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Apple's Trend Away From Tinkering
theodp writes "Having cut his programming teeth on an Apple ][e as a ten-year-old, Mark Pilgrim laments that Apple now seems to be doing everything in their power to stop his kids from finding the sense of wonder he did: 'Apple has declared war on the tinkerers of the world. With every software update, the previous generation of "jailbreaks" stop working, and people have to find new ways to break into their own computers. There won't ever be a MacsBug for the iPad. There won't be a ResEdit, or a Copy ][+ sector editor, or an iPad Peeks & Pokes Chart. And that's a real loss. Maybe not to you, but to somebody who doesn't even know it yet.'"
The iPad will get hacked, just like the iPhone. Cydia and all your friends will be there too!
Of course there won't be hacking tools for the iPad. It's not going to be on sale long enough for hackers to get one. It's the new Apple Newton with less flexibility. Only hardcore iFags are even looking at it, and they think it sucks. I suppose someone will tear it down and start reverse-engineering it with a logic analyzer, but it's not going to be worth the effort. Even Apple has much better hardware already shipping. They should have made up a MacBook Tablet or some such.
In the USA, we like stuff watered down, like beer, television, and freedom.
Unless the emulator that comes with the SDK is cycle-accurate to the point where I can test exclusively on an emulator and have a reasonable expectation that my app will run perfectly on hardware, it's still $99.
Boy.. you're dumb.
Yeah, please people, if you want good hacking, try Windows machines!
Ooh, $99, that's a fortune! The cost of two PS3 games! How can anyone afford that!
Better stick with Windows Mobile, with its $200 Visual Studio and $200 VeriSign certificate and... wait, that actually ended up more expensive? How did that happen?
Express doesn't even include an IDE, while Xcode includes everything out of the box for professional Mac development.
In fact Apple's excellent development tools for Mac have been free since at least 1997.
That said, as a Mac hacker for 25 years, like Mark Pilgrim I personally deplore the arrival of "cynical", closed platforms such as the iPhone and iPad.
you had me at #!