Apple Tries To Stop Sneaker Hackers

Apparently, Apple has decided that extending DRM to your Nike accessories will keep hackers at bay.  Sick of people cutting the sensors out of their Nike shoes for use on other apparell, they have applied for a patent. Ever noticed the warning that it’s illegal to pull the tag off of a mattress?  Did that stop you?

[via Slashdot]

19 thoughts on “Apple Tries To Stop Sneaker Hackers

  1. Wouldn’t first sale doctrine come into play, patent or not? And are there really any companies that are taking off the sensors and reselling them? If not, then this won’t make much difference — even if they try to apply the DMCA, the workaround is so obvious (even more so than a 64-bit XOR), so they’d probably get slapped down in court.

    As for the mattress tags — you know that the warnings only apply to sellers, right? If you bought the thing, you can pull them off to your heart’s delight.

  2. As a consumer…
    I can do whatever the hell I want to with a product.
    Manufacturers have to adhere to these things like tags on mattresses.

    Sure.. I may violate the warranty policy if I mess with things but that is MY choice.

  3. Hack a Day (and sites like this one) could help the hacking community by refusing to cover crippled product offerings like this one. Instead, there are no less than three Apple posts on the front page.

  4. Wow, so dumb. People don’t “cut” the sensors out of their shoes either. They come seperate and are placed in a pocket in the shoe. I don’t understand how people can run a site like this and not dp their fucking research.

  5. this just seems like an excercise in futility… It will be just as easy to pull that second sensor off of the “piece of clothing” and put it next to your Ipod receiver, and THEN duct-tape that to your old pair of New Balance running shoes…

    Oooh.. we could put TWO sensors… surely these college-educated software/electrical/mechanical/Industrial design engineering-educated hackers wouldn’t be able to figure that out…

  6. You know this has to be the most pointless thing I’ve ever seen just use both sensors if you want to use it on a different shoe.
    I think this is more to prevent people from making their own software to use the sensors vs only allow them to be used in a crappy nike shoe since it would take me what 3 minutes to make it work on any old shoe.
    The DRM is likely something idiot simple like a 64bit hash.
    But really Apple has become very lame these past few years and DRM is never cool or hip.

Leave a Reply

Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.