With everything in the news recently about worlds newest must have gadget, the Apple iPhone is receiving an extremely large amount of attention from all sorts of different people and for all sorts of different reasons. The main focus of this article is to concentrate on just one of those reasons, hacking.

As many of you are probably aware, the Apple iPhone is setup to accept only the AT&T network, and therefore requiring activation with the network (Done through Apple’s iTunes) before the phones true potential can be fully unlocked. However, since the release of the Apple iPhone, numerous groups have dedicated their days to cracking the safe on the phone and unlocking it’s full array of applications and functions.

Recently, Jon Lech Johansen (DVD Jon) figured out a way to bypass the AT&T activation process. However, this left the Apple iPhone with no phone functionality, and was unofficially coined as the “iPDA”.

Since then, groups have been focusing on unlocking the phone to other carriers/networks as well as trying to find a way to run”homebrew” software on the device. A recent report has claimed that a user managed to bypass the security in place, and run a simple “Hello World” application on the iPhone. If this claim is true, it is truly a large step forward for the hackers.

However, the reason I am posting this article is to ask whether or not the Apple iPhone’s lockdown is justified? With a price tag of around $400~$500, should we be receiving a piece of technology that is limited to the software it came with, when it has the potential to do so much more?

I cannot argue on a legal perspective, as I have no experience in that field, however I can argue the fact that being able to install and use third party applications on the device would cause no harm to Apple or AT&T, and that it would in fact increase the overall popularity and user base of the phone.

Still, it remains to be said that in time it will come. The hackers will eventually break through the barricades of the Apple iPhone, as they did with the Nintendo DS, Sony PSP and many other similar devices.  It is just a matter of time.

Please let me know what you think about the lockdown that Apple have placed on the phone and whether or not you feel it truly is a justified decision.