposite: Sadun thinks Apple worked hard not to brick iPhones -- even hacked ones.
"It wasn't intentional at all," she said. "If they wanted to brick hacked iPhones, they could have done a much better job of it."
Sadun said the software update disabled some hacked phones because it was a "troublesome update" -- it even caused problems with iPhones that hadn't been touched. "They messed up," she said.
That makes more sense to me than believing Apple could not be 100% effective at deactivating an iPhone that has been tampered with in any way. Permanent deactivation probably requires nothing more complex than clearing the appropriate bit in the static RAM.
