iPhone: How many Hackers?

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.

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!

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

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.

#6, the photo is a screenshot from NBC's new show Journeyman.

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.

Oh I found the answer to my own question.

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!

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.

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.