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Comment by zxcvcxz | Hacker News Reader

I don't want it unless it has an exposed CLI without jail breaking.

It's officially running iOS and not mainline OS-X-for-tablets, so I think it's safe to say that's out of the question.

What do you want the CLI to do? It's pretty fundamental to the iOS model (and the Android one) that apps are isolated from each other, so you certainly could have a CLI app that does stuff (ssh, git, vi?) within its own home directory, but can't interact with the rest of the system.

In fact there are Android apps that do this. It's harder on iOS because you don't get fork(), but if someone wanted to try super hard, you could make all the apps run as threads within the same process.

If you want a root shell without jailbreaking, that's almost contradictory.

busybox + filesystem access + a way to raise events for other applications (Android intents equivalent) + a way to install CLI tools with CLI-appropriate sandboxing (python, for example) would be incredibly useful. Done right it'd be the last thing needed to really obsolete pre-mobile OSes. You wouldn't have to abandon the security model.

Hearty +1 from me, then, but I'm pretty sure you can do this as a standalone app on the App Store without needing Apple to give you anything. You'd basically be running busybox on a bizarro version of a unikernel / rump kernel (or, alternatively, a bizarro version of User-Mode Linux).

Android apps have shared access to the "memory card" (often simulated, e.g. on Nexus devices), so they can interact through that.

Hell, in Android you can even run Debian without rooting: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cuntubuntu...

There's the app 'Prompt' which gives you an ssh terminal.

Why? I don't think you're their target market?

I was disappointed that my MacBook didn't have a coffee machine built into it. In reality, it would have been a silly thing to ask for, or assert "I don't want a MacBook unless it has a coffee machine in it" as if they would bend their entire product range to suit me.

Right?

Why is this so difficult.

It's interesting that you would think difficulty is somehow related to this. Unless what you're really asking is "why is it so difficult to give me whatever I want" in which case the answer is not anything you're likely to want to hear.

It's not about "difficulty", it's about control. Approximately 0% of Apple's customers (who don't frequent Hacker News etc) care about that sort of thing.

I think you're right. Control is definitely why I switched to Android. Switching back to iOS soon and that's one thing that has me worried.

ASUS Flip + Crouton

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