Ever since the iPhone came out there have been hackers and hacker communities writing code to open the iPhone. There have already been many hacks that allow iPhone users to make custom ringtones, use pay-as-you-go SIM cards, and even activate the iPhone without an AT&Tcontract. Of course most, if not all, of the sites that offer these hacks have a very large disclaimer that doing any of this could brick your iPhone, void the warranty, or even get the law after you.
However, today there was a big step in the process of hackers opening the iPhone up to third party downloadable apps. The folks over at the iPhone Dev Wiki have finally started to make inroads in opening up the iPhone. A hacker named Nightwatch has apparently sequestered himself for weeks working on his special project; the first independent “Hello, World” application for the iPhone.
The iPhone Dev Wiki’s front page sums it up pretty nicely:
After many, many hours of intense work from “Nightwatch”, the first independent “Hello World”* application has been compiled and launched on the iPhone. This was made possible using the “ARM/Mach-O Toolchain“, Nightwatch’s “special project”, that he has been working on so carefully over the past few weeks. Certain parts of the toolchain (such as the assembler) are being refined and tested and these will be released as soon as possible.
It should be noted that Nightwatch has been instrumental in creating these tools, working in near isolation to get them finished.
The folks at the iPhone Dev Wiki has asked that people don’t link to their website because of the last time the URL was linked on a site (digg) the wiki had problems (it crashed). But a quick search on, say, Google should hook you up.
Anyway, this simple little hack is pretty exciting for those looking to download third party apps onto their iPhone. From here it’s not out of the question to start seeing full third party applications in the near future. For more info on iPhone hacks and the “Hello World” hack check out Hack The iPhone or this article from The Unofficial Apple Weblog.
July 20th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
very spiffy.
of course, now I’m waiting for the Captain Crunch or Anonymous of the iPhone hacking world to make his appearance