First 3rd Party Native Publicly released iPhone app?

[timotheezz]

From gizmodo.com:

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/breaking/...ion-285830.php

[boss1]

...if Google Code is hosting this it probably means either that 1) Apple is giving the nod to this kind of development, 2) they are going to release an SDK or 3) Apple will realize the need for people to access the iPhone as a development platform to do really cool stuff with it.....

I wouldn't say that it's either 1. 2. or 3. It's probably all of the above 1, 2 and 3. This is very very exiting news.

[whateverandever]

That's not a Google App, it's simply hosted on their Google Code open-source dev site (kind of like SourceForge).

[boss1]

Originally Posted by whateverandever

That's not a Google App, it's simply hosted on their Google Code open-source dev site (kind of like SourceForge).

well if that's the case I'm still have hope for point 3.

[billchase2]

that's awesome!

anyone get it to install yet?

[MarkMS]

Originally Posted by whateverandever

That's not a Google App, it's simply hosted on their Google Code open-source dev site (kind of like SourceForge).

Yeah. I thought this was an app from a Google engineer or something.

[johnee]

sure, this might be cool now, but google might be making it's own PHONE!

[xUKHCx]

Well according to gizmodo

The application is MobileTerminal, "a terminal emulator application for the iPhone. MobileTerminal.app is NOT an SSH client, nor Telnet for that matter. It can however be used to execute a console ssh-client application."

Link to the google code site here

Hopefully the start of a lot of applications appearing. Wonder what happens when you put more than 16 applications on there.

[MacRumors]

iPhone hacking efforts have started to bring some rudimentary tools for developers to create their own applications on the iPhone. Unfortunately, the process of developing applications or even installing 3rd party applications remains cumbersome to most casual users.

One example application circulating today is Mobile Terminal (video) which allows you to have shell access on your iPhone.

A TUAW blogger writes about her experience playing around with the unofficial iPhone developer tools.

Again, while all these efforts or promising and the tools should only get easier, until Apple comes out with their own official developer's kit, we won't see the true potential for 3rd party applications on the iPhone.

Article Link

[ventro]

That's a really good looking icon. Looks even better than apple's terminal icons.

[yayaba]

Awesome, this is looking great. Can't wait until more advanced apps come out with an easy way to load them onto the phone.

[MarkMS]

Originally Posted by yayaba

Awesome, this is looking great. Can't wait until more advanced apps come out with an easy way to load them onto the phone.

Yeah! I can't wait as well.

[edka]

does this mean that we gonna see real applications for iphone

[MDiddy]

Can't wait for the holy grail - the VoIP softphone app

[arkmannj]

Sweet !!! Terminal is actually an app I was longing for on the iPhone.
Ping, traceroute, SSH, Pico (umm maybe the Pine/pico stuff isn't installed on iPhone OS ?) and maybe some great iPhone OS guy snuck in the terminal version of Tetris

It would be awesome, but I do find myself a little standoffish on the third party apps for now.

[Joshua8o8]

it would be interesting to see how the iphone would handle more than 16 apps. If it is even possible.

[crop]

Like the OSX dock may be...
Icons get smaller and you end up with 5 or 6 per row.
Or it will just scroll

-crop

[2GMario]

If security requirements weren't so tight now a days, I would be ecstatic about this program.

Don't get me wrong - little by little, the limits are being broken - either Apple will have to step up with a true dev environment or the hackers will just continue to have their way with it.

But how beneficial is a terminal program to anyone ? In my office, last year we went through SAS 70, recently we just got a Pen Test, and were starting the beginning of ISO 27001 certification.

Due to these, SSH access outside the firewall is a no no. No Wifi anywhere near the office and the iPhone doesn't have an ethernet connection so i could just jack in at a terminal on the floor and fix something in the server room from there.

So, like i said ? Do others have a use for something like this ? I do, but I cant use it.

Google is the kind of company to face the legal ramifications from Apple, if there were / are any, for doing this type of thing. The simple act of Google releasing this says alot.

-Mario

[Lixivial]

Originally Posted by 2GMario

So, like i said ? Do others have a use for something like this ? I do, but I cant use it.

Google is the kind of company to face the legal ramifications from Apple, if there were / are any, for doing this type of thing. The simple act of Google releasing this says alot.

Yes. I can now access my computers remotely and securely from my iPhone. Having sftp-server on the phone gives me filesystem access -- either via GUI drag-n-drop FUSE drivers or sftp clients or from CLI via sftp or ssh -- from any OS. That includes classic Mac OS and Linux, too. It also opens the gate for SSH tunneling as well, which can help in those scenarios of being on a public Wi-Fi network and still wanting to securely connect to email or computers.

Having sftp-server has greatly simplified the process of tossing ringtones on, and various other functions. Having a Terminal right on the iPhone is nice to have direct filesystem access from the phone and managing processes and implementing scripts. In short, with these and future developments it's finally become a mobile computer rather than a sandboxed device.

Even if you can't ssh out of the network, it's still nice to be able to ssh into computers within the network for diagnostic reasons. I've already used my phone to connect to my MacBook and kill a runaway process when it took a dump. Incidentally it was Finder when my iPhone's IP changed ...

Also, Google is not releasing this. Google has no affiliation with this. It's hosted on their open source code hosting page. If you read the TOS for Google Code, it states:

You understand that all information, data, text, software, music, sound, photographs, graphics, video, messages or other materials ("Content") are the sole responsibility of the person from which such Content originated.

Sure, Apple can try to force Google to pull down the page -- not quite sure why they would, but I suppose they could -- but in that unlikely scenario, it'd move to SourceForge, BerliOS, or any other source hosting pages. They're not exactly breaking IP by releasing applications that utilize Apple's API whether or not that API is published.

EDIT: Looks like the threads were merged, because I didn't see half of these posts when I started this post a long while ago. whateverandever covered the Google thing already.

[kdarling]

Originally Posted by xUKHCx

Hopefully the start of a lot of applications appearing. Wonder what happens when you put more than 16 applications on there.

Someone tried it and posted a video.

The main portion only shows 4x4 = 16 and doesn't scroll, or at least he couldn't find a way to make it do so. The bottom dock will hold up to 5 icons.

[xUKHCx]

Cheers for the update, I imagined that it would flip pages like safari does.

[clevin]

1) terminal? how geek is that? LOL, it might be useful for hackers,
2) I am still wondering, can anybody tell me, there are quite a few hacks floating around, what will apple's patch do to these hacks? such as those who hacks iphone into a pure ipod+"internet device" w/o phone function?

[shemp9999]

without a little snitch available for my iPhone, should i be concerned about running the pre-compiled terminal.app binary and ssh tools from the google code site? i'd imagine it could phone home my login credentials.

[Lixivial]

Originally Posted by shemp9999

i'd imagine it could phone home my login credentials.

If you don't want to take anyone's word for it, you're more than free to read the source and compile each of these applications yourself.

Isn't open source software beautiful?

[emotion]

Originally Posted by clevin

1) terminal? how geek is that? LOL, it might be useful for hackers,

It's not just hackers that use the command line. There's many of us that work with unix systems that would find a native terminal.app very useful indeed.