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Comment by stavrianos | Hacker News Reader

There's gotta be a way outside of the App Store to get software onto the iPhone, right? If nothing else, developers gotta test their apps out. If that whole process (whatever it is) were wrapped into a neat little app, an entirely new distribution channel could be opened up. Has this happened yet? And if not (I assume not), why not?

edit: not an iphone app, a regular-type computer app.

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Apple is trying to lobby the government into making it a federal crime to install your own software on the iPhone. I love this digital millennium that we live in...

Anyway, it comes down to -- what do you want more, pretty icons, or your freedom? Right now, the majority of phone users seem to want pretty icons.

Source? I'd really like to hear more about this.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/02/apple-says-jailbreaking...

Basically Apple wants it to be a crime (copyright infringement/DMCA violation) to jailbreak your phone.

I believe they will be ruling in October.

Really sad. Is this kind of treachery the inevitable result of success?

No, it's the inevitable result of making it legal for congresspeople to accept bribes. (Oh sorry, not bribes; lobbying money.)

No, it's campaign contributions. Lobbyists are paid to ostensibly lobby. Of course, a part of lobbying is donating to various candidates and PACs.

You mean apple's in-house legal council argued that it's a DMCA violation to jailbreak a phone. E.g., doing the exact job any decent lawyer would do for their client.

That's a little different from Steve Jobs saying "If you jailbreak your phone, I want you in federal prison."

I'm no apple fanboy or hater (I donate to the EFF, and write this from a macbook pro), but if we want a company to behave "right" (for our definition-of-the-week of "right"), we have to be fair to them first.

An iPhone isn't intended as a general purpose computing device, nor it it sold as one, nor should anyone who wants such a device buy it.

It shouldn't be a federal crime to fool around with it, mind, but this is emphatically not a "freedom" issue.

"If that whole process (whatever it is) were wrapped into a neat little app, an entirely new distribution channel could be opened up."

Yes! And then that app could be distributed through the App Sto... uhhh... hmmm... err...

"And if not (I assume not), why not?"

See above.

Check out Cydia and Icy:

http://cydia.saurik.com/

http://ripdev.com/icy/

Code needs to be signed to run on the iPhone unless you've jailbroken it - which most users don't do. So a key step in developing your neat little app is brute-force reversing Apple's private key (or stealing it, I suppose).

You can jailbreak your iphone and then install apps from a number of repositories. This, however, probably voids your TOS and warranty agreement.

While Apple would deny warranty service if they discovered the phone is or was jailbroken, a full restore from iTunes completely reverses a jailbreak, so as long as your phone is either dead or restorable, there are no warranty issues.

(Do you not find this completely unsatisfying though?)

I've found that for better or worse, most of the real world involves compromise and taking the good with the bad. So while I'd love Apple to totally open up the iPhone (I'd also like a free yacht) on the balance, I personally choose to have an iPhone instead of a G1 or whatever else. The upside is bigger for me than the downside.

The difference between an open iPhone and a free yacht is cost. A free yahct would cost someone money. An open iPhone would save Apple money (no need to pay app store reviewers, etc.)

No way - Apple gets a cut of all those app purchases.

I find this view disappointing. RMS (famously) remarked that he uses open source software, even if there is a superior closed source version because by using it, he can contribute to an open ecosystem.

When I look at the mobile phone market, I am quite willing to use a G1 solely to support the prospect of a handset that I can control. The more people use an iPhone because it is epsilon better, the less companies will be inclined to give users freedom.

Sir, did you reboot the computer?

That didn't fix it? Ok, reinstall windows and the latest drivers from our website.

That didn't fix it? Ok, here's an RMA.

Not that different from other platform vendors...

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