Industry analysts have weighed in with their opinions about Apple's decision to brick unlocked iPhones, and remove third party applications.

The criticism toward Apple from these quarters is not the resulting "damage" to owner's phones, but the fact that the company bundled both features and security updates in one package.

Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security said: "With the iPhone update, Apple is now producing a fear of taking their patches".

"If they release a functionality update and security fixes at the same time in the future, some users will think twice about applying it. They'll ask themselves, 'What will it break this time?' and, 'Will it backfire on me?'"

"Apple would rather have users secure, and users would rather be secure, but when the update appeared, it was almost certain that some huge percentage of devices for which the patches were intended would be broken. That, I think, was more important than the security updates themselves."

The fears are that as a result of the 1.1.1 update doing things to user's phone that they would rather it did not, that by refusing future updates iPhoners will leave themselves open to security issues.

Garter's John Pescatore: "There should definitely be a separation between security and functionality, users shouldn't be forced to accept new functionality to get security fixes".

>> Via - Computerworld