by Vincent Ferrari
Apple Phone Show Producer

On This Week in Tech and on his blog, Leo Laporte insisted that this analogy is very similar to what Apple is doing with the iPhone:

Let’s say you’re selling me a cow. You tell me that that cow is being sold for the express purpose of making milk. I agree, and buy the cow.

Later I decide that I’d prefer to make cheese. You say that’s a violation of our agreement and kill my cow.

When I paid for the cow it became my property, to do with as I please. If you don’t like how I’m using it you may choose not to do any further business with me but you don’t get to kill my cow.

And, by the way, warning me you’d kill my cow if I keep making cheese doesn’t make it all right.

The lawyers will point out that contractually I agreed to your terms. True. But I don’t think the contract said anything about killing the cow did it?

Apple’s sole redress is to halt all support of my phone. If we let Apple destroy our property for not following the rules we’re telling the music industry it’s ok to destroy a hard drive containing illegal songs, the cable company to fry our TVs for stealing cable. That is vigilante justice and a direct threat to the rule of law.

First of all, Leo’s example is not the same thing. Roger Chang gave a very good example of one that would be, however, so I’m going to adapt it so that it’s exactly the same thing.

Let’s say I sell you a cow. Along with the cow, I tell you I’m going to provide food for the cow for a monthly cost. You can do what you want with the cow (ie: make cheese, yogurt, or ice cream), but your cow must eat my food because it’s a special kind of cow. You sign the agreement that I’ll be your exclusive cow food provider.

You discover, by means of a veterinarian, that if you give your cow an injection, suddenly it can eat any food it wants and you start feeding your cow a new kind of food without my prior approval and stop buying my food altogether.

One day, I come out with a new kind of food guaranteed to make your cow stronger, happier, produce more milk, and so on. You decide to go back to the food I’m selling, and as soon as you feed your cow, it dies. Why? Because the combination of the shot you gave it and the food you were feeding it did damage to its digestive system and made it unable to digest my food causing it to die.

Who’s responsible?

If you had upheld your end of the bargain (ie: buying the cow at a certain price with the caveat that you use my food) all would be right with the world. If you had kept feeding you cow the unauthorized food, all would be right with the world. If you violate your agreement with me, and still want to go about like you didn’t, then things are going to break, and that’s what happened with the iPhone.

Leo’s argument doesn’t hold water.

Apple didn’t force anyone to update their hacked and locked unlocked iPhone. They didn’t come onto your phone and turn it off; you had to willingly go to iTunes and update your phone. In order to do that, you had to avoid numerous warnings from every website under the sun as well as big bold letters in that box that everyone clicks next on. Here’s the point: Do what you want with your cow, but don’t expect me not to kill it with the food that I give all the other cows I’ve sold.

Apple didn’t kill your cow. Apple gave all the other cows new food and yours died from it because you fed it other food as well. Whether or not your cow dying or your iPhone bricking sucks is immaterial. Of course it does, but in the end whether or not it sucks is meaningless.

Enough cow talk. If you like the iPhone, kudos. If you don’t like the iPhone, move along. If you want to hack it, hack it, just don’t complain when stuff breaks. Oddly enough, no one mentions that the original hacks were all based on a flaw in the modem’s baseband. Flaw patched. Hacks broken. That’s where it ends.

Next time, don’t change food on your cows, and if you do, don’t go back to using the old food.

You might just kill your cow.