Hacker-Friendly Hardware
It's not just Web sites and services that are more hackable than ever. Time was when Intel and AMD were at odds with PC enthusiasts who overclocked the chip makers' CPUs to push them to a higher level of performance. Today, however, both companies sell chips designed with overclocking in mind.
Even hardware companies that don't build explicitly hacker-friendly features into their products often help out hackers in other ways. Opening up a TiVo DVR box, for example, voids its warranty. Even so, the company's support forums are full of open discussion among its customers on do-it-yourself topics such as how to perform hard-drive upgrades. In an earlier era, you might have expected TiVo to censor such valuable chatter off its site.
In short, tech companies have become surprisingly tolerant of hacks (at least ones that don't involve circumventing copy protection or compromising security). So it was startling when Apple announced back in January that it intended the iPhone to run only client applications that the company designed itself, a decidedly hacker-hostile move. "You don't want your phone to be an open platform," Steve Jobs told Newsweek's Steven Levy.
Speak for yourself, Steve. The moment that the iPhone hit the street on June 29, hackers went to work on it, determining how to add useful features that Apple had left out, such as a capability to use the phone as a modem for a laptop. That's hacking at its best. And imagine what hackers could do if Apple decided to help, rather than hobble, the folks who seek to make the iPhone better for all of us.
Have favorite hacks of your own for the products you rely on? Drop me a line at harry_mccracken@pcworld.com and share them--I'm all ears.
Photograph: Robert CardinOn August 2, I had the privilege of representing PC World as we received one of the nicest compliments anyone has ever given us: At the Azbee Awards in New York City, the American Society of Business Publication Editors named PCWorld.com as its Web Publication of the Year. The judges called our site "well-organized, authoritative, informative, and entertaining," and singled out our videos for praise. As you can imagine, we're blushing.
The 43-year-old ASBPE gives awards for both magazines and Web sites. We won 13 national honors in all, including gold ones for Anush Yegyazarian's Tech.gov column "Censorship, Human Rights, and Capitalism" and for our product reviews.
Read Editor in Chief Harry McCracken's blog.
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