The Road Ahead: From Jailbreak to SDK

by Eric March on February 8, 2008 at 7:14 pm

As we head into the second week of February, our thoughts are increasingly about Apple’s forthcoming release of the iPhone and iPod Touch SDK in a few weeks, and with them, a lot of questions about what that will mean for our devices on both sides of the third party software fence, not to mention the accessory situation. There is no doubt that the SDK will be huge news when it is released, and it will continue to be a prominent component of news items to come as the floodgates of legitimate third party software and hardware accessories open. But what is it really going to mean? What can we expect to see? How much will it cost? What about jailbreaking and the homebrew scene? Good questions, all, so I would like to offer some thoughts on these topics.

Apps Go Commercial
The most obvious gimmie here is new software designed by commercial software houses. It is probably a safe bet that we will see high profile mobile software houses such as Astraware jump on board, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the likes of Handmark, Mobirate, MDM, and other PDA and Smartphone developers get in the game as well. The big question mark however is whether or not we will see official ports of Sun JavaVM™ and/or Adobe Flash™. Both have been discussed at length on message boards everywhere, and while there exists a homebrew JavaVM™ runtime port for the iPhone and iPod Touch, Adobe Flash™ is still hotly debated.

The primary point of contention here is that Flash, being a high-level interpreted scripting language, is slow code to execute, and therefore requires a fair amount of horsepower to run effectively. The Touch and iPhone, being 412Mhz devices, albeit with a decent video chipset, may or may not have the stones to pull it off — not in its fullest implementation, anyway. Suggestions have been made as to the greater feasibility of running an older, “lite” version of Flash, but most seem to agree that this would be insufficient to satisfy those who want Flash capabilities the most. This is likely one of those debates that only time will put to rest one way or the other.

More than applications though, there is the hardware accessory scene. Many of the current accessories designed for other iPods work just fine, but there are those handful of dongles and docks that introduce extra features by uploading and executing software onto the iPod in order to display information to allow a greater level of interaction. Take the Gear4 BluEye, for example. This great little gadget gives you a wired remote along with an FM radio and a Bluetooth receiver that you can pair with your cell phone and use to make an answer calls without ever having to take your phone out from wherever it’s hiding, nor even remove your headphones. On standard iPods, the BluEye uses the display to show what radio station you are currently listening to, who is trying to disturb your music listening experience, and let you see and dial from your last 10 incoming/outgoing numbers.

On the iPod Touch and iPhone, however, the display doesn’t work. Once the SDK is released however, Gear4 will be updating the BluEye firmware to fully support these devices and use their display just as it did on other iPod models.

Apple Holds the Key to Homebrewing
So what about the jailbreak scene? Homebrew software? What is to become of that? Will there be a continued future or will it all become about the SDK? There are actually two questions to answer here.

The first is jailbreaking itself. Jailbreaking relies on using vulnerabilities, or exploits, in the operating system of both the iPhone and iPod Touch to hack their way in and gain the ability to execute arbitrary code — that is, run programs of their own design. This is much like the way hackers gain access to remote computers through vulnerabilities in Windows or other operating systems in order to install trojans, virii, or anything else for that matter — though jailbreaking is benign rather than malicious. (Some may say beneficial — and who are we to disagree?)

Apple sees a problem with this, though. Not with the ability to open the devices up to third party development in whatever form that takes — but with the ability to open up the devices to anything at all. A vulnerability is a vulnerability, and if it can be exploited for good (jailbreaking), it can just as easily be exploited for bad (virii, trojans). Apple does not want this. In fact, this is the very reason Apple did not want to develop an SDK in the first place. Mr. Jobs simply didn’t want people to get their hands all up in his OS and start monkeying around, possibly creating a nasty virus or Trojan that could spread from iPhone to iPhone over the air and ruin his precious children. He does have a bit of a point.

Because of this, whenever the iPhone Dev Team finds an exploit and crafts a jailbreak around it, Apple scrambles to dam that hole for the next firmware update. The more holes Apple patch, the harder it is for the iPhone Dev Team to find new ones to break in through. While new firmware features bring with them the potential for new holes, the Dev Team are still running out of old ones to find, and as unfortunate as it seems, we need to consider the possibility that they may end up hitting a brick wall.

That leaves us with the SDK. What does that mean for the homebrewer? Maybe a lot. Maybe nothing. Not a whole lot is known about the SDK at this point, but one thing we do know is that anything developed with the SDK is going to require a digital signature in order for it to run, and only Apple has the key to that signature. This is one of the ways in which Apple has attempted to build a fence around its development borders to keep the undesirables out and let the Good People in. Remember, Apple never wanted to allow third party development in the first place (web apps notwithstanding); the SDK is merely Apple grudgingly acceding to tremendous public demand for it.

Furthermore, we do not know what will be involved in getting apps signed — but one thing we can give a high probability to is that it won’t be free. This is where homebrew developers may run into trouble. Apple doesn’t want just any old Joe Programmer wandering in off the street all scruffy and smelling of Bawls to go and write an application that for all they know could hack into the AT&T network and leave anonymous dirty messages on Steve’s voice mail.

In order to prevent this then, they have to aim the SDK squarely at those who are serious about writing quality apps, and promises and handshakes only go so far. Bribes Money talks and cow poop flops. Or something like that. So how much is enough to prove that you’re serious? It has to be high enough that Joe Bawls wouldn’t be willing to give up that many bags of Doritos, yet low enough that it would neither exclude small to middling software houses, nor involve such a cash outlay that the developers would have to charge dearly for their software just to recoup their investment on each title and turn a profit. If Apple is smart — and most of the time they’re generally on the ball — they will be aiming for that sweet spot that attracts a lot of professional developers any maybe even a few upstarts, but allows them to keep the cost of their software down to the $5-15 range, which will in turn attract more buyers to the platform.

But that doesn’t mean much to the r4m0ns or the ZodTTDs of the world, does it? Never mind the piercingly vocal “software should be free” posse that would pound their fingers raw knuckling post after message board post decrying them if they ever “sold out” and made honest binaries out of their apps, even for modest fees. This presumes that they would even be able to afford the signature to begin with. On the other hand, if they could and managed to make some decent cash with their apps, then more power to them; there are numerous developers in the jailbreak scene who truly deserve all the props — and sales — they can get, and the SDK could very well be the best thing to ever happen to them.

So Where To Now?
Until Steve spills the beans good and proper later this month, this is all just a good old fashioned tea leaf reading, an aimless wander into a potential and not-at-all-distant future. For now we really don’t have anything significant to worry about. The Dev Team still have an ace in the hole with which they will jailbreak our 1.1.3 devices after the SDK is released, and we ought to have plenty of time to figure out where this is all leading once we know everything. For now, and at least for the near future, we can enjoy our devices in whatever state they are currently in and look forward to seeing what sort of fruits drop from Apple’s code tree. I for one think things are about to get very interesting.

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• February 23, 2008 -- What Do YOU Want to See in the Next Firmware Release? (19)
• February 12, 2008 -- Flash IS Coming to iPhone (and Touch?) (4)
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Posted in Application Related, SDK