It’s amusing to watch Apple behave like Big Brother. For all its counter-culture, ponytailed acolytes, Apple has often been a nasty player, getting away with strong-armed tactics while selling overpriced and underpowered computers.

Now it’s striking back at iPhone owners who had the temerity to break the AT&T monopoly. Slashdot:

It was rumored last week, and Apple has now confirmed it: ‘Apple said today that a firmware update to the iPhone due to be released later this week “will likely result” in SIM-unlocked iPhones turning into very expensive bricks…

So what are users of SIM-unlocked iPhones to do? Not run the latest software update, that’s for sure. Users can instead pray to the hacking deities — the famed iPhone Dev Team that released the free software unlock, and iPhoneSIMfree, which released a commercial software unlock — to write applications that will undo the unlocks, as it were, if those users want to run the latest iPhone software.’”