Apple to Open iPhone to Developers via Web
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WWDC 2007 - Responding to feedback from developers, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said Monday that the company would open up the iPhone platform for third party application. The initial concern with such a capability was security, but Jobs says Apple came up with "a very sweet solution."
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I'm a lady! IBM and SAS Institute might not seem obvious sources of information for those interested in developing iPhone web applications, but - such is the appeal of Apple's little wonder and its perceived applicability to business users - that these hoary old giants are getting in on the act.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - iPhone hackers have some new tools now, thanks to HD Moore, one of the developers of the Metasploit hacking software. On Tuesday, Moore announced that he was supporting the iPhone within his Metasploit framework and released software that would allow hackers to run "shellcode" command prompts on Apple's mobile device. By integrating the iPhone into Metasploit, it will now be a little easier for hackers to gain access to someone else's iPhone, but they will also need a few other tools to succeed. First, they will need to create working exploit code, which takes advantage of bugs in Apple's software, to trick the device into running the shellcode. They will also need to create more sophisticated "payload" applications that can do things like remotely connect with the hacker. "It's a first step," Moore said of his hack. With iPhone prices dropping and noticeable improvements in the quality of iPhone hacking tools, Apple's phone has become a more interesting target of late, Moore said. And the iPhone has obviously hit a nerve in the security community. Moore said that about a quarter of the attendees at the recent Black Hat conference in Las Vegas had the devices. "It's trendy," he said. "It kind of creeped me out when I saw how many people had iPhones when I went to Vegas." In fact, hackers have already developed a number of exploits that they claim could be used on the iPhone's Safari browser. And security researchers have even demonstrated how the iPhone can be compromised. In July, a Baltimore, Maryland, company called Independent Security Evaluators showed howÂ it could run unauthorized software on an iPhone by taking advantage of a Safari bug. Moore believes that the iPhone's browser and mail client will be the best sources of bugs and he said that because of the components and information stored on the phone, it may end up being a more attractive target than the PC. For example, the phone could be used to track someone's location based on information from cell phone towers. Throw in the iPhone's microphone, camera, and an Internet connection, and you suddenly have a device that could be used to secretly keep tabs on people, Moore said. "If you look at what you get by exploiting someone's iPhone, you actually get a lot more than you do from someone's PC a lot of the time," he said.
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The iPhone&#39;s resume now includes YouTube. Apple announced that its upcoming, much-publicized mobile device will be compatible with videos published to the popular Web site, thanks to an Apple-designed application.
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InfoWorld - A video showing the founder of a Belfast, Northern Ireland, company unlocking the iPhone hit the Web early Wednesday U.K. time as proof that software exists that can unlock Apple Inc.&#39;s device for use with carriers other than AT&amp;T Inc.
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While the Apple iPhone lacks support for native applications -- the kind users can download and install -- developers have been busy building programs for the iPhone's version of the Safari web browser. Here's a look at the best.
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A video showing the founder of a Belfast, Northern Ireland company unlocking the iPhone hit the Web early Wednesday U.K. time as proof that software exists that can unlock Apple Inc.&#39;s device for use with carriers other than AT&amp;T Inc.
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SAN JOSE, Calif. - In an apparent about-face, Apple Inc. will allow third-party applications to work directly on the iPhone, chief executive Steve Jobs said in a posting on the company's website yesterday.
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Developers will get to write applications for the iPhone. Sort of.
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A growing set of developers is setting to work making Web browsing on a phone match the experience on a PC.Skyfire, a startup in Mountain View, California, joined the fray on Monday when it unveiled a free browser intended to support everything a PC browser can. That includes Flash video, Quicktime, Javascript, AJAX, and more, though not everything may be there right now, according to Nitin Bhandari, Skyfire&#39;s CEO. The browser is now in a private beta test for U.S. users only. The software was demonstrated at the Demo conference in Palm Desert, California.Apple&#39;s iPhone changed the mobile browsing world last year when it drew a huge following with its Safari browser. Unlike most browsers for phones, it lets users view a full, standard Web page all at once and zoom in to make up for the small size of the screen, though it doesn&#39;t support Flash video and some other standard Web features.Meanwhile, more opportunities have opened up for third parties to get any sort of application onto a consumer&#39;s mobile phone. Parts of&#160;Google&#39;s Android development environment&#160;are already available to developers, and Apple is preparing a software development kit for the iPhone. Both Verizon and Sprint Nextel, two of the biggest U.S. operators, have outlined plans to allow any device and any application on mobile networks.&quot;The iPhone has pretty much settled the debate. People want a rich, full Web experience,&quot; Skyfire&#39;s Bhandari said. &quot;There&#39;s a lot of consciousness that that&#39;s the bottom now, and everything now has to be there or above it.&quot;Since the phone&#39;s June debut, Mozilla has started developing a mobile version of Firefox, which looks somewhat like mobile Safari in screenshots on Mozilla&#39;s wiki. However, Mozilla has been vague about when that software will come out. Norwegian browser vendor Opera has its own mobile browser, Opera Mini.Skyfire&#39;s product will be set apart from Opera Mini and others by supporting the full browsing experience, Bhandari said. It does so by relieving the phone from some of the heavy lifting of presenting a Web page. In fact, a server transcodes every page into an efficient protocol that Skyfire has developed over the past 18 months, he said. The additional exchange of packets between phone and server to make that possible isn&#39;t a problem, because the server can carry out tasks much faster than a phone, according to Bhandari.&quot;The delay added by the server is actually such a small percentage of the time we&#39;re actually saving ... that it&#39;s actually a huge benefit in the end-user experience,&quot; Bhandari said. Skyfire operates the servers in its own datacenter.Skyfire can deliver full versions of popular Web sites, such as YouTube and ESPN, as demonstrated in a YouTube video. The zooming function, the critical tool for viewing full-size Web pages on a small screen, is different from the iPhone&#39;s &quot;pinch&quot; and &quot;unpinch&quot; gestures. A gray box appears over part of the Web page, and users can size that box to cover the area of the page they want to see full-screen, then tap on it to zoom in, Bhandari said. The browser also features a search bar and a tab with featured links in categories including news, sports and video.The browser is available only for Windows Mobile 5 and 6 today, but a version for Symbian, as well as an international beta test, are coming later, Bhandari said. Skyfire might also develop versions for Android and for the iPhone once Apple&#39;s SDK becomes available, he said. It is talking with handset makers and mobile operators about having the browser built into phones, but also sees search and advertising as possible revenue sources.In addition to invited testers, a limited number of public users will be allowed to participate in the beta. They can sign up at Skyfire&#39;s Web site.
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Etelos has made its CRM platform available to iPhone users via the devices Safari Web browser.
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The iPhone will ship at the end of June as planned, Apple CEO Steve Jobs confirmed at a conference. It will run on the full-featured Mac OS X, but won't have any third-party applications for now.
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Apple on Monday opened the core of its eagerly-awaited iPhone to independent developers, giving them a way to have customized programs ready when the devices hit the market June 29.
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(InfoWorld) - Push e-mail provider Visto says it will be able to send enterprise e-mail to iPhones starting later this year. Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino e-mail users will be able to send and receive messages on the iPhone, either as an individual user or on a corporatewide basis. Apple's much-hyped iPhone goes on sale on Friday. Individual users will download an application to their PCs. As e-mail messages arrive, that application transfers them from the PC to Visto's network operation center and then on to the user's iPhone. Users will automatically receive the e-mail in the standard client software that comes with the iPhone, said Haniff Somani, vice president and chief architect at Visto. Users must leave the PC on for the e-mail messages to reach their iPhone. To set up the service, a user will enter Visto's server address into the IMAP application on the phone, he said. IMAP is a standard messaging protocol. An enterprise could also buy server software that would push e-mail out to all the iPhone users in the company in a process that works in a similar way to the PC application. Early reviewers of the iPhone have written that users will be able to receive Exchange e-mails on the phone, but Somani pointed out some reasons that might not be a popular idea at enterprises. In order to push Exchange e-mail to the iPhone directly, IT administrators would have to open a hole in their firewall that allows the IMAP data to flow back and forth, he said. That can be dangerous because it opens a door to potentially malicious activities. Analysts agreed. "IMAP is not something they want to open up," said Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner. "Most enterprises, when they hear that, say 'There's no way I'm doing that.'" In addition, the direct IMAP services usually have poor performance, he said. With Visto's service, the enterprise doesn't have to open the IMAP port because the Visto server resides behind the firewall, Somani said. Ideally, Apple would license Microsoft's ActiveSync in order to support Exchange e-mail on the phones in a more robust and secure way, Dulaney said. That's how Nokia, for example, supports push e-mail to certain devices, he said. He suggests that enterprises may be wary of the Visto offering because Visto is associated with mobile operator-based services and enterprises don't always trust operators with such services. In this case, Visto is hosting the network operations center itself but must still work with AT&T, which has said it will enable IMAP in its network for the service, Visto said. Starting late in the third quarter, Visto plans to offer a beta version of the service that will be free to use for 60 days. iPhone users can register their interest in the beta on Visto's site. Visto isn't yet saying how much it will charge for service. Visto typically requires users to download a small application on their phones that improves the speed with which they get mail and consumes less data than IMAP, Somani said. However, Apple is only allowing third-party applications for the iPhone that are browser-based, so companies like Visto can't write software that can be loaded onto the phones. In April, a source at AT&T said the operator was planning to support the iPhone from a billing and customer support perspective for enterprise customers. However, an FAQ recently posted to AT&T's Web site says the iPhone will only be available to consumer accounts.
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Apple on Wednesday confirmed rumors that it will release a mobile software development kit (SDK) for developers in February so that third parties can create applications for the iPhone and the iPod touch.&quot;We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers&#39; hands in February,&quot; according to a post attributed to Apple CEO Steve Jobs on the company&#39;s Web site.The news should placate irked mobile developers who have already been busy building applications for the iPhone without Apple&#39;s approval. Tech-savvy users have been able to customize their phones with new software, at least until Apple put the kibosh on this activity with an iPhone update in September that erased all unauthorized applications from the device. The company did, however, post a list of approved Web-based applications for the iPhone on its Web site last week to discourage users from hacking into the device to add new applications.It will take Apple until February to come out with an SDK because the company is trying to&#160;create an open platform&#160;so developers can write applications accessing the most advanced iPhone features, as well as a secure environment that isn&#39;t prone to viruses, worms, or other&#160;security threats, Jobs wrote.&quot;This is no easy task,&quot; he wrote. &quot;Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones -- this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous.&quot;Jobs noted that other handset providers, such as Nokia, are not allowing applications to be loaded onto some of their new phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced to a legitimate developer.&quot;While this makes such a phone less than &quot;totally open,&quot; we believe it is a step in the right direction,&quot; he wrote.
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By MAY WONG  SAN FRANCISCO - Apple Inc. has set the stage for yet another rivalry with Microsoft Corp. by launching a Windows version of its Safari Internet browser and inviting developers to create Web-based programs for its upcoming iPhone.
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Some developers were underwhelmed with Steve Jobs' announcement that iPhone was open to creation of of Web 2.0 applications.