[SATLUG] [OT]Sony personal communicator

[Brad Knowles]

On 10/29/07, John Pappas wrote:

>  I have played with a locked iPhone, and it was neat, but not my Treo.

I had a Treo.  I haven't touched it since the day I bought my iPhone. 
If you're jealous, then you had damn well better keep your hands off 
my iPhone because I can be extremely violent when protecting me and 
mine.  If you don't want your bones broken, then keep your hands off.

That said, I am usually quite happy to turn it on and pass it around 
to people who would like to see what an iPhone is like, so long as 
I'm damn sure that I'll be getting it back and that it won't be 
damaged in the process.

>  A real argument would include some examples or differentiations about
>  how your iPhone experience differs given the unlocked/hacked/whatever
>  nature of your particular device.  What has unlocking it given you in
>  particular, as "unlocking" has many different connotations, so
>  specifics would be appreciated...

Unlocking it means that you can install third-party software which 
has been written with a Mac OS X-based software development kit that 
did *not* come from Apple.

You can install things like a replacement for the Apple-provided 
SpringBoard.app program (SummerBoard.app is one well known 
alternative, see <http://www.apptapp.com/summerboard/>), you can 
install programs that give you easy leverage to installing all other 
known major third-party applications (Installer.app, see 
<http://iphone.nullriver.com/beta/>), etc....

If you want to see a list of some known third-party applications, 
check out <http://conceitedsoftware.com/iphone/site/packages/>, 
<http://iphone.fiveforty.net/wiki/index.php/UIKit_Based_Applications>, 
and <http://blog.psmxy.org/>, <http://iphone.natetrue.com/>, 
<http://ericasadun.com/>, and <http://iphone-dev.com/>, among many 
others.



The Linux equivalent would be to buy a commercial Linux 
implementation which might include Open Office and maybe three or 
four other applications (including Firefox), but nothing else.

"Unlocking" your iPhone is the Linux equivalent of putting a 
third-party binary package manager on the system, so that you now 
have access to literally thousands of other applications.


I haven't unlocked my iPhone yet, but I've seen some of the stuff 
that's available, and I find it extremely tempting.

>  I am into banter as much as the next guy, but that statement has not
>  helped compel me to care about the iPhone; where a "Look at me SSH
>  into my home system and download an ISO via screen/wget" would
>  definitely catch my attention.

Doing ssh out is so last-year.  You can run the ssh daemon on your 
iPhone, because it really is running a pretty full-featured 
implementation of *nix.

So, try ssh'ing in from your computer to your phone and downloading a 
video directly there.

-- 
Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>
LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>