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Jail-Breaking iPhones at the Apple Store
An anonymous reader writes "According to an article in Xconomy, iPhone hacker and author Jonathan Zdziarski was invited to speak at an Apple Store in Cambridge, MA last week where he talked about the history of iPhone hacking, jail-breaking, and limitations of the official SDK. From the article, "Zdziarski was one of the first software engineers to figure out how to hack the iPhone, and he's the author of a forthcoming O'Reilly Media book called iPhone Open Application Development, which gives readers explicit instructions on jail-breaking iPhones. So for Apple to give Zdziarski the podium at an Apple retail location is a little like Steve Ballmer inviting Linus Torvalds to speak at a Windows product launch." Zdziarski reports in his own blog how the open source community was on the iPhone developer scene as early as 2007, long before enterprises got there, and estimates that nearly 40% of all iPhones have been jail-broken to run the third-party community software installer. Finally, this story from Top Tech News suggests that open source software might actually create competition for Apple's "official" developers, because applications using the open source iPhone compiler are not subject to the same limitations as official Apple SDK programs are."
Apple is really running behind in this battle. Currently, there is only one SDK-created, legit application for the iPhone/iTouch that has been released in the wild.
Will people give up the ability to run really nice iTunes unfriendly apps like the NES emulator? Or will developers see the potential and follow the Mac party lines so they can make money on their legit applications...
So far... only one legit app.
Ignore them, don't give them attention, money or whatever.
They need us, they want OUR money. Let them jump through OUR hoops to get it.
Have you forgotten YOUR place in the world? Seems you have.
You are the same people that have forgotten what the constitution is, its just a piece of paper until you remember what it is.
Until then. Continue being assfucked.
The EEE PC proves that your logic is backward. It's not that "Open Source" is unfriendly it's that most hardware vendors are. EEE PC uses free software and has one of the easiest interfaces to use of any portable device. It also boast accelerated graphics which can be used by other free software to do what Apple's iPhone does. There are plenty of YouTube movies of the EEE running Compiz Fusion's nifty cube interface. Free software will make it's way to other devices because the devices make money for the vendor. At that point, it will be the phone company that objects, yet another layer of unfriendly people.
The beauty and real joy of free software is that you can chose the interface you like rather than having it forced on you, so you will get the interface you want along with privacy and security. GPE and Opie are both better interface than Windows Mobil and better interfaces are on the way that will rival iPhone in every way. People love graffiti for text input and it's still available with X stroke. Really, it kicks handwriting recognition's. Complete platforms have been available through OpenZaurus and Familiar for years, despite the lack of cooperation and outright sabotage by most vendors. Apple's multitouch interface has much to be admired but these features should be trivial to reproduce and will be if Apple does not block the user community with bogus software patents. The move to free software by other vendors began with Zaurus and is now picking up speed. These devices will kick ass.
I'm sorry that you have had bad experiences in user forums. If you want to see a really ugly exchange, try this forum on for size. Nothing is less friendly than non free software because it's owners all ultimately think they way Creative does. Apple seems to be moving away from that with this lecture but the iPhone is still customer hostile because it won't let you do what you want.
No calls now, I'm