Apple bricking making iPhone owners brick it

In case you’ve been on planet iPod?Couldn’tGiveA, no doubt you’ve already heard all about how Apple are punishing their customers who have dared to unlock the iPhone or install third-party applications.

Stories about this have flared up all over the press and internet, but what I find really curious is the immediate invention and acceptance of a brand new verb.

Apple is repeatedly reported to have “bricked” the unlocked iPhones. “To brick”, in this case, seems to mean “render as useful as a brick.” And while bricks are indeed extremely useful, I’m sure owners of the $399 gadget would hesitate before cementing their prize and joy to another, or throwing it through a shop window. (For the record, the official, unbrickish and frankly dull statement from Apple is that modifying your phone will make it “permanently inoperable”.)

But why a brick? Why not say that a useless iPhone is like a paperweight or doorstop? My hunch is that the instant appeal of calling it a brick is that it hints at the early days of mobile phones, when the phones were literally as big and heavy as bricks. Of course the difference is that despite appearances, those bricks still operated as phones. The iBrick, however, has the exact same phone functionality as its clay brethren.

Another obvious connection is with the verb “to brick it”, a delightful Britishicism meaning to be very nervous or scared. Rumour has it that the origin of this phrase lies with the brick uh, outhouses of yesteryear, where, of course, one went to empty one’s bowels. An action which may or may not have occurred across the world as iPhone owners suddenly realised that their new $399 toy had turned into a brick.