Recent trends in the NAS market and general tech market has shown a propensity to lock down their devices to prevent you from using the device you paid for as you see fit. We at ASUSTOR do not believe in locking down your NAS device. As such, all ASUSTOR NAS devices come in an unlocked state. Today, ASUSTOR is announcing its intention to continue to maintain its devices in an unlocked state for maximum freedom.

Owning Your Products!
In recent years, companies across the tech industry have announced tighter and tighter vendor lock-in requirements that are largely arbitrary in nature. This has been in the form of putting software locks that disallow the use of unauthorized software or peripherals on devices you purchase with your hard earned money. Examples of this include companies forcing use of in-house branded hardware like hard drives in a NAS, locking out third party operating systems and apps not approved by the vendor This is part of a general trend towards disposable technology, vendor lock-in, planned obsolescence, and anti-consumer practices all at an unnecessary expense to you, the consumer. At ASUSTOR, we believe that you own the hardware you purchase, and as such, ASUSTOR NAS devices come in an unlocked state. ASUSTOR NAS devices do not place arbitrary restrictions on your use of the device, while using a non-approved drive on NAS devices with vendor lock-in policies can cause error messages or loss of features like building a RAID pool or knowledge of drive health and more.

You've got to laugh at the hypocrisy of big companies sometimes. It's a well known fact that Apple operates a very closed and controlling walled garden eco system with all of their products, courtesy of the late Steve Jobs. Examples include the iPhone, which can only purchase apps from the official Apple apps store and the iPod, which can also only sync with iTunes, both due to deliberate vendor lock-in using a combination of hardware and software DRM (Digital Restrictions Management). Apple claims that this is to ensure a seamless, consistent and high quality user experience. Savvy users know this to be only half the story, instead it's there to shut out competition and lock you in to Apple for everything in order to charge high prices for allegedly "premium" product. The only way to avoid this, is to jailbreak the devices (break the DRM) which conveniently (for Apple) voids the warranty on these expensive gadgets. Thankfully, this process is no longer underground, due to a recent court ruling that said jailbreaking was legal, much to Apple's displeasure.

However, the equally closed Valve, with their Steam gaming platform and it's account-based DRM has accused Apple of being a closed system! They are also "concerned" about it. This happened in an interview between Bellevue-based Valve's Gabe Newell and leading games investor Ed Fries at the WTIA TechNW conference. This has been reported in The Seattle Times in Brier Dudley's blog.