Intro and Background

Introduction

Since its creation in 1973, the mobile phone has made boundless leaps in technological advancements. Today most people have what are called “smartphones” which can surf the web, play music, text, take pictures, gain access to thousands of apps, email, and multi-task. One of the most innovative smart phones to ever be created is the iPhone. The purpose of this paper is to explore the iPhone since its release in 2007 and how it has revolutionized the technological world. The benefits, legal and ethical issues, and security issues of the iPhone will also be reviewed.

Background

In the beginning, CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs, wanted engineers to begin exploring with touch screens. Apple worked in collaboration with AT&T in secret to develop the device at an estimated $150 million over three months (iPhone). The iPhone was then first released on June 29, 2007 and continues to be the fastest-growing smart phone. Hundreds and even thousands of people lined stores to be the first to get their hands on this groundbreaking device (Pandya, 2008). Being the first of its kind the iPhone immediately out did its competitors from Nokia, Motorola, and LG. About three and a half million iPhones were sold in the United States within the first six weeks of being released (Pandya, 2008). Then on July 11, 2008, Apple released the iPhone 3G in twenty-two countries and less than a year later the iPhone 3GS was released.

The original iPhone had an aluminum back and a black plastic accent.  Then, the iPhone 3G was made with a plastic back available in either black or white followed by the 3GS model in similar fashion. The current iPhone 4 has an aluminosilicate glass front and back with a stainless steel band edge serving as the antennae (Apple, 2011). The iPhone 4 has a 960-by-640 backlit LCD display with a pixel density of 326 pixels per inch. Apple engineers developed the A4 chip which allows the iPhone to multitask, edit video, and place FaceTime calls all while maximizing battery life (Apple, 2011). With the iPhone you can access the internet, send emails, download songs, applications, games, and watch movies and television shows. The phone has two built in microphones, a speaker, and multi-touch display and software. The iPhone 4 is only 9.3 millimeters thick and 4.5 inches tall (Apple, 2011). It is simply one of the most amazing and advanced smart phones ever created.

Potential Benefits

The iPhone has a vast amount of benefits for its users that has improved with each generation. It is an all in one product broken down into three components: a cellular phone, multimedia, and the internet (Pandya, 2008). The iPhone serves as a phone just like its name suggests. The latest version, iPhone 4, allows for videoconferencing and audio conferencing thanks to its revolutionary camera placed in the front of the phone. In thanks to the camera in the front video calling with friends and family is also possible. Apple calls this “FaceTime” where with a Wi-Fi connection someone can use the web cam to see and chat with another via the iPhones display (Apple, 2011).  Other features include call holding, call merging, caller ID, and voice control. Users can also customize ringtones from songs purchased on their iTunes for a small additional fee (iPhone).

The iPhone serves as a multimedia device unlike any other. It has a music library that resembles an iPod. The library is sorted alphabetically (except playlists which are sorted how they appear in iTunes) by songs, artists, albums, playlists, genres, composers, podcasts, audiobooks, and compilations. When the iPhone gets turned on its side a feature called cover flow appears and the album covers pop up in a horizontal landscape that can be scrolled through with the users touch. With the shake of the phone the songs will shuffle themselves and when a call comes in the music fades out so the user can take the call. When the call ends the music fades back to playing again (iPhone).

Like the iPod the iPhone plays movies, music videos, and television shows on a stunning 3.5-inch screen retina display in 960-by-640 resolution that will blow your mind for a hand held device. HD recording and editing is also possible along with a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash to capture crisp detailed photos (Apple, 2011). The phone has two microphones, one at the top edge and the other being at the bottom. The top microphone is used when recording videos and the lower is for speaking on the phone.  The nice feature is that during conversation the top microphone gathers ambient sound for noise-cancellation (Snell, 2010).

Then there is the app and iTunes store which gives users access to literally thousands of applications. More specifically there are 350,000 apps and counting and a large portion are free (Apple, 2011). Apps can be found in categories such as: books, business, education, games, medical, navigation, social networking, sports, travel, and more. Apps can be used to play games, find restaurants, connect with friends, and learn. The phone can even be used in work with the “level” app as a carpenter’s level (Goggin, 2009).  The opportunities are endless. ITunes lets users download their favorite songs, movies, and television shows all from their iPhone and watch them in stunning clarity (Apple, 2011).

Thanks to the iOS 4 operating system the iPhone 4 is incredibly easy to navigate with the touch of a swipe, drag, pinch, flick, tap, or twist. The iOS 4 is based off Mac’s most advanced computer operating system, Mac OS X. Performance is faster than ever and allows for multitasking. Owners can use third-party apps and switch between them without having to wait for them to load again. The apps will remember exactly where the user left off whatever they were doing (Apple, 2011). Users can also have a conversation on the phone while simultaneously be surfing the web or checking email. The iPhone 4 has GPS apps that allow you to continue doing other activities on the phone while still giving directions in the background. As if all the features of the iPhone 4 were not enough the phone works all over the world. Users can easily switch between languages and the keyboard is software based so owners can select from 50 different layouts with language specific characters (Apple, 2011). The iPhone is also accessible by just about everyone. It has built-in voiceover screen-reading technology that allows those who are blind or low vision to hear a description of what they are touching on the screen (Apple, 2011).
For a review of the latest iPhone check out the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsb89LOS4fI

Legal and Ethical Issues

One legal aspect that was found through research was by a man Adam Gershowitz who wrote an article called, The iPhone Meets the Fourth Amendment. In his article Gershowitz (2008) goes through a hypothetical scenario where a pretend defendant was pulled over for running a stop sign.  The officer feels this suspect is suspicious, but has done nothing illegal except drive recklessly. However, the offense is arrest able and because the officer is suspicious the officer places the suspect under arrest for running the stop sign.

Gershowitz (2008) goes on to talk about how under the search incident to arrest doctrine, officers are permitted to search the suspect’s body for weapons or contraband. The doctrine is automatic and allows the officer to open containers even without probable cause and this suspect has an iPhone in his pocket. The officer removes said iPhone and begins to search through the contacts, call history, emails, pictures, movies, or even the browsing history from the internet of the suspect. The officer not only finds financial, personal, and embarrassing information, but he also finds incriminating photos of stolen contraband and emails evidencing drug transactions (Gershowitz, 2008). Gershowitz (2008) asks the question of whether all of this is permissible in the court of law even though the suspect is arrested for a traffic violation and there was no probable cause or a warrant to search the phone.

            With the iPhones huge success and large popularity millions of Americans will have an iPod on them. But where is the line crossed when cops search iPhones? Should they be limited to just scanning the display screen or should they be allowed to go deeper? Should web browsing history and emails be searchable? Gershowitz (2008) acknowledges that the founders of the Fourth Amendment could not have for seen such a technologically advanced device. And that for now the Fourth Amendment would still uphold such an incidence as described earlier because the Supreme Court in 1914 said the government has the right “to search the person of the accused when legally arrested, to discover and seize the fruits or evidences of crime” (Gershowitz, 2008).

security

Apple designed the iPhone as a “closed” system that won’t allow the installation of third-party applications. This restricts users to the factory-installed tools of the file system called a “sandbox” where they can add and remove music and other files through iTunes (Pandya, 2008). This restriction irritated iPhone users which prompted users to hack or “jailbreak” the iPhone. This meant that third-party applications or gadgets could be permitted by allowing read/write access to the root file system (Pandya, 2008). Once the phone has been hacked it leads to unlocking the phone which allows the phone to be used by any wireless carrier and not just AT&T. Within the first six months of its release nearly a million iPhones were jailbroken and unlocked. Once unlocked the serious issues begin to arise.

Researchers at Independent Security Evaluators examined vulnerabilities with the software and were able to perform malicious attacks. In the first attack when a malicious HTML document was visited using Safari, “the iPhone was forced to make a connection to an outbound compromised server controlled by the attackers” (Pandya, 2008). The attackers could then secretively obtain personal information including contacts, call history, text messages, voice mails, passwords, and even emails.  The dangerous part about the attack is that it was carried out with ease. The author Pandya (2008) mentions that all it takes is for a link to a compromised web site to be sent via email and the iPhone owner would be lured into it and that is all it would take to obtain the user’s personal information. In 2010 however, the Library of Congress legalized the hacking known as “jailbreaking” which allows users to legally hack into their devices and run apps not permitted by iTunes (Schwartzel, 2010).

conclussion

The iPhone has come a very long way since its release on June 29, 2007. The first generation was revolutionary for its time and shocked the world with its innovation. Since then three more generations have emerged: the iPhone 3G, 3GS, and iPhone 4. Each surpassing its predecessor, the iPhone 4 is by far the best of the four generations. Other phones will try to compete with the iPhone but they will simply not win. The iPhone has one of the best resolution screens on the market, a long lasting ten hour battery, can surf the internet even during a call, has multiple cameras for FaceTime and HD recording, an endless App and iTunes store, can multitask as well as perform extremely fast due to its iOS4 operating system, and not to mention is also an iPod capable of 32GB of storage. While there are some legal and security issues this machine is everything anyone needs all in one package.

references

References

Apple. (2011). iPhone. Features. Retrieved March 1, 2011 from http://apple.com/iphone/features

This Reference is Apple’s website that gives all the details and specifications for Apple products like the iPhone.

Gershowitz, A. M. (2008). The iPhone meets the Fourth Amendment. Selected Works, 1-6.

Retrieved March 1, 2011 from http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=adam_gershowitz

This reference is an article written by an associate professor from South Texas College of Law about how the Fourth Amendment applies to the searching of iPhones in the eye of the law.

Goggin, G. (2009). Adapting the mobile phone: the iphone and its consumption. Continuum:

Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 23 (2), 238. Retrieved March 1, 2011 from

http://ehis.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?hid=6&sid=dfae2f7e-f7ea-4208-af08-41a3974e8e8a%40sessionmgr112&vid=12

iPhone. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved March 2, 2011 from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone#cite_note-Wired_Untold-3

This reference is about the iPhone and its history with well over 200 references.

Pandya, V. R. (2008). IPhone security analysis. A Project Report Presented to the Faculty of the

Department of Computer Science San Jose University. 9-11, 13-14, 32.

Retrieved March 1, 2011 from

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.150.7555&rep=rep1&type=pdf

This reference is a research paper written by a student going for his Master in Computer Science at San Jose University. It is about the jailbreaking and unlocking of the iPhone and the security issues along with it.

Schwartzel, E. (2010). iPhone hacking becomes legalized: Library of Congress Oks

‘jailbreaking’. McClatchy – Tribune Business News. Retrieved March 1, 2011 from http://mutex.gmu.edu:2048/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=2093019531&sid=16&Fmt=3&clientId=31810&RQT=309&VName=PQD

This reference is from a newspaper article about how the Library of Congress legalized ‘jailbreaking’ of cellular devices like the iPhone.

Snell, J. (2010). iPhone 4. Macworld, 27(9), 42-44. Retrieved March 1, 2011 from

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?hid=119&sid=692d6d7c-6595-4cc9-9d5e-92b678f60885%40sessionmgr110&vid=3&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=53391521

This reference is an article written for the magazine Macworld about the positive and negatives of the iPhone 4.