Recently I picked up an iPhone and thought I should do a short post on development for the iPhone and how open source fits into all of this, if at all.
At the moment, there is no official SDK (software development kit) for the iPhone. All applications are supposed to be built for the iPhone's web browser and hosted remotely. This doesn't really leave any room for open source as most of the interesting code would be server side. Of course you can still open up the site on a mac and use the view source feature to see any HTML, CSS or JavaScript but this may not be properly licensed and may not be the whole app.
I did a little digging around on the internet and any mention of open source and the iPhone usually refers to the 'jail breaking' apps and the applications that can then be installed. As far as I've heard the most recent way to jail break your iPhone was using a TIFF overflow vulnerability, which I believe has now been closed with the release of firmware 1.1.2. This means that those apps will no longer be able to be installed onto the iPhone at this point.
Apple have come out and said officially that there will be an SDK available in February of next year. I believe this is the time when we will see official, open source iPhone applications.
Monday 12 November 2007
Thursday 8 November 2007
Leopard incompatibilites
I thought I should maybe post about the issues that have arisen with Leopard being released. Personally I haven't felt the need to upgrade to Leopard yet but I have been hearing a lot about certain apps not working under the new operating system. Therefore I thought I would try and bring together a list of the open source apps that are not yet Leopard compatible. If I have missed anything off of this list, please add them in the comments.
Azureus
As far as I can tell this is an open source app, although I haven't played with it myself. According to MacRumors, this software has conflicts with the airport driver which causes a kernel panic.
The GIMP
An old version of the GIMP, version 2.2.11 has problems with Leopard.
Growl
Some of the growl plugins will not work.
Path Finder
There have been reports of various issues on Leopard. Read more on the Cocoatech blog.
Songbird
I haven't been able to find out exactly what the problem is with Songbird but if anyone has anymore information, please comment.
Quicksilver
I've heard there have been some issues with Quicksilver, but I believe the developer has now released a Leopard compatible version.
Azureus
As far as I can tell this is an open source app, although I haven't played with it myself. According to MacRumors, this software has conflicts with the airport driver which causes a kernel panic.
The GIMP
An old version of the GIMP, version 2.2.11 has problems with Leopard.
Growl
Some of the growl plugins will not work.
Path Finder
There have been reports of various issues on Leopard. Read more on the Cocoatech blog.
Songbird
I haven't been able to find out exactly what the problem is with Songbird but if anyone has anymore information, please comment.
Quicksilver
I've heard there have been some issues with Quicksilver, but I believe the developer has now released a Leopard compatible version.
Wednesday 7 November 2007
Quicksilver
This application has been one of my must haves on my new systems for a while now. I have been unable to write anything about it on this blog because, although it's freely available, the source code has not been given. Luckily, blacktree have recently opened up the source and made it freely available on Google Code under the Apache license.
Many people describe Quicksilver as an application launcher, which is true, and it is very good as one, but it is so much more. I use it as a file browser and file launcher, iTunes controller, quick contact lookup, URL launcher and as a quick way into many other apps, e.g. to launch a blank email with a certain file attached to it with just a few keystrokes.
As I just mentioned, Quicksilver uses keystrokes and key combinations to execute different actions. You can also set up tiggers that will do a wide variety of tasks. Some simple tiggers that I have on my system are, F2 launches Firefox, F3 launches mail.app.
You can also use it to do more complex tasks without having to touch your mouse. For example you could summon quicksilver (I use double tap command key), navigate to a file, hit tab to move to the next pane, hit 'o' and then 'p', which for me brings up 'open file with...', then press tab again and start to type the name of the app you would like to open that file with. I find this a lot quicker than having to open up a finder window, navigate around then have to right click.
The best way to get into quicksilver, I believe is to download it and just start using it to launch apps and files and slowly work your way into it. A very good resource for tutorials and ideas is Merlin Mann's 43 Folders website.
Many people describe Quicksilver as an application launcher, which is true, and it is very good as one, but it is so much more. I use it as a file browser and file launcher, iTunes controller, quick contact lookup, URL launcher and as a quick way into many other apps, e.g. to launch a blank email with a certain file attached to it with just a few keystrokes.
As I just mentioned, Quicksilver uses keystrokes and key combinations to execute different actions. You can also set up tiggers that will do a wide variety of tasks. Some simple tiggers that I have on my system are, F2 launches Firefox, F3 launches mail.app.
You can also use it to do more complex tasks without having to touch your mouse. For example you could summon quicksilver (I use double tap command key), navigate to a file, hit tab to move to the next pane, hit 'o' and then 'p', which for me brings up 'open file with...', then press tab again and start to type the name of the app you would like to open that file with. I find this a lot quicker than having to open up a finder window, navigate around then have to right click.
The best way to get into quicksilver, I believe is to download it and just start using it to launch apps and files and slowly work your way into it. A very good resource for tutorials and ideas is Merlin Mann's 43 Folders website.
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