Cookbook For Third-Party Apps On iPhone

a_skripko suggests this easy step-by-step procedure for adding third-party applications to an Apple iPhone. While the article claims "this procedure can be performed by the average user," it might at least have to be an average user with no fear of the command line.

Comments

I'll wait

[Merritt.kr]

I think I'll just wait until another iPhone type phone comes out. The openmoko, or something along those lines. Because something else with touchscreen and video and etc WILL come out, and I have no doubt it will be better, considering how many people are p.o.'ed about the restrictions on the iPhone (like 3rd party apps, restriction to AT&T, etc). Just a matter of time.

Re:I'll wait

[Man On Pink Corner]

Jeezly crow. How big is this thing?

I'm sure my tailor could sew a pocket into my pants that's big enough to hold my Dell D420 laptop, too, but that doesn't make it a good idea.

Re:I'll wait

[Man On Pink Corner]

From his post, the only size-related thing is its flash vs. the hard drive of the iPhone. That would make it SMALLER.

Kangaroos don't have dorsal fins, Chevrolets don't run on kerosene, and iPhones don't have hard drives. Other than that, yeah, I see your point.

iPhone weight: 140 grams
Kaiser weight: 192 grams
iPhone volume: 94185 mm^3 (115x63x13 mm)
Kaiser volume: 114840 mm^3 (110x58x18 mm)

Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone has an app that can make a phone call?

iPhone Hacking End-User Insecurity

[landonf]

Imagine how valuable a smart phone is as a malware target: it's carried on your persons, has access to your home and office, it's always always on, has direct internet connectivity, a decent camera, sensitive microphone, and a great deal of your personal information.

Given the value of this target, why on earth are people installing random binaries on their iPhone when they have absolutely no way of ascertaining whether they can trust the original provider of said binaries?

Writing malware is not particularly difficult when you have a good SDK. The iPhone is, for most purposes, a fully functional and familiar UNIX environment, and the APIs necessary to build a SpyPhone are not a secret. Given the lack of insight the average user will have into the operating system on a handheld device, they'd likely never know of an infection.

While I *very much doubt* we'll ever see a mass malware infection, users need to be careful about what they put on their phone, who made the binaries, and how they verify the source. Even one compromised iPhone would be very valuable to a nefarious malfeasant.

Why not? The usual reasons.

[mbessey]

Why not buy an OpenMoko phone? Well, it's certainly poised to bring the same success to the mobile phone market as we've been seeing with Linux on the desktop.

from http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Developer_preview
What you can expect
a functional bootloader with support for firmware upgrades
a functional Linux kernel with basic drivers for the various hardware subsystems, with small bugs here and there
a basic, simple linux distribution based on OpenEmbedded, that you have to install yourself as rootfs image using USB DFU
all the source code that we have at this point in time, and the corresponding build system
mailing lists

What you CAN NOT expect yet
reliable means of making phone calls, esp. not from the UI
reliable means of sending/receiving SMS, esp. not from the UI
integrated GPRS data access
bluetooth integration (basic bluez driver works)
proper power management (i.e. no reasonable battery life yet)
ringtone (or other) profile management
network preferences (call deflection, manual operator selection, ...)
a complete application framework where third party application developers can write apps that easily integrate with the OpenMoko world

Maybe I'm just a stupid Apple fan-boy, but I'm willing to spend a little extra for a cellular phone that can, you know, make phone calls.