Let's Give the iPhone Hackers a Big Round of Applause

I'm the kind of guy who rarely bothers to hack my devices. By "hack," I mean use the hacks and instructions of those who are much more intrepid than I. Tinkering with a device that I shelled out hundreds of dollars for, if not more, isn't something I take lightly. If I break it, I've not only lost usage of the device, I'm out of the money, too.

If I had a bigger bank account, I might be more cavalier about it all.

I've poked at my Apple TV, messed around with a first-generation iPhone, and the like, but the only super-useful "hack" I ever bothered with was enabling a white iBook to handle screen spanning between the iBook screen and an attached monitor. I'm not sure if Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) created the screen-spanning limitation because the iBook had a dinky graphics processor or if it was simply a cobbling effort designed to encourage people to buy a pro-grade PowerBook. Or perhaps it was to create differentiation in the product line -- pro vs. consumer models -- which these days is so, you know, quaint.