iPhone Can Now Run Apache, Python, Vim

An anonymous reader writes "After the first Hello World application, hacker NerveGas and the people at #iphone-shell have built Apache, Python and other Open Source apps for the iPhone using NightWatch's toolchain. Yes, your iPhone can now be a Web Server and do all sort of 1337 things. This also means that third-party applications for iPhone will happen no matter what. People, iPhone Doom could be just around the corner." It's fairly thin on information but if true, this will lead to good things. Like hopefully permission from apple.

Re:Disappointing

[Professor_UNIX]

Then maybe a video of it catching fire.

All they've got at their disposal are a bunch of iPhones so video is out of the question and a macro mode is non-existent so all you get is blurry close-ups of some kind of yellow-redish color blur. It's a phone, it's a revolutionary communications device, it's a music player... it's not much of a camera.

Re:s/permission/official blessing/

[Lumpy]

Fools ask for warranty work when the phone is modded. Simply reinstall the OS and play stupid. works great, they have no idea, and you get that critical flaw that everyone discovers in two weeks fixed for free.

Did it with many electronic items in the past. reload stock firmware and play stupid. works great, get replacement reload custom setup/firmware/unlock/etc and life is good again.

I though all geeks knew that simple tidbit.

Re:my thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the demand for a SDK caught apple by surprise (possibly because the iPod didn't have many people hollering for a SDK, and since it's easy to see the iPhone as an iPod + phone functionality I can see how this was given a low priority.)

There is plenty of demand for an iPod SDK, and has been since day 1:

http://www.alteringtime.com/log/archives/96 [alteringtime.com]
http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/09/21/macgamesip od/index.php [macworld.com]
http://www.ipodhacks.com/modules.php?op=modload&na me=Forum&file=viewtopic&forum=2&topic=1806 [ipodhacks.com]
http://lists.apple.com/archives/studentdev/2001/Oc t/msg00437.html [apple.com]
...and so on.

Apple has their reasons for not releasing an iPhone SDK, same as they have their reasons for not releasing an iPod SDK. I assure you that not knowing the demand has nothing to do with it.

Re:First Application . .

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.meebo.com/ [meebo.com] - Meebo works with my iPhone. Supports AIM, Yahoo, GTalk, MSN.

Re:AIM instead of SMS?

[triskaidekaphile]

Still think so? [iphoneappl...onlist.com]

Re:s/permission/official blessing/

[ookabooka]

Exactly, I'm pretty sure bending the iPhone (or any gadget for that matter) would void the warranty. Then again no warranty can limit the reasonable life-expectancy of something. Check out the better business bureau [bbb.org] for a better idea of what actually voids warranties (most of the time the company is just spouting BS because they don't want to pay for a replacement/repair even though they should; it is either fraud or they just don't want to get on the bad side of the BBB). I think the BBB says the warranty for most consumer electronics is 3 years or so, so don't be afraid to say no to that extended warranty, nothing gets you customer service like opening a claim with the BBB for binding arbitration. My roomate had his mp3 player replaced after 2.5 years even though the warranty expired after 1 after I suggested he check out the BBB.

Wow I started off with a joke and then made a decent comment. . I must need some sleep.

Not Quite There

[DylanQ]

People are completely misunderstanding what's going on with iPhone development. We have no means of writing apps for the iPhone with a GUI, or even apps that handle user input. We CAN access the iPhone via SSH and run things remotely; that's about it. Some people are working hard on reverse-engineering current apps and frameworks (myself included) so that we may be able to compile a GUI app, but at this point, there is no Doom "just around the corner". For a while, the main focus of the iPhone hacking efforts has been unlocking. Hopefully this will change, but while people are focused on unlocking, not much else is getting accomplished (aside from what Nightwatch is doing with his toolchain).

Re:Erh what?

[Ant P.]

If a Game Boy's 33MHz ARM7 can run it, I'd think one with hundreds of MHz would be able to as well.

Re:my thoughts

[tji]

Sure, some were asking for an iPod SDK.. But, for something with a wheel as an input device, your development options are pretty limited.

The iPhone is much different, because

- It has full input capabilities -- pointer, selection, keyboard input and more.

- It's a much more powerful device (cpu/ram) than the iPods

- Apple positioned it as a "smart phone", directly comparing it to the competitive smartphones, which do offer SDKs.

- Apple represented it as running "True OS X". They even mentioned it supporting Cocoa. Why the hell would you talk about the programming interface if you don't intend to give your developers access?

After watching the initial iPhone introduction, I just assumed developers would have access (based on the OS X / Cocoa stuff). Just after that annoyance of finding they were NOT making an SDK wore off, Apple came back with the "you don't need an SDK, just write web pages" bullshit, which re-opened the wound. That episode was the farthest off I have seen Apple in understanding their developers/customers. Hopefully they remedy it soon.

Re:Erh what?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was on earlier systems too, the SNES, 32x (and maybe vanilla Genesis), and Jaguar.

Supposedly, Jaguar version of Doom was one of the best of the time.

The toolchain means nothing...

[Chief Typist]

The hard part about developing apps for the iPhone is working with a completely new environment.

For example, here are some of the problems with building a SSH client for the iPhone:

http://furbo.org/2007/07/02/beyond-sweet/ [furbo.org]

-ch

Re:my thoughts

[iamdrscience]

Yeah, they sure didn't understand the 700,000 (!) customers who bought the phone on the first weekend.

Too bad that number's made up because Apple hasn't released how many phones they sold in the first weekend. AT&T, however, just recently said that only activated 146,000 iPhones during it's first two days on sale.

While we still don't know how many phones they sold in the first weekend, this is the first hard number we have to estimate it. It obviously doesn't take into account any people who had trouble activating their phones at first, nor anybody who bought the phone on Sunday July 1st, but it gives us an idea. Adding in those people, it's entirely possible that your estimate 700,000 is more than twice as many as were actually sold. At best, I doubt they sold even 400,000.

Re:First cool app for apache

[ChakatSanddancer]

Decent as in like what TMobile does with the sidekick data plan. Unlimited SMSes. SMS is useful when you don't have to worry about how much they're going to charge you. Think of them as mini-emails or IMs.

Re:my thoughts

[Dahan]

Well they're wrong... Apple released the sales figures, and they sold 270,000 units [zdnet.com] during the first two days, not 700,000.