Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

terminalbytes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 198 posts

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#81

Post by nfriedly »

selcuka wrote: post #79
nfriedly wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPhone 8 has the unpatchable checkm8 bootrom vulnerability, so while it doesn't say this in the article, the author could have jailbroken the device to run whatever software they want without paying any Apple fees. That vulnerability was a huge win. It just recently stopped, with the final vulnerable device (7th gen iPad) not getting the iPad OS 26 update.

Isn't it an in-memory exploit, though? I believe it would stop working if the phone restarts for some reason.

Yes, that's correct, it's "tethered" meaning you have to basically redo it each time the phone restarts.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#82

Post by lmm »

behnamoh wrote: post #29
nancyminusone wrote: post #12

>I’m saving approximately $84-120 CAD annually. I suppose most of this is eaten up by the need to pay apple $99 per year just to run your own app on your own phone for longer than a week.

This Apple fee is one of the most absurd things they do. Like, how is it even justified—does Apple really spend $99 on infra maintenance and server costs to host your app? When I buy a device I want to know that I own it, but Apple keeps pushing the narrative that "we LET you use this device in ways we see fit". So basically the customer is just borrowing a device from Apple while paying the full price. I'm a longtim…

> how is it even justified

Money is nice, they can charge it and people will pay them. Would be letting their shareholders down not to charge it really. I'm surprised they haven't tried bumping it up yet.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#83

Post by neilv »

rtaylorgarlock wrote: post #73
neilv wrote: post #55

Nice hacker effort and writeup, but I want to comment on a general HN pattern of what tech people promote implicitly with hacker network effects... For every HN blog post of "I accomplished ___ despite a hacker-hostile platform, and now you can use what I built, and be hopelessly tied to the platform"... Baby Jesus Linus sheds a tear. In this case, it's a bit odd, since the writer has an entire section, "Why This Act…

THANK YOU. For example, I'm currently a user of an android app (installed thru Play Store) which I found through front page; cool. The headline: "I developed and didn't use ". Tragically, I care less about framework than I do about functionality, and ever since installing, i've been left wondering how many of the hundreds of upvoters tried running what I describe as the single buggiest app on my phone. I've rage unin…

Yes, but usually it doesn't come down to something that works vs. doesn't work.

And some of the times that it does, it's because someone earlier didn't think about values before establishing network effects that stuffed a bad-values thing while starving a good-values thing.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#84

Post by akutlay »

demosthanos wrote: post #76
mitemte wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s worse is it used to be 90 days. Apple changed it to 7 days years ago.

90 days is still absurd. I have custom apps I install on my Android phones once per phone . I go years without bothering to rebuild them.

I would guess they do it because they want to minimize the chance that someone will install an unapproved app to someone’s phone and cause harm. I know it’s already pretty hard but Apple seems to be very particular when it comes to this.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#85

Post by sampullman »

rkagerer wrote: post #66
behnamoh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This Apple fee is one of the most absurd things they do. Like, how is it even justified—does Apple really spend $99 on infra maintenance and server costs to host your app? When I buy a device I want to know that I own it, but Apple keeps pushing the narrative that "we LET you use this device in ways we see fit". So basically the customer is just borrowing a device from Apple while paying the full price. I'm a longtim…

This is why I switched to Android 10 years ago. Unfortunately the grass isn't looking much greener over there these days. I'd love to hear from individuals who worked at these companies whether it disgusts them as much as it does me, and ideas (from a business perspective as much as technical) on how a new platform might wrest control back into the hands of users/owners.

The Android fee is only $25, but in my experience everything around the submission process is at least 4x worse, so it evens out.

At least Apple has humans doing review and support.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#86

Post by eddieh »

The iPhone 8 was peak iPhone. I’m on my second iPhone 8 and am posting from it now.

I did also like the original iPhone SE mostly because of the size, but the haptics make the the iPhone 8, along with having a bezel, square screen, and home button.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#87

Post by 8note »

aerostable_slug wrote: post #34
behnamoh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This Apple fee is one of the most absurd things they do. Like, how is it even justified—does Apple really spend $99 on infra maintenance and server costs to host your app? When I buy a device I want to know that I own it, but Apple keeps pushing the narrative that "we LET you use this device in ways we see fit". So basically the customer is just borrowing a device from Apple while paying the full price. I'm a longtim…

I think it's fair to also cover the fairly rigorous testing that occurs for each app store submission. I'm not sure a hundred bucks is the right number, but it's not fair to say all they do is host the file.

apple could easily pay that with its money printer commision on app sales or on its money printer iphone sales, both of which are inpart because of the app developers.

whats the value add of rigourously validating an app that youre only running on your own phone?

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#88

Post by cortesoft »

behnamoh wrote: post #29
nancyminusone wrote: post #12

>I’m saving approximately $84-120 CAD annually. I suppose most of this is eaten up by the need to pay apple $99 per year just to run your own app on your own phone for longer than a week.

This Apple fee is one of the most absurd things they do. Like, how is it even justified—does Apple really spend $99 on infra maintenance and server costs to host your app? When I buy a device I want to know that I own it, but Apple keeps pushing the narrative that "we LET you use this device in ways we see fit". So basically the customer is just borrowing a device from Apple while paying the full price. I'm a longtim…

> Like, how is it even justified—does Apple really spend $99 on infra maintenance and server costs to host your app?

How much something costs is not what determines how much a company charges for something.

A company sets prices based on what will make it the most money. A company only lowers prices if they think doing so will generate higher total profits in the long run.

Apple seems to think charging $99 a year for developers will help its long term bottom line the most.

There are probably many reasons for that, some of them already mentioned in sibling comments - keeping low effort apps out, preventing spammers from constantly buying new accounts to bypass bans, reducing the workload for approvers, generating revenue from the fees, etc.

Prices aren't justified or not, you choose to pay them or not.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#89

Post by nikolayasdf123 »

interesting, who (why?) is using and even paying for this service?

1. if you are on device, then use on device OCR (e.g. use Apple Vision directly)

2. if you are on cloud, then self-deployed OCR models

3. if you are on browser, then WASM/local self-deployed OCR models

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#90

Post by wpm »

aerostable_slug wrote: post #34
behnamoh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This Apple fee is one of the most absurd things they do. Like, how is it even justified—does Apple really spend $99 on infra maintenance and server costs to host your app? When I buy a device I want to know that I own it, but Apple keeps pushing the narrative that "we LET you use this device in ways we see fit". So basically the customer is just borrowing a device from Apple while paying the full price. I'm a longtim…

I think it's fair to also cover the fairly rigorous testing that occurs for each app store submission. I'm not sure a hundred bucks is the right number, but it's not fair to say all they do is host the file.

OK, then don't charge me until I submit something to the App Store.

I should be able to self-sign an app for longer than a week on a free developer account.

Post reply on HN