[LINK] "Unforeseeable growth" (iPad)

[Rachel Polanskis]

On 21/01/2011, at 11:04 AM, Roger Clarke <Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au> wrote:

> At 10:46 +1100 21/1/11, Rachel Polanskis wrote:
>> ... [great review;  pity about the line-length  (:-)} ] ...

It is a side effect of typing on the iPad!

>> At the present state of the art, the iPad already has an almost full 
>> UNIX style stack.
>> When I ran Cydia on my iPad, I was able to SSH into it and install a 
>> suite of GNU software
>> ...  it also grants the user and programmer an enormous capability.   ...
>> With IOS, you only get one flavour, but it is a known evil. ...
> 
> I'd understood that the device was tightly closed and controlled.

It is, unless you jailbreak it.   
> 
> If you could get access under the bonnet, can't other parties, 
> including re-sellers?
> 
Apple makes it hard, but not impossible for jailbreaking.
It is not Apple policy to permit apps that can manipulate the filesystem 
or modify the OS, but it is not against law, either.  I do not
think Apple would be happy to let resellers into the OS,
so jailbreaking is the alternative. 

> 
> Reason for my interest:
> 
> Leaving aside punched-card and terminal usage, I'm a 27-year desktop 
> and 15?-year laptop-user.
> 
> But I've skipped the mobile phones, Walkmen, PDAs, palmtops, iPods, 
> smartphones, netbooks, satnavs, and all the rest.

This is pretty much my story, although I also have played with homebrew 
on the the Nintendo NDS (dslinux).

> The long-heralded arrival of tablets seemed to be the biggest 
> challenge yet to my digital isolationism, especially given how good 
> the first release was.
> 
> But I was turned off by what I understood to be the closed nature of 
> the beast, and the highly manipulative philosophy that Apple has 
> sustained since 1984, and deepened.
> 
> If it's less closed than I thought (particularly once v2 comes out), 
> maybe I need to re-think?
> 
If you are prepared to jailbreak the device, then it is almost an open platform.
There is a full GNU gcc environment, which you link using xcode.  Loading your 
own code is pretty easy.  A lot of jailbreak effort has been towards changing
the look and feel of the UI.  But the GNU suite is the core component.  
Once you have run some kind of jailbreak on the device,
it opens it up to being quite a computer.  I am looking 
at how to get an LDAP client and an NFS client working
for example.

Also, the jailbreak is ostensibly more personally secure than the pure OS. 
You are directed to change some default passwds for the device and
there are also mods that disable certain app usage trackers or web bugs.

90% of the appstore apps are suitable for the purpose as they are
and most people would never care about Cydia or jailbreaks.  But
the fact there is a proper OS underneath is enticing, so I think it 
is worth exploring. 


rachel

--
rachel polanskis 
<r.polanskis at uws.edu.au> 
<grove at zeta.org.au>
>