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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."
Both Apple and ATT have non free practices at the core of their business. It is not surprising that they would each pretend to be more customer friendly than they really are. The iPhone suffers restrictions from both companies that are integral to each company's business model.
It would be better to have free software devices that could use free spectrum. This would remove the ability of others to restrict your communications and such things are vital if we are to undo the damage broadcast media has done to democracy.
No calls now, I'm
"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."
I would say very little like this if at all, when you use a hacked iphone you still had to shell out the bucks(to apple) for the device. When you run Linux you can completely avoid giving any cash to Microsoft.
open source software might actually create competition for Apple's "official" developers
:)
Riiiiiiight, just like the homebrew scene creates competition for Sony, Nintendo, and the Xbox 360. If someone want to goof around with doing homebrew iPhone apps, great! But, there is no way that jailbroken apps will be any sort of successful business model for the iPhone. No business will pay for it or install it, and too few consumers will be brave enough to jailbreak. 40% of iPhones are jailbroken? Ridiculous.
If devs really want to do open source phone applications why aren't they using Android or OpenMoko?
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
I keep seeing these two concepts being confused. Jailbreaking is the act of circumventing the original OS to run arbitrary code. Unlocking is the act of disabling the link between the handset and the AT&T SIM, thereby allowing the use of other mobile providers. The former does not imply the latter.
I have said it before and I will say it again. Apple is a publicly held corporation. Their fiduciary duty is to their shareholders. Their goal is to be profitable. However, their business model (strategy of doing business in order to be profitable) centers around making well-designed, elegant, easy-to-use, robust products. (By 'robust' I mean in a design/UI sense, not necessarily in a hardware sense.) They believe that controlling and streamlining the entire consumer experience from start to finish is the best way to deliver their product--this is the reason behind the Apple Retail Stores, the near-obsessive attention to the packaging, and the restrictions of the iPhone OS. Make no mistake; Apple doesn't do this out of the goodness of their hearts. They do it because it is a way to stand out in a competitive and rapidly shifting industry, and be profitable. But this long-held strategy of attention to the consumer experience and design excellence has created a community of Apple enthusiasts, and they often misinterpret Apple as being more altruistic than they actually are.
The hacker philosophy runs completely counter to Apple's view because they believe devices are meant to be experimented on, each component dissected, analyzed, and understood. They are unafraid of taking something apart and reassembling it to meet their needs. Apple's model is geared not towards these hackers, but to the average consumer, who, if allowed to tinker, would probably break something and have no idea how to fix it. The wildly popular success of iPods and the increasing market share of Macs in the face of the MS monopoly demonstrates that Apple's strategy is the correct one to adopt--the average user values stability and predictability over the ability to play Dr. Frankenstein with their precious, beautifully designed Mac/iPod/iPhone. The idea that "it just works" is in itself a kind of freedom.
Apple knows they can't keep the iPhone OS locked down forever. They knew it before they even had built the thing. They realized, however, that (1) upon initial release, the OS would not be complete, (2) they needed to buy themselves time to establish a user base and fix stability issues, (3) locking the OS would prevent the casual user from messing around and then complaining that the iPhone sucks because it's too easy to break, (4) it fits with their business model. The only good thing the hackers/jailbreakers have done is to push Apple to develop the SDK faster, and put more emphasis on security. I don't see their actual jailbreaking as being particularly relevant, because it is still not something that most users would do. Many users so strongly enjoy the integrated, streamlined Apple experience that the last thing they want to do is run some "shady" code and open themselves up to the unknown. It all goes back to the philosophical dichotomy mentioned above.