Filed under: Odds and ends, iPhone
iPhone: How many Hackers?
The iPhone appears to have an installed base somewhere upwards of one million units according to Apple's official numbers. A majority of those units have been sold to early adopters; that is people with a certain adventurous spirit, not just those who got to the story early. Some have been hacked by hand, others through tools like AppTapp. Hard data on the number of hacked units is indirect.
I haven't been able to get in touch with "lg", the man behind AppTapp/Installer.app but I was able to talk to other developers: there have been over 70,000 Open SSH downloads and upwards of 600,000 unique visits to the SMXY repository this month. Since only a portion of Installer.app users will install SSH, that hints at a much bigger base.
What is my best guess? I'm thinking conservatively that between 10-20% of early adopters have hacked their iPhones for third party software and that a similar number are unlocking their iPhones for non-AT&T service; and, no, I'm not sure what the overlap might be. Either way, I expect the software-hacks to plunge as we enter the holiday season where most purchases will be from less adventurous customers and the unlock percentages to rise as the iPhone hits Europe.
Thanks to Shaun Erickson and Nate True.
Update: The fabulous Drudge has uploaded a complete breakdown for his most popular hosted packages. In addition, he reports nearly 800,000 unique visits between the Conceited and SMXY repositories. Even taking EDGE into account, that's a lot of visits. "Kroo" lent his able assistance to the stats gathering effort.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Nicholas Arvanitis said 3:16PM on 9-18-2007
Umm no. I plan to immediately unlock my iPhone for an alternative pay as you go network in the UK straight away. I don't think you realise how common unlocked phones are here, so I doubt percentages will drop, especially if an easy to use GUI unlock comes around. Almost all phones come unlocked here, and if not you can ask them to do it for FREE or a small fee.
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Pants said 3:28PM on 9-18-2007
Seems a centrally located, mac oriented blog should do a survey... Maybe TUAW for example?
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JT said 3:33PM on 9-18-2007
@ Pants (great name by the way)
Seems like a TUAW survey would be skewed to folks more likely to hack than not, imho.
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Jonathan said 3:56PM on 9-18-2007
" there have been over 70,000 Open SSH downloads "
A lot of folks have been having trouble hacking their iphones and might download this many times (after a restore) before getting it working, or like me, wanted a fresh start after unlocking.
It would be interesting to see unique IP's and see how many of them were already using ATT's EDGE.
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Andrew Escobar said 4:05PM on 9-18-2007
Erica,
I can see the number 415-555-9833
...555 seems suspicious. Is this picture related to the voicemail hack you briefly mentioned a few days ago?
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Andrew Escobar said 4:05PM on 9-18-2007
Erica,
I can see the number 415-555-9833
...555 seems suspicious. Is this picture related to the voicemail hack you briefly mentioned a few days ago?
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Will Angel said 4:41PM on 9-18-2007
#1, you might want to reread what she actually wrote in regards to your comments.
Anyway, the unlocking is *almost* mainstream, so I would agree that it'll be rising. There's even been iPhone coverage specifically on unlocking it in BusinessWeek.
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matt said 4:54PM on 9-18-2007
10-20%, really? I work in a very technical field (programmers or engineers, the lot of them), and know several people who have iPhones, but not one of them is even considering hacking it, for any reason.
I plan to buy a revB iPhone, which will hopefully include more storage, better email client, and butter my toast. I am probably the most likely out of the folk I know to hack an iPhone - I would miss my treo's flexibility, app-wise. If the iPhone is ever unlocked for 3rd party developers though, I doubt I would - I don't really need SSH or a command-line, thanks much.
I'm not disputing your claim, but I'm surprised that my experience is so different from yours.
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Mitch said 4:55PM on 9-18-2007
My gut feeling is that the Hack number is much lower - around 5%. 10% would surprise me.
I think most people don't like messing with a good thing.
Thank goodness for those who do ;-)
I think the unlock number in the US will be tiny (a few percent) with those outside the US being much, much higher (over 75%).
My .02
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Faentur said 5:24PM on 9-18-2007
I bought my iPhone right after the price drop. (I said from the beginning that I was waiting for a price drop and the ability to use it on a network other than ATT) I set mine up right out of the box to work without activation on ATT and 3rd party apps. Then I jumped at the chance (using the Harro hackjob, When it first hit the interwebs sorry erica, I had no idea he was a fake at the time) to SIM unlock it. Now I use it on T-Mobile daily and am very happy. I have been in the business of technology for a very long time, and am already prepared for Apple to break a few things along the way. As long as I can continue on T-Mobile I will be happy. Now if I could just get one of the YouTube hacks to work for me!
Since I got mine working on T-Mobile and showed it to my friends, 3 of them have bought iPhones and had me unlock them.
Hopefully this trend will continue.
-Faentur
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Nate True said 5:55PM on 9-18-2007
In case you were wondering, Tap Tap Revolution relies on a web service for the iTunes Library tracks, and yesterday just over 7,000 people accessed that web service. That's a lot of users!
I wholly expect that number to fall, though, as people realize that TTR isn't as fun as it first seemed.
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Aron Trimble said 6:02PM on 9-18-2007
Am I missing...? The statistics show anySIM.app in the list... I don't remember that ever showing up in Installer...
Ps, I find it interesting that MobileChat is the highest - even above openSSH and BSD Subsystem!
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Aron Trimble said 6:05PM on 9-18-2007
Oh I found the answer to my own question.
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Shawn said 6:14PM on 9-18-2007
Those are pretty impressive numbers and I don't think they're very far off. I've hacked it myself and I've had several friends come to me to hack theirs. I'm usually on top of the hacking scene, my PSP hacked to bits, but this is pretty unprecedented. I can't believe how well implemented Installer.app is. It's almost like running native Apple software, truly a feat so early on this device. And people seem to be having a very positive experience with all these third party apps. This represents an interesting problem for Apple. With north of 15 to 20 percent of their install base happy with these programs that are coming in each day, whats going to happen when they re-lock the doors? I understand Apple's concern. They want a unified iPhone experience much like they enjoyed with the iPod. But more and more this thing is proving to be capable of so much more. Right now the only thing jeopardizing the stability and security of the device is the volital nature of 3rd party hacking. So they have a decision to make. Either re-cripple the device, making 200,000 people pretty upset, myself included. Or open the floodgates. Put out an SDK. I've always thought a dashboard/widget system would be a good way to go about doing that. It's becoming apparent this thing is a fully fledged mini-computer running OS X and it's gonna be a shame if they try to throttle the power of the iPhone.
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russdogg said 6:37PM on 9-18-2007
If you haven't tried it, you might not understand how easy it is to "hack" the iPhone. Hacking doesn't even seem like an appropriate phrase anymore. Modding, maybe. The hard work has been done and wrapped in a nice installer. The reality is that installing third party apps only take two finger taps. Some of the easiest hacking ever. 10-20% is totally feasible, in my opinion.
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frank k. said 7:30PM on 9-18-2007
#6, the photo is a screenshot from NBC's new show Journeyman.
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Reg Muffet said 8:00PM on 9-18-2007
Those are impressive numbers, Apple should take note. And even if the numbers were smaller, they are heavily composed of "influencers."
Influencers are people are drive adoption of a technology. They are enthusiastic (to a diagnosable extreme!) and will go out of their way to bring people into their world.
For instance, I've been directly responsible for helping at least five people clinch the decision to go iPhone. I'm in no doubt that my enthusiasm has been a large part of it, and that without that, those people would not currently have iPhones.
The hacks (which are rapidly turning into highly polished apps) also make very impressive "demo tools" that go over and above the natively installed software.
For example, seeing SummerBoard scroll the main springboard, with a Leopard style Dock and grass leaves in the background, kind of builds on the image colorful icons and black background that has been viewed so many times in web stock photos. It's a definite jaw drop moment.
As is:
- showing MobileTerminal or SSH or Ruby to someone with a web admin background, or
- Frotz to someone over 40 who remembers the Infocom phenomenon of the early 80s, or
- an IM app to a Gen X or Y'er, or
- the practicality of an app like VNotes to an office peon, or
- Books.app with a collection of EBooks, and/or
- the many dictionaries that have just sprung up to a bookworm (who will probably migrate from a Sony Reader as a result, not least because they won't fall asleep waiting for pages to turn!), or
- the never ending stream of little utils to _do stuff_ with your stuff,
etc, etc.
Flipping CoverFlow on its side for 30 seconds of quickly wearing off novelty only goes so far. The impressive and rapidly growing collection of innovative software aka "hacks" takes over where the native Apple apps leave off.
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Mohammed Mudassir Azeemi said 8:03PM on 9-18-2007
I am interested to write some iPhone Apps, I am experienced Software Architect, let me konw where do I start from ?
Thanks,
Mudassir Azeemi
San Francisco, CA
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hourog said 9:29PM on 9-18-2007
Computerworld reported the following today:
September 18, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs said today that it's his company's job to stymie hackers who try to unlock the iPhone -- the first time the company has officially said it would fight attempts to use the popular device on unauthorized networks.
Looks like it will be a long cat & mouse game.
Good luck to ya'll. It won't be easy!
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Tom said 1:34PM on 9-19-2007
I seriously doubt 10-20% have hacked their iPhones. MAYBE 5%, but remember, people can download these multiple times especially if there's software updates or other reasons to reformat their phones.
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