Perpetual quest for GNU smartphone

[Shlomi Loubaton]

2009/5/31 Tzafrir Cohen <tzafrir at cohens.org.il>:
> But it means that the setup voids your warantee. And if you happen to
> brick your new toy along the way? you get a nice small paperwieght for
> your desktop.
>
> That's something to factor in the price.

True.

> Now, think about somebody who wants to provide a product or a service
> for such a platform. Think about instllation instructions you'll
> provide. Fun, isn't it?

You are preaching to the choir. And I'll probably never try to provide
a product for such a platform but I'll comment just for the fun:
Your talking about Android but let's take the iPhone as our case study -
I don't own an iPhone but I know a few people in Israel who bought it
(I guess they don't mind the risk involved). All of the iPhones I have
seen were jailbroken (required for Hebrew support). Some of the iPhone
owners seem to be "Simple Users" ... I guess they used the "kid next
door" for the task. OTOH, They are gadget lovers so who knows?

The only complicated part in jailbreaking the iPhone (currently) is
pressing some combination of keys to make it load a "backup" image.
The rest of the process involves clicking Next,Next in some windows
installer application (QuickPwn). Then you get an installer called
'Cydia' which is the "Synaptic" for non-official iPhone repositories.
The list of available repositories/apps is huge. Looks like there is a
prosperous community around jailbroken iPhone apps.

>> BTW: iPhone is not a bad GNU phone at all (jailbroken).
>> Somebody created a portage-apt-get-like system for it. You can run GNU tools
>> and even ssh server.
>
> Likewise: maybe slightly Unix, but not GNU. And likewise: jailbroken =>
> unsupported and risky. Especially for those who want to build their
> businesses around it.

I know about at least one commercial company (Flixwagon) using Cydia
to distribute it's iPhone software. There are more. (most of them were
rejected by the appstore or attempted to hack around some iPhone API
limitations and ended getting out of jail for it).

> There was a company who made a lot of noise around providing "MAC
> compatibles" recently. They finally wen bankrupt a while ago.
>
>  http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2009/05/mac_clone_maker_psystar_goes_bankrupt.html

GM will go bankrupt tomorrow... like many other companies in the past year.

> Apple is a company that likes to keep tight control over its platforms.
> Sure, there might be some hobbists providing some systems. But it will
> never take off: people will never be able to sell such systems to your
> mom and dad. Which is why other than the cool factor this is not the
> place to spend time on.

My mom and dad will probably never try to ssh the office... So, Yes. I
guess they're better off with a jailed phone environment :)


Shlomil.