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It wasn’t that long ago that real “tech words” never entered Average Joe’s vernacular. These days, the dumb media, and in turn, Average Joe himself, misuses geek terminology like they’re reinventing a word from scratch. Case in point: the recent Apple-upgrades-iPhone-firmware fiasco, in which thousands of stupid iPhone users hacked their phones and didn’t think twice about installing Apple’s upgrade before real hackers tested the upgrade to see what negative effects it could have. It’s not as though people weren’t warned: every major Apple blog who reported on the iPhone unlocking scene proposed that owners of unlocked iPhones steer clear of future iPhone “upgrades” until it’s been verified that these upgrades either (A) don’t re-lock the iPhone, or (B) allow the iPhone to be re-unlocked afterwards.

Either way, the stupidity continues when reports are all over the webscape that Apple’s 1.1.1 iPhone firmware is bricking iPhones, when it’s not. The firmware upgrade is re-locking previously-hacked iPhones, requiring them to be reactivated with AT&T. This is not the same thing as “bricking.” From NinjaWords:

brick (v) : to make an electronic device nonfunctional, rendering it as useful as a brick

This is not a complicated concept. Hacked iPhones upgraded with firmware 1.1.1 are still functioning - they turn on, can be reset by the occasionally-helpful Apple Store employee, and most of them can still be activated with the original AT&T sim card that came with the phone immediately after the firmware upgrade is done. Thus, these iPhones are not equivalent to expensive paperweights (i.e. they’re not bricked).

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