Apple I- Phone

Apple postpones China retail launch of iPhone 4S after unruly crowd rages in Beijing [u]

By Josh Ong

Published: 07:00 PM EST (04:00 PM PST)

After an unruly crowd disrupted the release of Apple's iPhone 4S at its flagship location in Beijing, Apple has decided to postpone the sale of its best-selling handset at its official retail locations in China, though the device will still be available through its carrier partner and authorized resellers [updated].

Update: Apple has confirmed in a statement to AllThingsD that it will delay sales of the iPhone 4S at retail locations in Beijing and Shanghai.

?The demand for iPhone 4S has been incredible, and our stores in China have already sold out,? an Apple spokesperson told the publication. ?Unfortunately we were unable to open our store at Sanlitun due to the large crowd, and to ensure the safety of our customers and employees, iPhone will not available in our retail stores in Beijing and Shanghai for the time being. Customers can still order iPhone through the Apple Online Store, or buy at China Unicom and other authorized resellers.?

Apple retail staff at the Sanlitun Apple Store in Beijing put signs out Friday afternoon with a note saying, "This store will not be selling the iPhone in the recent future."

Apple had previously announced that the iPhone 4S would go on sale at its Sanlitun retail store in Beijing at 7AM local time (6PM Eastern), but altercations between scalpers and line-waiters have allegedly delayed the launch. As of 8AM, the store had yet to open.

The imminent launch of Apple's latest handset in China had attracted thousands of customers outside the company's five stores throughout the country. Security barricades had originally been set up to manage the crowd at the Sanlitun store earlier in the week, but they were taken down sometime on Thursday night or Friday morning.

Remnants of the crowd outside Sanlitun Apple Store in Beijing early on Friday, Jan. 13.

One journalist on location in Beijing claimed that Apple had canceled the launch because fights had broken out during the night, while some crowd members claimed Apple would take orders for the iPhone 4S at the store on Friday without distributing the devices.

Groups of professional line-waiters and scalpers could be seen congregating outside the store early Friday. As the 7AM launch time came and went without Apple opening its doors, a number of them became disgruntled. Shouts of "Open the door!" rang periodically rang throughout the crowd. At one point, a group of unhappy line-waiters left shouting profanities at Apple. Several individuals were forcefully escorted away by security officials, though it was not immediately clear why they were being removed.

Bloomberg reported on Friday that some angry customers pelted the Apple Store with eggs after it was revealed that the device would not go on sale. According to the publication, the Apple Store in the Pudong district of Shanghai opened an hour early and has begun selling the iPhone 4S.

Police officers cordoned off the Sanlitun Apple store in Beijing on Friday.
The 16GB iPhone 4S is selling for 4,988RMB ($790) on Apple China's online store, while the 32GB and 64GB models sell for 5,888RMB and 6,788RMB, respectively. Estimated shipping time is currently two weeks. China Unicom is also offering iPhone 4S for free with a multi-year contract on plans starting at 286RMB ($45).

The well-organized secondary market in Beijing has led to conflicts at the Sanlitun store in the past. Last year, the release of the iPad 2 and white iPhone 4 was marred by an incident that resulted in a broken glass door and several injuries.

In addition to China, Apple is scheduled to launch the iPhone 4S in 21 more countries on Friday.

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Just a few days ago, the jailbreaking community was taken by surprise when one of its most prominent figure, Comex, joined Apple as an intern. Many have wondered whether he’ll continue developing jailbreaking tools in the future and whether his current ones would be kept.

As most regular readers are likely aware, Comex is the developer of the easiest jailbreaking solution available: JailbreakMe. Using this tool, which works with iOS 4.3.3 and below, any iOS device, including the iPad 2, can be easily jailbroken in a matter of minutes. This is a fully untethered jailbreak that uses a PDF exploit in Mobile Safari to load itself onto any device, requiring no connection to a computer whatsoever.

Now that Comex has crossed over to the white side (or the black side, depending on how you look at things), there’s no doubt that his relationship with the jailbreaking world will change. He will no longer be able to create further jailbreaking tools, as he made it clear in his Q&A over at Reddit. Instead, he will assist Apple at finding exploits, although he believes that others will pick up the slack and develop other tools:

There are a lot of smart people working for Apple already; maybe I can help, but I doubt I can stop people from finding exploits.

As for current tool, JailbreakMe, Comex promises not to modify or take them down. Instead, he’s handing it over to other prominent members of the jailbreaking community who will hopefully continue to develop them:

I’ll hand them over to MuscleNerd or chpwn or whoever will take care of them.

At the beginning of this month, Comex was profiled by Forbes, revealing some of his personal details for his first time, including the fact that he was on leave from University in order to pursue an internship (which he has now obtained). Despite the success he has achieved developing jailbreak tools, which will likely continue throughout his stay at Apple, Comex plans to return to University once the internship is over, even if the Cupertino company offers him a permanent job:

I don’t know if I’d want to do that- I’ve never had a job before and I don’t know what it’s like- and I intend to go back to college soon.
Mostly with congratulations.

Nonetheless, Comex plans to continue jailbreaking his iPhone even though he won’t develop tools personally:

I’ll want to jailbreak my phone, so I hope someone finds them [vulnerabilities]

Here is a snippet from the Q&A:

Did you always set out to be a hacker or was it just something that interested you and found you had a [knack] for?

Comex: I never wanted to be a black hat hacker, but I did enjoy hacking (originally SQL injection and crap) as a natural extension of programming.

Your thoughts on Steve Jobs’ departure?

Comex: Really a shame; I was hoping to meet him some day, and, company direction aside, keynotes won’t be as entertaining without him.

Have you made any money from the jb scene?

Comex: I’ve made a good amount of money through donations, which is mostly being used to help pay for college. JailbreakMe 2.0 was like $40,000; 3.0 was $15,000 (not quite sure why it decreased).

Have you met Steve Jobs?

Comex: I wish.

Can you give any insight on how apple views the Jailbreak communitiesmods?

Comex: I have no idea.

As a huge open book for them to steal take ideas from.

Comex: I certainly don’t mind. Jailbreak community puts an idea in front of people with a crappy implemenation; Apple polishes it to the point where it can be an OS feature. I don’t know whether Apple actually pays attention to jailbreak apps, but see App Store, copy and paste, multitasking, etc…

Firstly, why did you choose to get involved in specifically the iPhone jailbreaking scene, what was it attracted you to the iPhone? Secondly, did you always set out to be a hacker or was it just something that interested you and found you had a nack for? Finally, in regards to the PDF bug used for the JailbreakMe.com jailbreak, where on earth did you get the brilliant idea for it?

Comex: I had one… and it was a device that (a) had a lot of functionality, (b) had a nice and flexible UNIX OS, (c) already had an active homebrew community, and (d) was really cool. :p

I never wanted to be a black hat hacker, but I did enjoy hacking (originally SQL injection and crap) as a natural extension of programming.

FreeType was one of the less studied open source components of iOS.

Do you have any regrets?

Comex: I should have worked on these jailbreaks more consistently, and released them more quickly; I’ve had several exploits fixed on me that could have been used in a jailbreak if I was quicker at packaging.

What, besides money, made you flip to the other side?

Comex: It’s not about money. A large part of my motivation to jailbreak was always the challenge; the internship will be a new sort of challenge.

It’s still unclear what the future will look like after this move, but many feel we haven’t heard last from Comex. Yet, he’ll likely work under the extreme secrecy Apple is known for throughout his internship.

As we’ve mentioned before, this is definitely not the first time that such a huge company has hired someone from the jailbreaking community. Geohot for example was snagged by Facebook a while back, and apart from that, jailbreak developer Peter Hajas, the man behind the famous jailbreak tweak MobileNotifier was also hired by Apple, and his most prominent work with Apple? The Notification Center in iOS 5.

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Airtel Bangladesh started its operations today and joined 19 countries where Airtel operates in Asia and Africa. Airtel had earlier acquired majority stake in Warid Telecom in Bangladesh from the Dhabi Group.Warid Telecom has now been renamed as Airtel Bangladesh


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