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IPhone 3G Jailbreak Released, Paves Way For Open Source Apps
PainMeds writes "iPhone Atlas is reporting that the first jailbreak for the iPhone 3G has been released, and includes the popular Cydia community installer for distributing free games and applications. Since Apple's SDK was released, web sites have criticized Apple for the restrictions placed on both what developers could write and what APIs they were allowed to use. Others have noted the SDK's incompatibility with the GPL. The Cydia installer has provided a distribution channel for both open source software and software that would otherwise be impossible to build using the restricted SDK. A few applications are already out, including MobileTerminal and NES.app, a Nintendo game console emulator. In just over a week, open development is finally here for the iPhone 3G!"
Flamebait? By pointing out the OpenMoko's obvious downsides to the iPhone? Are you kidding me? The overzealous sensitive mods are out in force!
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of the OpenMoko, but the execution is poor considering the considerable competition. People are developing plenty of apps for the iPhone because it is popular and it does have a very polished user interface. The iPhone has staying power. The OpenMoko? Not so much.
Because they can. Isn't that like the official motto of geeks everywhere?
The reasoning is not very difficult:
1) I like the hardware
2) I don't like the software
If the cost of fixing 2 is less than the value of 1, then you buy the device.
I don't have an iPhone either, but I don't act like people with a different opinion are drooling morons.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
Posting on Slashdot must automatically remove all of your ability to sympathize with other human beings too.
Let's go through why most people don't care about the stuff you raised.
1) Most people don't do anything that's restricted anyway. This is less true of being restricted to a single carrier, but people generally have very little loyalty toward an individual carrier.
2) People really do not feel that it's a big deal to connect their phone to their computer one time in the 2+ years that they will own it.
3) People don't have "many different types of media", they have MP3s. The iPhone plays MP3s.
4) $200 US does not seem overpriced to me. As for overhyped, most people don't have this weird reaction where they feel that they are obligated to dislike anything that's popular.
5) Most people simply don't care about replacing their battery.
6) Most people simply don't care about storage expansion.
Your complains are all legitimate and it's fine that you don't like the thing (I don't own one either), but it's silly to act as though the device has no merit whatsoever.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
The SDK is XCode and GCC. Neither one cares which license you use. Apple's iPhone app store requires signing, which conflicts withe the GPLv3, but it doesn't prevent using the GPLv2 or other open source licenses and it doesn't prevent you from distributing the code (or binaries).
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
The same way you'd buy an HP and throw Ubuntu on it. You like the hardware, but despise the software (or part of it), so you do what you can to change that.
I don't think anyone is going to get through to you though, you've apparently already convinced yourself that the only reason to own an iPhone is for superficial trendy reasons. Personally, I feel that the UI is far superior to any other phone on the market, particularly when compared to similar smartphones that run Windows Mobile. Let's not talk Blackberry, their UI is so woefully behind both WM and iPhone that it's really a bit pathetic.
I jailbreak mine because I like the responsiveness of the OS, I like the UI, I like how many things are taken for granted (the media capabilities out of the box are excellent, as opposed to other smartphones, where they feel grafted on, and do not integrate well with other apps). I also want to run 3rd party software on it, because there's some really good stuff out there.
Awesome, so you're buying a product and deliberately cutting yourself off from software updates for it.
What could possibly go wrong?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Not buying a great product you can easily crack is even more retarded. If you limit your options only to fully supported models of distribution you'll never have anything. You'll also face a life of being totally ripped off by the people that have you at the mercy of limited options.
The car dealer recommends you change the oil at the dealership, do you do that every tie as well?
We live in the hackers age. Embrace that, and win.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Hatred is always irrational. It doesn't arise from reason, it arises from emotion.
I personally save my emotion for people. Spending it on companies and computers seems like a horrible waste to me.
Get on with the news, zealots: the final SDK has been released July 11, so the NDA has been lifted for more than a week now.
You'd think so, but no. If you check Apple's Cocoa mailing lists you'll see multiple nastygrams from the moderators stating that the iPhone SDK is still under NDA. It's an exceptionally stupid situation where anybody in the world can download the SDK, but nobody can talk about it, and presumably publicly posting code that uses it would be in violation.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.