Thursday afternoon, Apple released the scheduled update to the iPhone software. And the gadget blogs confirm that it does, as Apple threatened, wreak havoc on modified iPhones. Some phones have indeed been “bricked.” In others, unofficial applications have been disabled. And there are worries that hacking the updated phone will be harder.

And idiots everywhere are griping.

I don’t know why people who want to own an iPhone feel it is somehow their right to hack into it to unlock it from AT&T and use it on another service or for any other reason at all. It is not unusual for a new mobile communications gadget to be attached to one particular service for X number of years before being widely available everywhere. Anyone else remember when the Razr first came out? Besides, when you aren’t using the iPhone on the AT&T service, you lose some of the functionality that makes the iPhone really cool, so what, exactly is the point? Well, the point seems to be the mindset of “I want an iPhone, and I want it now, no matter what!” Status symbol bullshit … wanting to have the coolest gadget right away, even if you have to screw it up to use it. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for anyone out there who now finds themselves in possession of an iPhone-shaped brick.

I want an iPhone too. I do not want to switch back to AT&T/Cingular/whatever-they-are-calling-themselves-this-year. I know that in a year or two, the iPhone will be on the general market and be a phone just like any other that you can get to work with any service (and be cheaper than it has been), and by then, any bugs in the thing will be worked out, or it will vanish forever when something newer and better comes along. Such is the way of cell phones. Patience is your friend. If the iPhone is still the coolest thing going after the initial contract with AT&T, I’ll eventually be able to get one to use on my service. If not, I’ll fall in love with some other mobile communications gadget. I don’t have to have one right now, if it means using AT&T or breaking it. I guess, I am just not that cool and cutting edge.

And while gadget collectors everywhere are screaming at the top of their lungs about how unfair it is for Apple to brick their hacked cell phones and how much harder it is going to be to hack the new software update, there are people in Burma (Myanmar) screaming and dying for freedom, which concerns me far more than a bunch of early-adopting Apple fans paying way too much for a phone only to break it themselves and crying foul when someone holds them to the agreements attached to the use of a stupid electronic device.