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roaming | McCartman - 9/1/2011 14:03
torn - If a user has the technical knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to bypass the proprietary UI restrictions of a given device, which device offers the greatest potential level of customization? ANDROID-BASED / iOS-BASED
Either or both (see next question/answer )
torn - If I jailbreak my iOS device, I'm still stuck with the restrictions of a closed operating system.
Wrong. As I explained above, jailbreaking opens iOS up to customize just about anything. Is it legal, since iOS is "closed" - probably not. I believe early on, Apple considered going after jailbreakers but probably figured it would be a costly and time consuming battle same as music sharing. iOS being "closed" does NOT mean that once jailbroken, nothing can be done to the source code. I believe the difference between "open" and "closed" once a root or jailbreak takes place is nothing more than a legal one.
Actually, Apple did pursue jailbreakers, and were shot down in court. The ruling was that Apple could void the warranty on jailbroken (jailbreaked? jailbricked??) devices, or deny technical support, or take other internal/policy actions, but could not pursue civil action.
I think you misunderstand what source code is. Source code is human-readable and is what programmers write. But the target device (a phone, in this case) cannot understand source code. To turn source code into something that a computer can understand, it must first be "compiled" using another software program called a "compiler", which turns source code into a series of ones and zeros (called the "binary" or "machine code" or an "executable"). Then it is loaded on the target device, which reads the binary code and performs (hopefully) whatever function the developer intended. If the device does not do what he intended, he has to figure out if the problem is in the source, in the way the compiler compiled the source, or in the way the device interpreted the compiled code.
In your answers above, you acknowledge that iOS is not open-source. On this we agree. But then, in the quote above, you say "iOS being 'closed' does NOT mean that once jailbroken, nothing can be done to the source code". This is incorrect. To modify the source code, you first have to have access to the source code. Since iOS is NOT open-source, there is no way for you or I or any other member of the general public to access the source code. iOS source is only worked on by Apple developers. Same thing for Windows. Take any PC, and try to find the Windows source code. You can't. You can find compiled code (machine code), but not the source. Theoretically, machine code can be decompiled and turned into source, but that's no easy task and results are not guaranteed to be what you expect them to be.
SO, at the end of the day, with a rooted Android device, you have a device on which you are free to install whatever modified Android code you want. With a jailbroken iOS device, you are still left with the original as-Apple-delivered-it operating system, which you can't modify because you don't have the source code. You can do some additional customization to this OS, which would not be possible on an un-jailbroken phone, but the level of customization is not the same that you would be able to achieve on a rooted Android device.
Thus the fundamental difference between an "open" and "closed" system.
Now, if your argument is that they are both "closed" as far as the **average** user is concerned, then I would agree. But that doesn't appear to be your argument.
Edited by torn 9/1/2011 22:37
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anyone rooting their droid?
