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Comment by wolfgke | Hacker News Reader

> Depends on who "we" are. Some people also wanted a hassle free device, which only runs curated apps, and that keeps the whole experience more secure, unified, private, etc that a "open for all" environment.

To serve this kind of users I think what Apple does is perhaps all right. What I criticize strongly is that there is no option for experienced users (besides jailbreaking) to free themselves (also completely) from this walled garden - ideally in a way that allows users to free themselves only for certain security aspects so that they still have the security advantages of the prohibitions that they don't deactivate.

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If you know how to use Xcode, you can install any software you like on iPhone, without Apple reviewing it, and without jailbreaking it.

When I first heard it, I thought it was a very big new that finally apple allowed to sign the apps for their devices without $100. Now I don't know why, I see almost no one is using it.

I don't know the license terms, but I can imagine that there are some terms that disallow people to distribute apps for users to self-sign them on the web.

Last time I checked the "free" provisioning profiles it generates are valid for something like 7 days. It's not really convenient for anything but experimenting with iOS development.

Plus you still can't do it if you don't have a Mac.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this way - with a few exceptions, like SMS and phone cal handling, you can write an app to do anything on the iPhone if you're so inclined. There are always going to be the Power Users who want more out of the system but won't code, but my experience with my iPhone has been that if I ever ran up against a wall I wanted changed, I could write an app to do so, even if I didn't publish to the store.

> you can write an app to do anything on the iPhone if you're so inclined.

Is it now possible to allocate executable memory (e.g. for development apps or writing a JIT compiler)? Is it now possible to write apps that have root permissions?

Why would I want an app, even one I write, to have root permissions? Do you operate your computer as root all the time? I know I don't, if for no other reasons than I sometimes make mistakes, and I'd to write an app that can wipe out my phone just because I made a mistake.

> Do you operate your computer as root all the time?

Not all the time, but sometimes - both under GNU/Linux and Windows - I want to/have to run an application with root/admin permissions.

That's often a sign of poor OS design not really a goal on it's own.

You are not a hacker. :-(

There's definitely a vanishingly-small proportion of hackers around here, relative to the reputation the site tries to encourage. Lots of people who might be branded "prescriptive social engineers," but not many hackers.

And you are probably not an engineer.

As a passenger I suspect you would expect different standards from an Aircraft autopilot than a cellphone. But, there is a lot to be learned from system that just work.

> But, there is a lot to be learned from system that just work.

From the hacker ethics by Stephen Levy:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hacker_ethic&oldi...

"Access to computers—and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works—should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative!

Levy is recounting hackers' abilities to learn and build upon pre-existing ideas and systems. He believes that access gives hackers the opportunity to take things apart, fix, or improve upon them and to learn and understand how they work. This gives them the knowledge to create new and even more interesting things. Access aids the expansion of technology."

What are some examples of applications that you typically run as root?

Besides the usual suspects that you run as root because of the "limitations" of the OS, like installing applications/binaries etc.: All the kinds of debugging/tinkering tools needing special permissions, such as Wireshark, attaching a debugger to a running process, tools for generating and handling raw network frames (a capability that I need surprisingly often), ...

This is what spontaneously comes to my mind. But if I reflected for some time probably more things would come to my mind.

These are the kinds of tasks that I would expect to require root access. I don't want some random rogue application sniffing my network packets or attaching debuggers to other processes. While peoples use cases certainly vary, I've also never needed to or cared to do these things on my phone, so lack of root hasn't bothered me. YMMV.

> I've also never needed to or cared to do these things on my phone, so lack of root hasn't bothered me.

You are not a hacker.

There are many definitions of hacker and sniffing packets on your phone or attaching debuggers to apps on your phone are only one narrow definition of many.

> There are many definitions of hacker and sniffing packets on your phone or attaching debuggers to apps on your phone are only one narrow definition of many.

The willingness to look under the hood or desire to at least be able to do so is a rather universal property of hackers.

But doing so on your phone isn't necessarily.

You're putting me into a category (or excluding me from one) based on your own subjective opinion on the meaning of "hacker".

I don't really care for the label, but I think you are probably still wrong. Just because I have no interest in doing this with my phone, doesn't mean I don't elsewhere in my life. For example, you don't know about the time I took a MIDI controller apart and nodded it to add more functionality (both physical hardware and software). Or the time I spent reverse engineering the Diameter protocol with wireshark (yes I have used it) so I could figure out how to talk to another system (technically this was for work, but I didn't have to inspect the packets to learn how to use it), or any time I've stepped through a binary in a debugger to see what it does, or inspected some source code, or the time I tried to fool RF sensors with a home-made EMP device, or written some utility or otherwise hacked the world to do what I wanted it to. Yes, I am willing to look under the hood if it helps achieve my goals or if it's fun to do so.

Yet somehow all of that is irrelevant because I have no desire to do any of that on my cell phone. Or maybe the world isn't as black and white as you're making it out to be.

If you want to do these things, you need to jailbreak it. But the iPhone is probably the wrong phone for you if you are into these kinds of things.

The iPhone offers a safe environment for you to play in. Root access is fundamentally incompatible with that idea. If you want a device that lets you shoot yourself in the foot, get something else.

You can make changes for yourself, but you can't effectively make changes for others. You can improve your immediate environment, but you can't improve the world for everybody.

Is there anything that would prevent someone to clone your project and then compile and install it on he's own device?

This is a great question. I'm actually surprised that there isn't a tool available for doing this easily today...

I'm not sure if you were being sarcastic, but there is: it's called Xcode.

LOL! I meant more like a one click thing for regular users to use, not people familiar with development tools.

I can publish an app, and then I can make the world better for other people. The comment I replied to was focused on one user's experience, so I answered it similarly. Look at email clients - Apple ships one, but the market suggested that people wanted alternatives, and we have them. The world was made better for everybody.

If you want to grab the system audio stream to apply DSP effects such as dynamic compression on it, is it allowed by XCode? Last time I checked it was not allowed, presumably because a user could rip music from iTunes to mp3 - yet by banning it they are limiting interesting audio effect apps.

I doubt the amount of people selling audio apps on Apple devices feel any kind of limits on their creativity.

The plethora of audio effects apps on the app store completely renderers your point null.

I have not looked at Xcode since the time it was a requirement to have a paid account to install apps via Xcode. I know this has changed in the last couple of years.

Are there other restrictions on apps installed via Xcode today? E.g do they work for a limited time? Or work only on devices approved in some way?

Thanks!

If you have a free account, you can install an app from source and it will remain valid for 7 days.

That's obnoxiously short and probably intended to discourage people from using that as a distribution channel for developer-focused apps.

What is the validity for paid developer accounts?

Until your certificate expires, so a year.

That's the point. It's meant for testing your apps, not distributing them.

I agree, but for me there's Android which will let you load any app you want. The latest Galaxy is also IMHO a much better phone, and even includes a headphone jack.

I wish there were more than two options, but the modern mobile market is still only about 10 years old.

What makes you think our options will increase as time passes? The history of modern operating systems is a decrease in viable operating systems over time. Along with iOS and Android, webOS, BlackBerry OS, and Windows Mobile all used to be major OSes.

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