iPhone Unlocked

Last week at Macworld, Apple officially released the latest update to the iPhone firmware which added some features (the improvements to the map app are my favorite). The firmware had been leaked a few weeks before, which gave hackers a head start at unlocking it’s secrets.

Nate True posted his interesting analysis of the iPhone 1.1.3 firmware’s behind the scenes changes. He found obvious signs that the iPhone is now ready for official third party applications. Applications now run as the “mobile” user, rather than “root.” This improves the security of the iPhone (so much for all those “experts” who thought Apple had blown security-wise it by running apps as “root” in the early releases). He also found extensive changes to the application frameworks, which will break a lot of existing 3rd party applications.

He also noted that the $20 software upgrade for the iPod touch demonstrates the application installation infrastructure is already in place. It may be that Apple won’t have to do another firmware release before they ship the official Software Development Kit next month.