Give me a fucking break.

If you patch any part of the software stack on an embedded device, and then are dumb enough to apply a vendor software update to the device, you get what's coming to you. Your phone is fine: it's the same bundle of components and ICs and wires and transmitters you got when you forked over $599 for a phone. You decided to take over the software, now you figure out how to make it work after you mangled it.

Doesn't anybody remember Black Sunday? The DirecTV hackers patched the software on the H cards, just like the unlockers did to the iPhone. They got free PPV TV from it. Then, a week before the Super Bowl, DirecTV ("Dave") sent a software update over the public airwaves that burned "GAMEOVER" over the whole H card, permanently. They literally broke the hardware.

Short of not locking their phone to a specific carrier at all, what, exactly, do people expect Apple to do here?

"Short of not locking their phone to a specific carrier at all, what, exactly, do people expect Apple to do here?"

It would be nice if, after paying for it, it became "my" phone and not "their" phone.

It is your phone after you pay for it. But if you want it to work, using Apple's software, you have to abide by their license terms. They weren't secretive about them.

I didn't call them dishonest, and nor did the original post. Both of us note that they're being foolish, and not adhering to common standards.

No, the original post called them criminal. Which is an asinine argument.