Apple Fans Mad After New Firmware 1.1.1 Was Released

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 29, 2007

Yesterday, Apple released firmware 1.1.1, an application that “neutered the handset” according to Gizmodo.

One of the reasons why iPhone reached popularity so swiftly wasn’t just the technology built-in, but because of the opportunity that software developers had to modify the console.

This is why Gizmodo rated the iPhone from “Wait” in July 2007 to “Buy” and now switched reviews to “‘Don’t hold your breath.’ I’m done with this handset until third-party apps come back.”

Why did Apple release this firmware? It is believed that there are third-party applications that aid in unlocking the iPhone so that it would work with other telecommunications providers. Currently Apple shares profits with AT&T exclusively for the iPhone.

“Programs like the faux-GPS, IM clients, Flickr Upload, and NES emulator –what did they ever do but make the iPhone far better than the stock original They made it far more competitive with open-platform superphones like the Nokia N95, to which I will now be switching” wrote Gizmodo’s Brian Lam.

“I flew back from NY to SF today. While there, I would have liked to have pushed my photos from the trip to flickr; I would have liked to have played NES games on the subway. I would have liked to have used the Navizon GPS thing to figure out where the hell I was at any given moment, and when I used one of those web 2.0 IM clients, my battery took a huge hit, and I missed a lot of messages because Safari couldn’t tell me I was getting IMs while out of the browser. Very annoying.”

The firmware is known to brick some of the phones that have applications installed on them. Many phones with these applications aren’t repairable after third-party applications on them for now. The new term for these phones that don’t work after the firmware update is called: iBricks now.