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from the more-lock-in-is-just-what-we-needed dept.
FuckBeta writes:
"Guido Stepko reports - In an GOLEM interview at CEBIT 2014 fair, Frank Kuypers, technical account manager at INTEL corp., proudly presented a new feature in INTEL processors, called "hooks", beginning with the new 2014 "Merrifield" 64 bit SoC chip generation.
In the Intel network only mobiles with certain Android versions are allowed to use certain functionalities. If you then replace your Android version, e.g. by a free Cyanogenmod Android kernel, not only some chips would stop working, e.g. LTE/UMTS, but also mails from your employer would be blinded out, because now the processor itself would 'classify' the new software as 'risk'.
Now, beginning with the new 2014 power efficient mobile "Merrifield" processor generation, this functionality will be used to lock the processor for certain OS'es or OS versions. Whether there will be a SDK or use of this 'functionality' will be kept a secret, still is undecided, Kuypers said.
Ryan O'Dell sees a potential abuse of the technology: "You'll buy a computer from a shop with Windows OS and not be able to change to Linux or another OS in the future. You may be able to buy the processor unlocked for a sum. With mobile phones/tablets it can be worse with phone networks also potentially have a lock-in. It's a disaster for the consumer"
Google translation from German: (Google)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 16 2014, @12:33AM
Those in the know shed some light on this.
Why would Intel do this? Who would demand such a "feature"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 16 2014, @12:42AM
At a guess, I'd say the corporation in question is one who's name begins with an "M" and ends with a "t".
(Score: 0) by NullPtr on Monday March 17 2014, @12:50AM
No - the Midget corporation recently got one of its finest spokespeople to stand on a create of children's clothes and deny outright it had anything to do with this.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by bill_mcgonigle on Sunday March 16 2014, @05:04AM
Why would Intel do this? Who would demand such a "feature"?
Hardware manufacturers. If you're, say, HTC, do you want the user that's fed up with his old phone to install the latest CyanogenMod or upgrade to a new phone?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 16 2014, @09:22AM
That kinda makes sense - but how many phones are using intel chips?
Alright, so Google answers my question fairly well, https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=cell+phone+i ntel+chip&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=ubuntu&channel= fs [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by omoc on Sunday March 16 2014, @09:55AM
Intel will enter the mobile space this year since they started to make decent products. The upcoming products are actually incredibly good and I was really looking forward to them. When you can run *anything* on your x86 phone (including relatively simple Android updates) with decent performance people stop buying a new phone every year and that will hurt vendors. If performance is no reason to update your phone these days, its the Android update policies.
So Intel just gives vendors the option of planned obsolescence so they can still sell the same number of phones when they start going with Intel SoCs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 16 2014, @07:20PM
The answer, spelled out, begins with "Micro" and ends with "Soft" --- and the rest in the middle represents the entirety of the integrity and decency of the parties involved.