If you know how to use Xcode, you can install any software you like on iPhone, without Apple reviewing it, and without jailbreaking it.
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!
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?
Not all the time, but sometimes - both under GNU/Linux and Windows - I want to/have to run an application with root/admin permissions.
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.
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."
This is what spontaneously comes to my mind. But if I reflected for some time probably more things would come to my mind.
You are not a hacker.
The willingness to look under the hood or desire to at least be able to do so is a rather universal property of hackers.
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.
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.