That was fast. Yesterday, Toyota made the bold move of publicly supporting the iPhone jailbreak market by launching an ad campaign with a theme on Cydia. Apple, not a big fan of folks doing stuff on their iPhone that don’t fit within their utopian vision, growled at Toyota and had them remove the theme from the “illegal” app market.
Ad agency Velti was working on the campign for the Toyota Scion, which is itself pretty iPhone-firendly by having a USB port with iPod connectivity standard. There’s also an optional hands-free calling system which I presume works over Bluetooth. Unfortunately, I’m not seeing a lot of the cool smartphone stuff that Ford, BMW, Chevrolet, and others are including in their cars. For more info on the Scion, check out their flashy minisite here.
This was a pretty big deal because the jailbreak market generally had a sketchy aura to it, but the participation of a big-name company like Toyota instantly adds credibility and mainstream appeal to jailbreaking. For the record, it’s exactly because of situations like this that I don’t even glance sideways at Apple products. The iPhone’s very shiny and all, but I wonder if you can ever actually own the thing without jailbreaking and being officially disowned by Daddy Jobs. I’d happily sacrifice a bit of polish for the peace of mind that buying a phone doesn’t have any more strings attached – I think carriers have that covered well enough on their own.
[via ModMyi]