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First Third-party Native iPhone Application Released
An anonymous reader writes "A third-party native application for the iPhone is now available. Gizmodo discusses the real full-fledged iPhone application with a graphic user interface and its own icon in the iPhone home screen. It is not a Web 2.0 app but the real thing. What is it? Ironically enough, MobileTerminal, 'a terminal emulator application for the iPhone. MobileTerminal.app is NOT an SSH client, nor Telnet for that matter. It can however be used to execute a console ssh-client application.' The iPhone dev revolution has just started."
Spare me. OpenMoko is an open platform that supports third party development.
You've almost certainly not set the application file within the Terminal.app bundle to be executable once it's been transferred. Just like FTP, iphoneinterface always sets permissions to rw-r--r--
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Well, it's called MobileTerminal.app, and the iPhone runs a Darwin kernel. So, just guessing, but it would seem to be a mobile version of Terminal.app on normal OS X.
Meaning, it's "a console window for the iPhone's operating system", yes.
Which also means that if the iPhone had a serial port, you could talk to that with MobileTerminal. Or if you want SSH or Telnet, those clients will run in MobileTerminal.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Nobody cares about the iPhone as a platform either....
With no official SDK who is going to make applications for it?
Well all these people care enough about it as a platform to write what apps they can using the browser as SDK.
One of them in particular, is Popcap with the well known game bejewled.
Now you might say, that doesn't count because it's "just" a browser based app. But all of the applications listed there have been tailored to fit and work well on the iPhone. Most of the even use fragments of custom CSS that helps define the appearance for the iPhone specifically. If it's tailored to the platform, then how is using the browser as a GUI library really that much different than a true native app as far as the intent of the developer, and interaction by the user? There are even proof of concept web-based apps that detect phone rotation and respond accordingly...
Sure native apps would have a wider range of capability, but again that's a function of the scope of the API that is available at the moment more than anything. These people are all developing apps and some will be chafed by those limitations, and seek a more advanced API - as we have seen with the Terminal project.
The funny thing as far as I am concerned, is the people most clamoring for applications are in fact the ones that will likely see applications first, SDK or no SDK - as evidenced by the first third party app being Terminal. Really the wider audience can live without third party apps for a while.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
She get Maddox's phone... they don't lock down the device.
I've heard of a couple potential SSH clients that would work on the iPhone.
WebShell is a project that is geared specifically as an SSH client for the iPhone. The problem is that it requires installation on any server that you want SSH access to.
GotoSSH.com appears to provide web SSH access that would probably also work on the iPhone. It seems unique because it doesn't require any software installation on the SSH servers. I've found it handy since I can connect to some of my servers that are outside of my work firewall (which blocks SSH traffic of course).
I'm not sure how useful it would really be to try and use a text terminal on an iPhone, but I suppose it would be handy to be able to restart a daemon process or other quick maintenance commands.
plus all cell phone providers are showing off their new 14 day try for free policy that the government mandated upon them a year or so ago.
oh you didn't know??
It's fantastic. For years, I've heard Mac fans (amongst others, sure) moan loudly about web standards. Browser independence. Railing against websites that discriminate against Safari. That are "best viewed in IE".
Now, there's the iPhone. And suddenly coding HTML and CSS to meet the needs of one device / browser combination is apparently A-ok, because it's their device. I see.
No. No you do not.
Web-based applications, are a totally seperate beast than iPhone specific applications, and we must be very clear to keep them distinct EVEN THOUGH they make use of the same underlying mechanisms.
I am still all for general design that works across all browsers. And indeed the iPhone browser makes such a goal a reality, because you have a reasonably sized viewport for viewing real web pages that don't have to conform to "mobile" standards. I cringe and wax poetic against those who would detect the iPhone browser string and have a web page display differently just because they have the temetry to imagine I want my web page simplified and dumbed down for my "mobile" device.
An iPhone application now, is not meant to be used on other browsers or even other devices. It is generally written to realize that a finger will be manipulating the screen, the actual screen size will be just so during normal operation, and is tailored also to try and match with iPhone asthetics. Bejewled is a great example, since it is eminently tailored to the iPhone screen and works quite well. Also as I said the test application that detected rotation of the screen, for when would that make sense to detect on any other browser? But for a Javascript/CSS based application targeted for the iPhone, there is real value in understanding that has happened and acting on it.
Again these are two seperate worlds, do not attempt to confuse or cross them for they have different goals! And for web designers, please as I said test your app on Safari but do nothing special when you see an iPhone - I want to see the real web page thanks!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Heh, the iPhone is a LOT easier to pan and zoom, and no other phone has or will have multi-touch. You won't believe it until you try it. Good riddens to the stylus and hunting and pecking at scroll bars.
Not mentioned is the revolution in cell phone activation. Done in one's own home. If iTunes 7.3 is already installed, it takes less than 5 minutes in many cases.