Ten percent of iPhones Are Running Third Party Software
by Ewan Spence
By any account, there are over a million iPhones out there from Apple, and a huge number of them have been cracked open to get round the locks both on third party software and the SIM lock (to allow the device to run on any network around the world). Hard numbers have, until now, been hard to come by, but now Nicholas “Drudge†Penree has partially solved that query. He is the man behind AppSnap – a web based application that gives users read/write ability to the main file system in the current firmware. This allows other apps, including a generic application installer, to be placed and run on the iPhone.
With over 150,000 downloads, Penree feels that this represents around 100,000 devices. Add in a touch of windage, and that’s almost ten per cent of iPhones sold that have been cracked open. This isn’t a few hackers trying out a few things and kicking the tyres. And I very much doubt that every single user of a cracked iPhone is some uber-power user.
This is the community making a very loud statement about what they want to do with their device, that they paid for with their money. I find it amazing that, post-sale, any company would seek to limit what a person can do with their own property – even to the point of reaching into a device and switching it off permanently.
To a certain extent Apple is now trying to head this off at the pass by promising an SDK in February 2008, but really this should have been communicated at the launch of the device. Building a smartphone OS is a complicated business, and giving everyone the keys is going to expose every single flaw in the device in short order. One obvious one is that as a Linux based device, every application will be allowed to run with root privileges. I’m pretty sure that a full firmware upgrade will be needed before February, which will rework loopholes and gaps (such as root access) before the SDK arrives. I suspect a large swathe of developers are currently trying to make the brand new mobile OS habitable for hackers, while at the same time holding them up with a slow leak of PR friendly about turns.
Apple, normally pride themself on being the master of the message and spin, have really dropped the ball on the iPhone.
