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Android Ported To iPhone
anethema writes "iPhone hacker planetbeing, from the iPhone Dev Team, has successfully ported the Android OS over to the iPhone. He is doing it on a first-generation iPhone, but others may be possible. The port is pretty functional, with data, voice, and many apps working, although it is running a bit sluggish and buggy at the moment. There appears to be much work left."
I can't believe it. Someone's answered my dreams!
A phone that is expensive, sucks, *and* pretentious. I thought I was going to have to go with a lame old Android phone, but man, there's hope for poseurs like me yet!
So Steve Jobs was wrong, you CAN get porn on your iPhone ;)
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
... then it may just be the next step when my contract is up with O2 in a couple of months. I want the free google turn-by-turn app, and if I don't have to buy new hardware to get it, it might just make the difference.
an interesting turn of events...
1.) Does this mean that Adobe will resume flash development for iphone?
2.) Will Jobs now consider the iPhone a viable platform for porn applications?
.. There's an app for thet !
rule #35. If no porn is found of it, it will ...
Perhaps as an Apple fanboi you kinda missed their point.
Let me re-iterate to you:
APPLE STIFLES INNOVATION AND LIKES TO ABUSE THEIR POWER OVER DEVELOPERS.
Do you seriously think that armed with a NDA-protected, $99/year developer fee, restricting nearly all aspects of development and content and NOT providing alternative app stores will EVER match up to Android?
Perhaps as an angry Apple hater, you missed the part where I was ridiculing Apple fanbois.
Palm trees and 8
I think the headline is in itself better than the substance of the story! Is Jobs punching holes in the walls now?
and finally, a Jobs-approved way to get pron on your iPhone.
(He *did* say to get Android !)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
So uhm, all those people who say the iPhone/iPad is not a computer because things like this are "impossible" -- where are you now?
Lots of things have all sorts of electronics in them... Frequently enough processing power to be called a computer, if you really want to be pedantic about it. I could probably go to the junkyard and rip some chips out of some cars and port Android to that pile of silicon too... But that doesn't really make my car a computer, does it?
Used to be that you'd buy an engine or a motor. It'd be a big ol' freestanding thing. You'd use an assortment of gears and belts to attach it to whatever equipment you wanted to run. You might very well use that same motor to drive a number of bits of hardware.
You can certainly still do that... But folks don't, generally. That kind of thing is pretty much reserved for large-scale industrial stuff, not your average homeowner. These days our gadgets come with their own motors built-in.
A drill, a saw, and an electric toothbrush all have electric motors in them... And you could, if you really wanted to, rip those motors out and re-purpose them... But I certainly wouldn't call a drill a motor.
Similarly... Despite the fact that an iPhone does contain a processor and can run arbitrary code on it, I wouldn't call it a computer.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Note that is was done on an older iPhone; my guess is that the next generation iPhone will be even more restricted and prevent this sort of installation.
Palm trees and 8
Apple's low-cost hardware with its wide range of options and standard interfaces teamed up with Android's consistent, carefully designed user interface experience, dazzling speed and frugal memory use.
Truly a marriage made in heaven.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Apple does more flashy useless bullshit on less but more expensive hardware.
FTFY.
So this is how they are planning on introducing multitasking!
The 3GS has 256Mb, but the 2G and 3G do only have 128Mb.
This will be nice even if only for google's turn by turn app. I love my iPhone, but I don;t love TomTom's ludicrous price for their app.
Note that the iPhone has more than just a "processor [that] can run arbitrary code" -- it has a CPU, memory, a general user interface, and could, in the absence of deliberate software restrictions on the part of Apple, be used as a small mobile computer (which happens to have the ability to connect to a cell phone network). This is not as extreme as running NetBSD on a toaster, or repurposing a car's microcontrollers for some other task -- the iPhone has all the hardware needed to be used for general consumer-grade computing, albeit in a pocket sized form factor.
Palm trees and 8
iPhone OS 4 will not be supported on the original iPhones, which have basically hit EOL. If you want any more new software features for one of those, they won't be coming from Apple.
Objective C and English : two things you didn't learn.
Since you seem to be this thread's expert on the topic, perhaps you can answer this simple question:
Why do you approve of the significantly stricter controls and higher development that Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony place on their Wii, XBox, and PS developers, but hold Apple to a different standard for their consumer electronics device?
It is more profitable to control your customers and railroad them into using only the applications you approve (and turn a profit on). Apple is not in business to bring computers into the world (not anymore), they are in business to increase their profits (it would be "terrible" if they sacrificed a chance to turn even higher profits), and if that means mistreating everyone else, then that is how it will be.
Palm trees and 8
Note that the iPhone has more than just a "processor [that] can run arbitrary code" -- it has a CPU, memory, a general user interface, and could, in the absence of deliberate software restrictions on the part of Apple, be used as a small mobile computer (which happens to have the ability to connect to a cell phone network). This is not as extreme as running NetBSD on a toaster, or repurposing a car's microcontrollers for some other task -- the iPhone has all the hardware needed to be used for general consumer-grade computing, albeit in a pocket sized form factor.
I understand all that.
And the same could easily be said of many other smartphones out there.
But I wouldn't actually call any of them a computer.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
...but still faster than running Android on an original G1.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
Who tagged this with "why"? If the article had been "Android ported to toaster" everyone would have been jumping all over it. Say what you will about the pretentiousness of iphone users, it pales in comparison to holier-than-thou geeks.
All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.
Does flash suck down battry fast? or is apple just trying to lock out free flash games?
The guy's a slashdotter. Awesome. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yO2KQHkt4A&feature=player_embedded#t=06m30s
Can all the iPhone owners who are forced to buy the OS bundled with the hardware demand a refund now? Why should they pay the Apple tax for the OS they don't need when a better alternative is free?
I honestly do not understand why you would not call a device that has every hardware feature my laptop has a "computer" -- the only difference is the form factor and the advertised use. What if I installed software on your laptop that railroaded you into using it in a specific way, would I have suddenly transformed your laptop into something other than a "computer?"
Palm trees and 8
How does this manifest to the user? I've got a Droid and cant' say I notice any problems that I'd attribute to the OS eating memory. Granted I haven't really gone looking to see what the RAM footprint is, but everything I do runs smooth and stable. Am I missing something?
The 3GS has 256Mb, but the 2G and 3G do only have 128Mb.
This will be nice even if only for google's turn by turn app. I love my iPhone, but I don;t love TomTom's ludicrous price for their app.
Well, you could always look into other options, such as Waze. It's not that great with home addresses but it works fine with most businesses I've tried. Plus it gives turn-by-turn voice directions, learns improved routes as you use it, and it's Open Source.
As with much OSS, it's not perfect, but it seems to be steadily improving since I've started using it.
Nothing to see here
This is like buying a Lexus and replacing its interior with Chevy parts.
block it in their upcoming firmware version
Why would you need to upgrade to later firmware versions if you're running Android on your iPhone? Seems to me you would only want to upgrade to later Android versions.
The point your're missing is that you WON'T have to develop for the iPhone. You can develop for Android and you apps will work on all Android phones as well as iPhone that have this installed.
Sigh, why can't hardware makers these days just do that: make hardware?
It won't be long before the differences in hardware between Apples products and Droid based products will be minimal. At that point Droid phones will have a distinct advantage in being able to do things Apple can't, if simply because Droid phones won't have all the restrictions that Apples products do.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
It's the year of Linux on the iPhone! Who needs desktops?! Pah!
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
At what point did anyone say they approve of restrictions on other computing systems? Who is holding Apple to a different standard? We all have the same things to say about Nintendo, Sony, and every other company that actively works to restrict the users of their devices.
Palm trees and 8
I honestly do not understand why you would not call a device that has every hardware feature my laptop has a "computer" -- the only difference is the form factor and the advertised use. What if I installed software on your laptop that railroaded you into using it in a specific way, would I have suddenly transformed your laptop into something other than a "computer?"
I guess one of the primary differences for me is the ease of executing arbitrary code.
My laptop has a keyboard that I can use to type in commands/code/whatever. It also has an optical drive that I can use to load software. It has USB ports that I can use to load software off a USB key, or connect another CD-ROM or floppy drive or whatever.
The iPhone has a touchscreen and little else. If I want to load software on it I have to go through their official channels, or jailbreak my phone. If I want to write my own software for it, it requires a second device to do the programming and then upload it to the phone.
Similarly, the PLCs that control the heating and air conditioning in my building are most certainly computers in the technical sense. They're fully functional and can be programmed to do pretty much anything I want them to. But I have to connect external devices to them in order to do that... I have to plug in a laptop with a serial cable if I want to actually do anything to them.
My Cisco routers are also pretty much computers in the technical sense. And they've got USB ports I can use to store/load software. But again I have to connect another machine if I want to do anything with them. Otherwise they just do their job, day in and day out, like any other appliance.
I guess I'm not really debating the functionality of the iPhone. It certainly is a computer in any technical sense of the word. But there are connotations to the word "computer" that just don't match an iPhone.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Slugish and Buggy, just like my actual android phone (HTC Magic, UK)
"But there are connotations to the word "computer" that just don't match an iPhone."
Which are not a result of the iPhone's design, but a result of the proprietary software that the iPhone ships with. All I see here is Apple trying to reshape the way people think about mobile computing, by removing capabilities and taking control of those devices -- and the fact that people think there is something wrong with using the word "computer" to describe the iPhone shows that Apple's tactics are working. I am not blaming you here, and you are certainly not alone, but it is very troubling for me that Apple (and to a great extent, other smartphone manufacturers) is so successful at dividing up the world like that.
There is no reason for the connotations of the word "computer" to be inapplicable to an iPhone. Really, the software is creating that situation, and Apple could, overnight, fix that problem, although I doubt they will (not with Jobs running the show)...
Palm trees and 8
For all of their "think different" ads, Apple is a very traditional vertically-integrated engineering firm... like the old "big iron" unixes: Cray, SGI, SUN, IBM, where they sold the entire platform: hardware, software, custom interfaces, etc.
For all the Microsoft-bashing we do around here, they were really the ones that separated hardware from software on the PC (and then Linux came around and offered the even more of the same).
But now we have vertically integrated smartphones again. And for all the Google vs. Microsoft that we do, Android is pretty much Google's effort at doing to the smartphone what Microsoft did to the PC.
So don't take your freedom of hardware abstraction for granted! But in the end, we pretty much know how this dance should turn out.... just look at what Cray, SGI, SUN, IBM are doing now :-P
Apple will probably always be Apple (at least as long as Steve Jobs is around). Because he doesn't make products for us geeks, but for the rest of the people. He know his market well. And it is not us. So get over it and let the people have their stripped-down straightjacket internet devices.
block it in their upcoming firmware version
Why would you need to upgrade to later firmware versions if you're running Android on your iPhone? Seems to me you would only want to upgrade to later Android versions.
That's how I read it at first, but I think the point is that new iPhones that come with new firmware preinstalled won't be able to take advantage...
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves
We can have flash, java, a camera and broadcast anything we like from fashionable hardware running a real OS.
All we need now is a Downfall video of Hitler learning Android OS has been ported over to the iPhone.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
ALK Copilot Live 8 for iPhone - North America Other maps and locations available.
I run CoPilot on my Windows Mobile phone, having used dedicated TomTom units and TomTom software on my old WinMobile device. ALK beats it hands down, and is a good site cheaper.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
So Steve was this what you were talking about when you said if you want porn get Android?
"For all the Microsoft-bashing we do around here, they were really the ones that separated hardware from software on the PC"
Let's be clear here that Microsoft only did that on the PC. Throughout the 70s, a large amount of software for Unix was decoupled from the machine and the specific Unix running on the machine, and that software was exchanged between various hackers. The only innovation Microsoft introduced, in terms of computing, was to decouple software from hardware and then sell that software.
"Because he doesn't make products for us geeks, but for the rest of the people."
The great danger with this thinking is that it justifies the control Apple exerts over its customers, and encourages the idea that Apple's customers should be the general public. I really do not want to live in a world where a company like Apple, which we can now say has a history of censorship (including political censorship), exerts such a high level of control over the primary communication medium of the general public.
Palm trees and 8
So, um, don't update the firmware....
No sig today...
But I wouldn't actually call any of them a computer.
Well hello there, Steve Jobs.
Sure I sold you robot insurance. But you were attacked by a cyborg. Not covered.
i think your confusing the word "computer" with "user workstation"
QFT.
My n900 has a keyboard and a USB port and lets me run arbitrary code. It's also a smartphone! The iPhone is no different: Its keyboard is software and not hardware, but it still runs arbitrary code. It's just the iPhone OS and associated software that refuses to *install* arbitrary code.
I want my Cowboyneal
Android is pretty much Google's effort at doing to the smartphone what Microsoft did to the PC.
Except that MS made it "Any hadware, Microsoft Windows"
Google is trying to make it "Any hardware, Any vendor's Android." There's a world of difference between those two positions.
I want my Cowboyneal
Oh god, are we still at this stage?
I thought we'd got past the "OMG ITS USING RAM!!!111111" whines after that completely wrong and setup article drama about Windows RAM usage where multiple people pointed out that applications using RAM is better than RAM going unused.
Yes you're right that Android phones generally have more RAM, but they also often tend to have faster processors, more pixels on their screen and so forth too, but it doesn't mean it's a requirement of Android, it's just the benefit of the rapid evolution of Android phones vs. the once per year refresh of the iPhone. The iPhone is always behind on hardware apart from right at the start of each refresh, it's just the way Apple tend to do things.
RAM usage is not a bad thing, it's a good thing when used properly, as it is with the JVM and Dalvik- RAM usage is optimised so that RAM isn't just sat there unused and is actually being used for what it's there for.
Can we finally put to bed this ancient idea that RAM usage is inherently bad and that developers should ensure their applications use as little RAM as possible which would in fact make things worse because it'd generally mean more work is being done to keep RAM usage down, such as higher levels of paging from disk or use of compression and so forth?
RAM is cheap now, we can afford plenty of it, and we can afford to use it, the idea that having less RAM and having as much of it as possible sat unused meaning there's more paging from disk and more CPU cycles being used on data compression is ludicrous. It's not like the bad developers argument holds much weight nowadays even, RAM is cheap, it's better to use as much of that as possible than it is to try and shrink your RAM footprint at the expense of more expensive processor cycles.
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I know. But really, Why?
Gotta be honest man, they seem to be doing a pretty bang-up job of "matching up to Android" even with all those restrictions you cite.
The CoPilot app for the UK is £27.99 ($43), which is much cheaper than TomTom's app (£60 - $92), but I still need an in-car mount, specifically for keeping the battery topped up and TomTom's one is the best but is a further £90 which is just crazy.
I think I may end up just finding a TomTom satnav separately, which comes with a mount and a touch screen, and a case, and a while set of hardware for less than the iPhone mount on its own. It's fucking stupid!
That's fair; My Touch Diamond 2 fits neatly under the lip of the recessed clock display (top centre of dashboard) with a charging cable from the in-car USB socket. I can't play music from the phone at the same time, as CoPilot map data is from the card yet the car requires exclusive access to it as removable media. Still, battery lasts a day running satnav so I don't need it plugged in all of the time.
If you want a car mount, try Brodit ProClip - I've not used them, but the folks at xda-developers with them all swear by them. A little expensive, but less than the TomTom unit (£50 for fully adjustable version)
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
> A vertical intergration in your hardware software stack means you can squeeze every drop of performance out of it.
Not really.
That only works if your hardware is something special. If Apple's phones are anything like their PCs, then this isn't the case.
Android liberating phones from St. Steve. That's just hilarious.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Nintendo never pretended to be in the computer business.
OTOH, Apple fanboys get their panties in a bunch when you call the iPad an overgrown iPod.
Clearly Apple and it's lackeys want the line to be blurred. Admitting the device is a souped up DS would make it much less attractive.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Unfortunately you won't get it, because having Google Maps requires a Google-branded Android device, which an iPhone is not.
No, they're just whining because they probably have a G1 with not enough RAM in the first place. Android kills processes when memory is needed, it's not like WinMo where all the apps stay open. I have a Droid and haven't had any memory-related problems either, and I use my phone quite a lot.
The Mega-iphone already has accomodations to use it as a proper desktop computer.
The only thing keeping the Mega-iphone from being used exactly like a Mac Mini is some artificial software restrictions.
If it's ports were standard, you could hook it up to the same peripherals that your Mac Mini or your PC uses.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Since it's just another ARM, all you really need is driver support for the "peripheral" bits.
Running Android on this thing should be conceptually little different than running Ubuntu on a mini. The user base is not defined by how many people run Ubuntu on minis, but how many people run Ubuntu on x86 in general.
Running a Revo with an nv9400 is pretty much the same as running a Mac with one.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I like the look of those, although the tell tale mount would have to live on display in the car permanently, so even if I always take my phone with me (which I would) the fact that the holder is on display invites someone to break in and look in the glove box. Even without losing anything that would be annoying!
I think a suction mount would be a better option, with a cloth to wipe off the screen marks!
From where I sit, the iPhone is very, very far from being the "primary communication medium of the general public". That title would probably fall to straight voice on non-smart cellphones, if not actual landlines. Most of the people I know have no desire to pay for either the more-expensive phones or the monthly data rates.
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
There are Android devices with only 128MB of RAM that to this day work very well. A great example is the Droid Eris from Verizon. I just upgraded a friends to the leaked 2.1 update and it actually runs smoother than it did on the 1.5 release. Does Google Naz and more just fine with Sense UI running.
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
Cool hack! I dub thee "hackeroid"! :-)
She thinks that "open source" somehow directly effects end users and that is makes up for slow boot time, a lag when switching to landscape keyboard, lag when typing on on screen keyboard, short battery life and gets too hot. Four hours of battery life is pathetic. Vibration is useless too? Sounds really awesome. I think that Android fanboi/girls are drinking the Koolaid and that Google has an RDF of their own.
BTW. iPhone OS 3.1.3 source code can be found here: http://www.opensource.apple.com/release/iphone-313/
I'm trying to figure out how it is better than the iPhone from that video.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Sigh, why can't hardware makers these days just do that: make hardware?
Because then the OS suffers as a result.
The traditional PC paradigm of one vendor supplies your hardware, another your OS is kind of ridiculous when you think about quality control and usability. It means no device is ever really unique anymore.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Because traditionally, specialized devices do very well in the mobile field. MP3 Players, game consoles, etc. Generalized devices don't. There's a reason why Palm's circling the drain and Windows Mobile took a knee in the ghoolies when the iPhone came out.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Computers are the primary mode of communication for the general public, and the iPhone is a computer, and sales of the iPhone have been growing. The GP's point was that Apple is marketing their devices to non-technical computer users, which is the overwhelming majority of people, at least here in America. My point was that I do not want to live in a world in which Apple, given its current behavior, is successful in that venture (and it seems likely that they will be, given their performance in the market; worse, other computer makers seem poised to copy their tactics).
Palm trees and 8
Oh no! Could Apple be right?
I seriously hope this guy doesn't get pwned like the poor Psystar people :P I can't imagine Apple appreciates anybody using their hardware openly anymore than they appreciate people using their software openly on PCs. I'll cross my fingers and see where this goes!
"True refinement seeks simplicity."
It's a debug build for testing purposes. Debug builds are always rough on the hardware and less responsive. We have no idea how well it will run as a release build, or what the battery life might be.
Lack of vibration support is a device driver. As soon as they figure out which chip is in the iPhone to control vibration, somebody will write an Android driver for it. No big deal. (Or at least, no bigger of a deal than any of the other driver problems Linux has taken on.)
Relax. It's a hobby project to see what's possible, not to change your phone for you.
See the iPhone CAN multitask.
Try Mapquest Mobile for the iPhone.
The features are limited, but the turn-by-turn is dead on. It even dips the music volume while announcing.
My speculation:
1) "Is apple going to let me use it:" Sure, you can use it. You'll void your warranty, but once you've bought the hardware, if you want to smash it with a hammer or load something else on it, they're not going to waste time and effort chasing you down.
2) "Will there be any installed user base?" I predict this will be wildly popular among the couple thousand android enthusiasts who would bother to purchase an iphone. In short, "not really".
Not true. The Droid Eris, like all variants of the HTC Hero, has 288 MB of RAM. This is more than, say, the Motorola Droid, which only has 256 MB of RAM. Given that the Droid was more or less designed to run Android 2, I can see how the Droid Eris can run it smoothly.
There are very few Android phones that have 128 MB of RAM; even the Dream/G1 has 192 MB. The only Android phones I've seen that have 128 MB of RAM have been the Chinese knockoff phones one occasionally finds on Engadget. Like this one.
Being a smartass is a much better thing than being the alternative.
Or - and this is just blue-sky brainstorming here, but indulge me for a second - you could buy a fucking Android phone in the first place.
...or if the firmware fixes some low-level problem that cannot be addressed from software.
firmware == software
While it's possible/likely that firmware upgrades will address problems, there is no reason these problems can't be fixed in the Android release as well. Essentially, much as jailbreaking places hooks into Apples official firmware distribution to allow additional functionality, the Android implementation replaces or augments a firmware file prior to being restored to the iPhone.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
+1, correct use of "jerkin the gherkin".
new iPhones that come with new firmware preinstalled won't be able to take advantage...
That's certainly possible, but this has been a cat and mouse game that the "jailbreak" community has been playing all along.
Every time Apple closes a hole in an effort to stop jailbreaks from working, the community responds with another break that gets around Apples "fixes". The latest round of this game (OS 3.1.3) took jailbreakers about two weeks to come out with a new "break".
Who knows how long this will go on, or who will win that game.
This issue (installing Android) is a little different however. Once you've installed Android (assuming you prefer it to iPhone OS), you won't need or want to install any more firmware upgrades from Apple. This will leave Apple impotent to stop users from doing as they please with their own phones.
Therefore, assuming Apple doesn't come out with pre-installed firmware that can't be broken (which despite many attempts they have not been able to accomplish so far), there will be no way for Apple to keep people from installing Android.
Of course, that doesn't mean that Apple won't resort to legal tactics to try and shut down the jailbreak community.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
Apple will probably always be Apple (at least as long as Steve Jobs is around).
Well, and I think it's fair to say that Apple plays a role. We could argue quite a lot about this, but the way I see it, Apple is able to make some pretty good stuff that works really well because of their strict control and vertical integration. Because of that, Apple gets to be the sort of high-end luxury brand of computers. Microsoft and other companies meanwhile do a good job at commodifying computing. FOSS helps to keep everyone honest by giving cheap and powerful options. In some ways, this arrangement is working well.
I know some people who want everything to be Linux, but I don't see the point in that. I'd like to see hardware manufacturers open up their specs and even lend a hand in writing drivers, I'd like to see companies like Dell and HP working harder to provide Linux support, and I'd like to see the patent system reformed. Other than that, I think we're doing ok. We've seen a bunch of moves toward greater openness in protocols and file formats, allowing for greater interoperability. Some of the proprietary guys are contributing to open source projects. Linux is getting to be quite a good desktop OS and mobile OS.
Would we have Android today if Apple hadn't released the iPhone? I kind of doubt it. I think Apple's tight little vertical integration produced a fancy product which made these manufacturers get off their asses and produce better phones. Steve being Steve, he produced a new vision for what a phone should be, and I Android seems to be following that vision.
Until apple shows serious intentions to lower their absurd level of control
Apple has been almost friendly to the jailbreaking scene - at least there are many steps Apple could have taken all along to make jailbreaking much harder. To date they have not done so.
People claim Jobs is upset that Android would run on an iPhone, but personally I think he's chortling with joy -because you can really compare the two OS'es on the same hardware and see which is more efficient and friendlier to use.
Plus let's say running Android on the iPhone really took off, what's the worst case - that tons more people buy iPhones? Boo Hoo goes Jobs, let me rub my eyes with the large wads of MONEY you have all just given me.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My first thought upon seeing this was that if Android is ported to the iPhone, it'll also run on an iPod touch, making it a very nice VoIP phone that should at least compete with the iPhone in power. do better once it's optimized and avoid AT&T voice and data plans. Of course, you can only use it in hot-spotted areas.
Bingo.
I wish more people understood this. Google doesn't want to build or sell cell phones. They don't care if Nexus One becomes a best seller. All they want to do is force the smartphone platform into being useful, open, cheap, and fast. "Why would they do that?", do you ask? Because then more people are using the internet more of the time, and when they do they often use Google.
Google sometimes tries to make their own things better. But just as often, they try to make the entire internet better, and count on the "rising tide lifts all boats" aspect to help themselves and others.
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
Right - Nintendo doesn't even *pretend* to be an open platform. So they're better, right? :-P
all those people who say the iPhone/iPad is not a computer because things like this are "impossible"
I don't think it's the Apple fanbois who are saying that...
SIG FAULT: Post index out of bounds.
Just because those companies don't provide an IDEAL experience doesn't mean that someone who disagrees with them would not still want to purchase their products. All that is required for a person to purchase a product is for the perceived gain to be greater than or equal to the cost. Someone may think that the XBox or Wii or whatever is worth the price that it is set at now, but STILL think that it would be better if it were a more open platform. Do you disagree with any of the policies of any of the politicians in your respective country? If so, then why don't you move? On a someone related note, as far as Sony is concerned, someone may have purchased the PS3 while it was still pretty "open" (you could install Linux or whatever if you wanted to) and now Sony is taking away their rights with the crappy stuff they are doing now.
SIG FAULT: Post index out of bounds.
Note that the iPhone has more than just a "processor [that] can run arbitrary code" -- it has a CPU, memory, a general user interface, and could, in the absence of deliberate software restrictions on the part of Apple, be used as a small mobile computer (which happens to have the ability to connect to a cell phone network). This is not as extreme as running NetBSD on a toaster, or repurposing a car's microcontrollers for some other task -- the iPhone has all the hardware needed to be used for general consumer-grade computing, albeit in a pocket sized form factor.
So, if I stuffed an iPhone under my couch cushion, then now my couch "has all the hardware needed to be used for general consumer-grade computing" and it is a computer too! Awesome!
Just having the hardware doesn't make it a computer.
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Really? Seems like the people throwing the fit are all the Android fans with their egotism and inflated idea of their own importance. All you guys do is bitch about Apple day in and day out. Ironically, creating more brand awareness of Apple and Apple mind-share in the blogs. All the while burying Android stories. Rather than complaining about Apple you should be chatting about Android if Android were actually better. But the Android interface blows compared to the Apple OS as several reviews have demonstrated.
Not calling an iPhone a computer is insane. It runs OS X, has a general purpose user interface, runs general purpose third party apps.
The chief Slashdot complaint, which is the single App Store source for apps, is not enough to move the iPhone out of computer status. It takes something like TiVo, where Linux is simply there to run a single app, or AppleTV, where it's Mac OS X that runs a single app. These things are appliances with embedded-type OS's.
iPhone2G will not have OS4 from Apple. Time to drop iPhoneOS ?
-- Rastignac was here.
1) "Is apple going to let me use it:" Sure, you can use it. You'll void your warranty, but once you've bought the hardware, if you want to smash it with a hammer or load something else on it, they're not going to waste time and effort chasing you down.
They may not chase you down for using it, but they may block you from using it in the first place.
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Sure, nobody wants root exploits in their software, and that's what's required to jailbreak an iPhone. If you're concerned about having the ability to update your firmware, I'd submit that the iPhone and jailbreaking it so you can run Android probably aren't the best means for accomplishing your goal of having a completely open phone that you can do whatever you want with.
That's a compiler, debugger, linker, and parts of the web browser. That is not even half the code. Where is the kernel, or drivers, or the GUI, or everything else. I also find it interesting that the license for everything but the linker is GPL/LGPL. Which means Apple did not begin the development, or probably even did most development.
You mean Adobe's incompetent coders can't figure out how to port their own stuff ? WHO'D-A THUNK IT!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
"Bundled-with?"
And here I'd thought I'd seen all of the facile Apple-Microsoft comparisons.
This isn't the PC OEM industry. There's one manufacturer, they make both the hardware and the software of the product, and they're essentially a single package. There's no OS "tax" on this device any more than there's a battery tax or a touchscreen tax or cellular radio tax.
Tweet, tweet.
... I'm glad the first generation iPhone can run Android now, but can it run Linux? ;)
Note that the iPhone has more than just a "processor [that] can run arbitrary code" -- it has a CPU, memory, a general user interface, and could, in the absence of deliberate software restrictions on the part of Apple, be used as a small mobile computer (which happens to have the ability to connect to a cell phone network).
You mean like just about every other smartphone on the market? A particularly good example being nokia's n900.
Yes, and now that I'm in the Dominican Republic instead of America, I would have spent about 8 times the price of the TomTom app just to get to the hotel from the airport in data charges to use the Google app being that it literally cost $20/MB for me to get data.
So awesome, you got a free app ... guess what, the iPhone also has a free google maps app, it doesn't do turn by turn so you when there. Either way, you're data required app is going to suck ass pretty much anywhere you actually need to use it.
TomTom's app is over priced and over rated, but it works in far more places than Googles can be useful, regardless of which device you use it on.
So good for you, you have a turn by turn app... and good for me, cause so do I, and the price of the app doesn't really bother me since its a fraction of the cost of the ridiculously priced phone itself.
You need some perspective and less fanboy.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Then why the hell do they feel so god damn laggy? Why am I always waiting on the UI to catch up to me?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I'll fully admit I'm an iPhone fanboy ... but I have yet to see any Android phone that 'worked well' unless by worked well you mean laggy, slow, feels like its more bloated than a 40 year old on the rag.
Perhaps I've only experienced the shitty versions of android and theres some mysterious not shitty version I haven't seen yet, but it certainly isn't what comes on any phone I've seen yet.
Perhaps you Android lovers have just been using Windows too long and aren't really aware that UI's don't have to suck ass?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Really?
Thats pretty funny cause I don't know any geeks who run Linux any more, and I know only 2 people that have had Android phones, neither of which are geeks, one of which has already been returned.
I can think of atleast 10 MacBook Pro geeks that I know and hell, I saw at least 6 iPhones on the bus on the way to where I currently am.
I'm pretty sure you have absolutely no idea who uses what outside of your little imaginary Linux world in your mind.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Of course, anybody who went through the trouble of installing an alternate bootloader for his iphone is definitely not going to be able to find the .apk file needed to install google maps on his phone...
Right...
I'm sorry, if you wander anywhere near a point, please spit it out.
What are you saying? That somehow I'm a fanboy because there's the possibility that (for free) I can add a turn-by-turn app to a phone I already own, using an unlimited data service that I already pay for?
I do the vast majority of my driving in the UK, covered by the 3G service I already pay for. On the offchance I go to the Dominican Republic, I'll print off a map. "Anywhere I actually need to use it" is "anywhere in the UK wider than about 40 miles from my house". In that case, my data charges are free (as in, already paid for by my phone contract).
Shock horror, sometimes people have different circumstances to you!
If I was going to buy a turn-by-turn with the maps already on it, I would just buy a standalone TomTom device - they cost about £50 here now, and come with charger, car mount and carry case. So for less than the price of the iPhone app, I get an actual touch screen sat nav with car mount and charger cable.
Incidentally, my iPhone wasn't "ridiculously priced" it was free on my contract, which I was paying anyway at the same rate as the old phone I was using. So, my contract didn't go up in price and I got a free iPhone. I know that technically it was not free and it was subsidised by the contract, but it was money I was paying anyway for phone service.
Hang on, what are you accusing me of being a fanboy of again? Google or Apple?
I just tried to parse your post again and... it's not really all that clear.
My "perspective" is that a turn by turn app is a luxury I can get by without, but if I can get a chance to test one out for nothing, then why not. Useful, but not essential.
Actually, the iphone also lags when switching to landscape. How many times have I seen an apple fanboy demonstrate how great their iphone was when switching to landscape while looking at pictures, only to have to move their wrist two or three times to actually get the thing to turn...
Where did the GP say that.
You're projecting again. For the record I deride Apple, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, for their restrictive policies. However as a PC gamer the inadequacies of consoles are not my concern.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Yes, I would agree with you. Just get an android phone in the first place! Besides, the iPhone won't have the Home, Back, Menu, Talk, or End buttons or a trackball and almost every (if not every) android phone has the majority of these buttons, so I don't see how the iPhone could be used effectively with the Android OS.
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your n900 can also use bluetooth keyboards!!!
i was quite surprised/pleased to see that shit!
i am currently saving up for the next maemo phone^H^H^H^H^Hmobile computer!
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
...wait about seven long seconds for the camera to boot up...
man you sure bought a shitty camera. i have canon's poweshot a480 or some such, it was the cheapest i could find. the time between pressing the power button and the recorded picture displaying on the screen is ~4 seconds for without flash and ~6 seconds with flash.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
n900 actually has so much hardware that it is obscene. 32 gb storage? 1gb ram? discreet graphics with opengl acceleration? i mean wtf??
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
Why do you approve of the significantly stricter controls and higher development that Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony place on their Wii, XBox, and PS developers, but hold Apple to a different standard for their consumer electronics device?
What stricter controls do those companies exercise over their platforms? I haven't seen any of them telling developers what languages they must write their code in, telling them they can't use intermediate abstraction layers, etc...
problem with flash video on mac is that apple does not expose the api required to hardware accelerate h264. so flash video on mac sucks. while windows has had its flash vids accelerated from ancient times. not actually adobe's fault.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
It's a debug build for testing purposes. Debug builds are always rough on the hardware and less responsive. We have no idea how well it will run as a release build, or what the battery life might be.
Lack of vibration support is a device driver. As soon as they figure out which chip is in the iPhone to control vibration, somebody will write an Android driver for it.
You did not even bother to follow that link? No, because if you had, you would have seen that it was a video of the Droid Eris, not the hacked iPhone. That phone is running the production build, not the debug build. Excuses, excuses. Android fans have a million of them.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Actually, the iphone also lags when switching to landscape. How many times have I seen an apple fanboy demonstrate how great their iphone was when switching to landscape while looking at pictures, only to have to move their wrist two or three times to actually get the thing to turn...
The iPhone 3GS does not lag when typing which is what the reviewer was complaining about Android on the Eris. There is a second delay switching from portrait to landscape keyboard in the mail app while the Droid too a longer to switch. Switching without a keyboard on screen is about half a second on the iPhone. Android starts to lag badly after a while on production builds straight from the manufacturer.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
but is apple going let me use it, and will there be any installed user base? Not appearing or not found in the App store, would stump me from wanting to developing there to.
With an attitude like that, I don't see why anyone would want to hire you. If you were a professional developer with a professional attitude, you would not have a problem with learning another language. How do you think all of those .NET developer with years of experience learned C# in the first place? Through osmosis? Through magic?
They picked up some books, read magazines and started learning the language through trial and error.
The fastest way to become obsolete and redundant is to refuse to learn something new or to use the best tool for the job. I've posted before that the majority of languages that I have written code in for the past 10 years have been learned by me while on the job.
If you are afraid to learn Objective-C then I suggest that you turn in your geek card right now.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
In answer to "but-can-you-go-the-other-way dept" I say - but-would-anyone-in-their-right-mind-really-want-to?
No one does want to hire me. I'm 40, been programming all sorts of things in all sorts of languages. I learn LAMP in the 90s, then they go and change the P from Perl to PhP. I know both of course. If I learn Objective C, (the pryamids in Egypt), then I can have a Objective C (0 years), on my CV, great, I don't hired. 40 years with zero experience in a new subject, get sent to wall.
Android starts to lag badly after a while on production builds straight from the manufacturer.
On a G1, yes, but on the droid (I own a milestone, the GSM european version of the droid), definitely not...
No one does want to hire me. I'm 40, been programming all sorts of things in all sorts of languages. I learn LAMP in the 90s, then they go and change the P from Perl to PhP. I know both of course. If I learn Objective C, (the pryamids in Egypt), then I can have a Objective C (0 years), on my CV, great, I don't hired. 40 years with zero experience in a new subject, get sent to wall.
It sounds like the issue isn't Objective-C specifically but that your experience is with developing web pages and web apps exclusively not that there is anything wrong with that.
Where I work, developers will often switch from writing server-side app server code to web interface code to even native windows interfaces. I've also switched product teams several times and some of those teams use C# for some components, Java for others and Python. The choice of language depends on whether we are interfacing with our in house services (C#) or Third party servers (Java, Python).
If you had any experience with writing web services in a language like Java, then you could contribute to a team that was writing a client-server app for the iPhone on the server side. Once you know Java, C# is easy to pick up or visa versa.
If you don't have experience with C/C++, Java or C# in an application or server context, learning Objective C will be difficult. So the language might not be the larger hurdle but rather a lack of experience with fat/thin/rich desktop clients.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Android starts to lag badly after a while on production builds straight from the manufacturer.
On a G1, yes, but on the droid (I own a milestone, the GSM european version of the droid), definitely not...
Is Youtube blocked where you post from? The video I linked to was a review of the Droid Eris by a linux fangirl. It was not the G1. Perhaps you have an older build of Android without the bells and whistles and the Droid Eris comes with more eye candy?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
k that subject lines that continue in the post are annoying, along comes a guy that fini
Dutch too, I'm ashamed.
"the rest of the people" ... well, the rest of the people who have sufficiently high incomes to be able to afford iPhones/etc. In your western middle class bubble that may well be many people but it's not "the rest of the people" by a long shot.
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.