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We got Linux on the iPhone, iPad and other idevices

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111–120 of 181 posts

Re: We got Linux on the iPhone, iPad and other idevices

#111
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And any way you look at it, it's clear that Apple wasn't just trying to cripple old phones in an attempt to sell the newer models. They were doing their best to prolong the life and/or maintain a decent experience for the phones that had become outdated.

Which is why they were sued and _lost_? The mental gymnastics you people use is nuts. I guess this is part of Apples PR, is it? Deny history?

They didn’t say that’s what they were doing. Now they do. The feature still exists today on brand new phones.

Re: We got Linux on the iPhone, iPad and other idevices

#112
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And any way you look at it, it's clear that Apple wasn't just trying to cripple old phones in an attempt to sell the newer models. They were doing their best to prolong the life and/or maintain a decent experience for the phones that had become outdated.

Apple was intentionally and silently slowing down aging iDevices to make it seem like they had just become obsolete under the higher requirements of newer software, rather than just having dying batteries. While the person you're responding to is mischaracterizing what happened to some extent and implying that it is still happening (they may still be throttled to protect from sudden shutoffs, but everybody knows now)…

They weren’t slowing down ageing devices, only handsets that had degraded batteries. It’s an important distinction. The change that they made is now when your battery degrades you can choose to get peak performance at the risk of reboots.

Re: We got Linux on the iPhone, iPad and other idevices

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder about the implications of running them in an "always-on" configuration. Would it be possible to remove the battery and run them entirely on AC power? If you could do that, you might be able to have some pretty nice low-power home servers.

If you just want a server, you can use an android phone already. Either pick one that works with postmarketOS, or termux could work fine (I don't know the overhead of that though). No point in using an iPhone here.

You could just buy a $2,000 2u rack mounted machine too... or you know, flash an old iphone you have sitting around with Linux.

Re: We got Linux on the iPhone, iPad and other idevices

#114
post #95

While only semi-related, this reminds me a lot of iPodLinux, a project from around 2006/2007. I'm on the younger side, and this project was my first real introduction to the possibilities of computing. It let my grayscale iPod Classic play videos and Doom, which at the time, was mindblowing to me and my middle school classmates. In the process I was fortunate enough to actually learn a thing or two about Linux and co…

Same! iPodLinux was my introduction to Embedded Systems, and that's now my actual job :-)

I was only a teenager at the time as well, yet read the whole forum as a moderator. It was always fascinating to learn what new hacks people had made to let the iPod do everything it's capable of!

It's so nice to see Linux becoming available for the iPhone and iPad too.

Now the iPod is discontinued, I wish Apple would release its intellectual property (schematics, board views), so I can repair the old ones. The screen's a bit glitchy on my 1st gen, and I'm not sure how to fix it.

Re: We got Linux on the iPhone, iPad and other idevices

#115

Am I the only one not understanding what’s the point of all these efforts to try to run Linux on completely closed with no documentation devices (like iPhones and even mace for that matter). Seems like a lot of effort, for a crappy solution that maybe 0.0001% is going to use before realizing it is crap. Even only effort to keep up with the yearly hw updates that apple does and the complete disregard for backward comp…

I respect that you are an utilitarian, so I understand your point. But you shall also respect others' non-utilitarian hacker-ianisms, and let them hack whatever device they want to, including "non-useful" iDevices.

Re: We got Linux on the iPhone, iPad and other idevices

#117

Anyone remember getting android on early iPhones? Blew my first gen up, well the battery at least, with the dual OS running together. Good times

Running a chunk of Android userspace on top of the Darwin kernel feels like a better idea if you want Android on an iPhone. You'll have to shim Android APIs to iOS ones and implement an ELF loader/linker for apps that use native libraries, but that's it. Should also be portable across all (jailbreakable) devices.

> but that's it.

That’s a heck of a lot of APIs and daemons to shim. And then you’ve got to do all of that again if you want to run a newer version of iOS or Android.

Re: We got Linux on the iPhone, iPad and other idevices

#118

I'm so excited. I want to use an old Ipad that has a failing battery as a home automation screen. Poor iOS APIs mean developers can't create good kiosk apps to do simple things like control system settings, lock screen and so many more things that I resorted to an Android tablet. This is finally going to make it possible and turn junk into gold.

> This is finally going to make it possible and turn junk into gold.

I am also hopeful, but last week when I checked the compatibility matrix, my 3rd generation A5 iPad was "wayyy" too old and not supported. Only A7 chips or newer, iirc.

Re: We got Linux on the iPhone, iPad and other idevices

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft's CEO admitted that they have been gaming Hackernews for a while, so it's highly likely the other big brands do the same.

Citation on that admission?

I was intrigued by that as well, so I did some digging and turned up the transcript of the “Microsoft Fiscal Year 2019 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call”: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/events/FY-2019/earn... . If you search through that for “Hacker News” you’ll find Satya saying:

In fact this morning I was reading a news article in Hacker News, which is a community where we have been working hard to make sure that Azure is growing in popularity and I was pleasantly surprised to see that we have made a lot of progress. In some sense that at least basically said that we’re neck to neck with Amazon when it comes to even elite developers as represented in that community.

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