Nearly a month ago I wrote:
Rainer Brockerhoff wrote:

So, I’m a 100% percent sure nobody will be able to unlock the iPhone or run third-party applications on it unless Apple opens it up. Here’s why: ARM’s TrustZone…

It’s hard to believe Apple didn’t want to take advantage of TrustZone at all, unless the intention was to publish a complete SDK later. Or perhaps only parts of the hardware are protected; the radio and the camera are possibilities.

A SIM hardware unlock hack was published a few days ago, and today Engadget wrote about two software unlocks. There’s no real confirmation on these yet but I no longer doubt it’s possible. I gather that people managed to write software to clear certain parts of the firmware flash RAM.

To me, this shows conclusively that Apple elected not to use TrustZone at all – just as they, in the past, elected not to use the TPM chips on the first Intel Mac motherboards to lock down Mac OS X to Apple machines. About the latter question, of course we’ll have to wait until the Leopard GM release comes out to be absolutely sure, but I haven’t heard anything about Leopard breaking new grounds regarding such protection. On the other hand, while there are groups of people still busily adapting every new Mac OS X release to run on “generic” PCs, they still seem to be very much in the minority – and for a reason. Normal users want support and Apple hardware quality without having to do complicated hacking and installing.

Coming back to the iPhone, on reflection it makes some sense for Apple to not do an unbreakable protection. Under the current situation, every iPhone software update is a single package; I understand that all apps are updated at the same time and everything except the user’s data is wiped and reset. This allows Apple to ensure that all versions of official software mesh with each other and also gives them the freedom to radically change the system, if necessary, without anybody noticing. Also, this means that the first item in any support procedure will be a reinstall, meaning Apple doesn’t need to worry about what the user may have installed; they’ll have to re-hack again later.

I’ve also heard from people who know people close to the iPhone team that all these efforts are closely watched. No doubt Apple saves some time and money, even if indirectly, by the current situation; it would make securing some future version easier should they deem it necessary.

I also think that not having an iPhone SDK available immediately will have been good in the long term. It’s helping Safari gain browser- and mindshares, and it’s allowing the iPhone’s OS X and built-in applications to become more fully debugged without Apple having to worry about keeping legacy APIs around for prematurely released 3rd-party applications. Yes, those apps will be released with a larger delay than people expected, but they’ll rest on a better foundation. With the hacker’s development toolchain becoming more polished there are now some 3rd-party GUI apps being released, and of course Apple will be adopting some ideas for its own apps and SDK (even in the negative sense of making sure they’ll be doing something differently).

From what I’m seeing, AT&T will be the loser in this situation. Apple will sell some more iPhones – probably not in statistically significant numbers at first – but AT&T will lose some contracts. Apple can demonstrate that they did a reasonable effort to prevent that, and it may not even be illegal for someone to unlock their own phone (it’s probably illegal to set up a business unlocking other people’s phones though). So, AT&T will lose some business to other carriers, as they do with other phones.

I usually don’t believe in sinister Apple agendas, but this may qualify…