What Is Up Motorola’s Ass?
Back in July, in addition to treating a lot of excited phone enthusiasts with the Droid X, Motorola also threw in an Easter egg that effectively locked down the bootloader in order to prevent people from rooting and flashing custom roms. They went out of their way to do this, developing some near-bulletproof encryption mechanism to poop all over the XDA crowd’s party.
Naturally everybody flipped out, enough so that Motorola issued a statement saying basically Hey we know you guys like to get under the hood with these phones but it’s for your own safety so relax and go to our MOTODEV website, which is sort of like XDA, except it’s not at all like XDA.
Recently Droid X owners were teased with news of a Froyo OTA update but those updates take forever to trickle out so someone, maybe an insider at Motorola or possibly Google, filled the demand and leaked the upgrade so that everyone could get their hands on it tout suite and flash it.
This pissed Motorola off bigtime and now they’re running around stinging every site in sight like MyDroidWorld that’s hosting or linking to this leaked signed rom with cease and desists. Now I’m generally not a fan of articles with question marks in the title, but it’s not a rhetorical question – what is up Motorola’s ass? Anyone? Do any of you know (or can you speculate on) what may be up their ass?
C’mon Motorola, relax that ass and extract your encrypted bootloader from it, along with your cease and desists.
Doug Simmons
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Doug Simmons
Biographical info.. hmm. I have a history of not being able to strike the balance between what is "safe" to put into these forms and what is, in my mind at least, funny. Can't do it.
I’m not siding with them but I get what they’re doing. They want you to enjoy the phone as the phone they provide to you. They even said if you want to play with your phone then get a Nexus. They want their phones treated more mainstream like an unjailbroken iPhone and think (or hope) that the software they provide is up to spec… anyway, I wonder what the percentage of people who jailbreak their iPhones are but I suspect it’s not a huge percentage. We just dwell in a world where we expect it.
So… some guy stole my wallet, right out of my pocket, the other day. I had just enough time while he was running down the street to chuck my Droid at him. Hit him right in the head and I got my wallet back.
When I got home I had a bill from Verizon for using my phone as a “Theft Deterrent Device” and a cease and desist from Motorola for using my phone for something other than what they programmed it for.
Not really, but you get the idea.
Exactly, DavidK. How many iPhone users jailbreak their phones? I bet it’s much less than 1% (probably less than 0.5%). And how many Android users are rooting their phones? Maybe because many new users are WM converts, the number may be 2 or 3%, but certainly no more than 5%.
So let these users have their fun. Even the U.S. Courts says it’s OK. The remaining 95-99.5% of users can take full advantage of their devices as they were intended by the manufacturer without the risks and hassles associated with modifying their devices. And, if the percentages are actually much higher than I suspect, then that’s a direct reflection on the inadequacy of said device (i.e. WM) and the manufacturer has an obligation to address and correct said issues.
I have said it before, but until manufacturers/providers start LOANING me devices at NO COST, get off my back and let me do whatever I want with my device, including wacking would be thief in the head. Motorola’s energy should be directed towards making their devices better, not scolding users for wanting more. If their devices were already perfect (and up to date) no one would need to make any changes.
@Paul:
I think their problem might be that if something goes wrong because of rooting it, like the device gets broken because of bad code, or something, then people have figured out how to restore the bootloader and make it look like they never voided their warranty.
But who am I to speak to Motorola’s intentions.
Let’s see…..
I purchase a car, let’s say a new mustang,…pay cash. It is my car, correct? I decide I want more horsepower and start to modify the motor. This will void the warranty but it is my car and I own it outright. I am OK with losing the warranty. So far so good, right? Nope, the entire electrical system and computer will self destruct upon modification rendering the car totally inoperable because the car is not being used as the car company had originally intended. BULLS@#!.. It is Mine and I have paid for it, If I want to glue astro turf and install a propeller it is my business and mine alone. PERIOD! VOID the warranty, but DO NOT DESTROY my possession. Maybe we need to burn some books while we are at it.
All they are trying to do is to insure revenue stream after purchase. Can you imagine getting into a car that keeps having ad’s pop up every time you start your car?
Total BULL.
There need to be laws prohibiting this nonsense.
I don’t know, but as far as i’m concerned they are shooting themselves in their own foot. I thought they were making a come back from the old RAZR days and was actually planning on getting a droid X, then the locked down bootloader came up and they got kicked right off the list of possible new phones and HTC got my money instead.
Very dumb move Motorola.
Very nice info and right to the point. I don’t know if this is actually the best place to ask but do you folks have any thoughts on where to hire some professional writers? Thanks 🙂