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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."
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!
It goes like this:
1. Use standard broser to download an application you like, for instance Wayfinder Earth or Opera Mini
2. Copy the application to your SD or MS-card, if your phone support those, or connect your phone to your pc via USB, IR, Bluetooth or serial and install it using the application-installer supplied by the producer of your phone, whatever works best for you.
You still need to know how to open a web page in a browser and click a hyperlink and then either copy a file onto your SD/MS-card or how to put the cd that came with your phone in the cd-player and press "Install", plug a cable into the computer, start an application in windows and how to read buttons like one labled "Install" and then choose a file in a file-selector.
Still, there is no magic or any hacks involved.
All steps are done by "Point and click".
You also have the alternative of using the existing WAP-browser on your phone to install directly over the air, but that means you have to know how to enter a web-adress into a textfield on your phone and how to click a hyperlink in your WAP-browser.
Not "Point and click", unless you've got a smartphone with a stylus/touchscreen.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
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??
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