14 DAY TRIAL // An Apple employee working in the iPhone Development Department has leaked some valuable information regarding Apple’s upcoming plans with locked iPhone 4 devices, an unseen face of the one of the most prominent iOS 4 features - FaceTime calls, and more.
In what the people at Addictive Tips call shocking information, the aforementioned Apple staffer (called “Alpha” in the report) revealed that AT&T is now able to lock all US iPhone owners to their network via regular OTA (over the air) updates; that AT&T shipped some iPhone 4 devices early to verify their OTA update system; that Apple is downright stealing user information via FaceTime, because of lacking encryption; and that some Apple staffers are not updating to iOS 4, simply because they are aware of this situation.
In iOS 4 there is a line of code which sends OTA updates to the user every 7-14 days, according to Alpha. This allegedly enables Apple to detect and lock the system if it is not using the AT&T network. The employee claims Apple and the US provider of wireless services have 6 months worth of OTA updates in their server. He claims that even when users call Apple Care Support, all information is displayed. This includes whether a device is jailbroken, baseband version and other such tidbits. The staff has been allegedly instructed to treat these customers differently, since they broke the contract rule.
On the FaceTime topic, Alpha explains that, “The issue is with Wifi is that anyone can get on a Wifi Signal and potentially see what the viewers and broadcasters are looking at without them know, now Apple will deny this and say its not our problem you where not on a secure connection, in my mind I think that its all [expletive]”.
“People should be able to have some type of security during those calls”, he adds. “Worst yet is once a person connects to another person on FaceTime it for some reason non of us in the office can figure out, sends us APPLE a message and says those two people are connecting via Facetime and gives out their location to us. So for whatever reason we need that information just blows my mind. As a consumer why would you need to let Apple know that you are connecting with a person via FaceTime, its non of Apple’s business”.
Alpha allegedly decided to leak this information because he simply didn’t think Apple had any right to do these things. “Its their property once it leaves our retail stores and people need to know what they are getting into”, he concluded.