
Running postmarketOS on iPhone 7 - zdw
https://blog.project-insanity.org/2020/04/16/running-postmarketos-on-iphone-7/
======
Elv13
The iPhone 3G and original iPhone both had Android ports. Back then the
(internal) hardware was mostly off the shelf, so it was easier. Still, this is
neat.

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Paianni
They predated the SoC era, as did all the late Symbian handsets.

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weare138
How are we defining SoC era? Maybe before SoC's were accessible in the
consumer market but the first ARM based SoC, the ARM250, dates back to 1992.
Plus I'm pretty sure there are SoC's based on other architectures older than
that.

~~~
numpad0
Yeah, mobile CPUs were always called SoC since at least flip phones era.
Absurd some Apple fanboys think they made it mainstream or even invented it.
Those are entirely false.

System on Chip are called System on Chip because they don’t expose I/O
ports(like PORTA through PORTD on AVR) to the pins thus can’t interface RAM or
ROM or other peripherals natively, but only over narrower buses through
internal interface chips/logics.

In my rule of thumb, every surface mounted “CPU” between 80 to 200MHz across
industries were called SoC from 2003 through 2010s.

Those CPUs/MPUs that do expose I/O directly to be interfaced to SDRAM, LCD or
equivalents of North Bridge chip on PC were usually called either MPU or CPU,
often MPU for they integrate some peripherals. Those were roughly 200MHz and
above, including PowerPC for NAS or x86 for PC for which heat or footprint
were not concerns.

Those under 80-120MHz were often called Microcontrollers(uC). They were also
often self contained like SoC but didn’t count, also got a lot higher clocked
recently but still don’t.

Intel and AMD refer to their systems as SoC since Apple started doing _custom_
SoC, and that might give you an impression that it’s new and better. That’s
not true.

SoC means CPU’s main I/O ports are not exposed to pins.

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floatboth
> Intel and AMD refer to their systems as SoC since Apple started doing custom
> SoC

Intel and AMD refer to their systems as SoC since they integrated the north
bridge (which includes the memory controller) into the chip, has nothing to do
with Apple.

> CPU’s main I/O ports

That's a weird definition. Most architectures don't have "I/O ports" and use
memory-mapped I/O exclusively. And even if we read that as "any kind of I/O
pins" and go back to the

> can’t interface RAM or ROM or other peripherals natively

part: the vast majority of mobile SoCs in the 2010s use external RAM (and
storage). The _memory controller_ is onboard and the external connection is
directly to DDR3/4/.. chips.

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renewiltord
This is really cool! I hope they get the GPU running. I would _love_ to run
Ubuntu Touch or something on an iPhone. I wonder how much of the
responsiveness of iOS is due to the hardware.

~~~
RL_Quine
Why would you want this? The iPhone 7 has a broken bootloader, which is what
makes this possible in the first place. It's impossible to be sure of the
integrity of the device when you can just get root over USB. It's likely to
require tethering to boot every single time, so you have a functionally
useless device.

~~~
dan-robertson
One reason one might want this is because of the hacker spirit. It seems more
interesting and impressive to do what something was deliberately designed to
not do.

Another reason is that Apple’s hardware tend to be very high quality. For
example, on JavaScript benchmarks (which you may or may not consider to be a
good proxy for general/single threaded performance), an iPhone7 performs
comparably to the current latest Android phones. Also spare parts or
replacements are easy to come by.

I’m quite unconvinced that the boot loader exploit demonstrates that the
platform is so insecure that you shouldn’t use it. If you want to run a
different operating system on a typical android device you would either not
need to circumvent such security measures (which doesn’t mean that they exist
or work) or you would use some exploit that didn’t get such wide press.

~~~
samatman
Interesting, I wonder how much of that is the fact that Apple has the only JS
runtime which supports tail call elimination:

[https://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/](https://kangax.github.io/compat-
table/es6/)

~~~
solarkraft
I remember the real reason being the optimization of an operation for array
access that is relatively obscure, but heavily used by JS.

~~~
saagarjha
I think it's more complicated than that.

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solarkraft
Do you have more information? I can't find the relevant article.

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boucher
I hope the right to repair movement catches on.

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etaioinshrdlu
Does anyone know why there's tape on the button?

~~~
sdegutis
Based on context, I kind of assume it's to avoid finger print data being
collected.

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phyrex
iPhone finger print data isn't sent anywhere; it stays on the phone

~~~
sdegutis
Right but there’s a lot of people who don’t trust that that’s actually true,
either thinking Apple is lying or thinking third party bad actors can probably
hack the software and firmware to get that data. At least that’s my guess
based on what I know of the typical HN crowd.

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solarkraft
This technical achievement is awesome as is postmarketOS, but ... I can get
that on an arguably better device. Has there been success getting iOS running
on other hardware?

~~~
sanlyx
Not that I've heard of. Recently I stumbled upon this guy trying to get it to
work in QEMU: [https://alephsecurity.com/2019/06/17/xnu-qemu-
arm64-1/](https://alephsecurity.com/2019/06/17/xnu-qemu-arm64-1/)

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131hn
Did he put tape on the home button for us not to steal his fingerprints ?

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anfilt
It's just sad apple does not let owners to do this with their device by
default. We had to wait for a bootrom exploit.

~~~
ironmagma
Yeah. I would be buying an iPad these days if I could just install Linux on
it, but no, that’s not allowed. So I’ll keep my money, thanks Apple.

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valleyer
Is this using some SecureROM or iBoot exploit? If not, how do they bypass the
secure boot chain?

~~~
plorg
In the article they describe using the checkra1n jailbreak for exploit
process.

~~~
saagarjha
Technically, they're just using the checkm8 exploit, not the checkra1n
jailbreak.

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evolve2k
I love that it’s called “Project Insantity”. It gave me a smile.

~~~
mlok
You mean "Project Insanity"

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jsjddbbwj
What I'd really want to see is Android phones running iOS.

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fhelik
Cool

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egypturnash
Maybe link to the actual blog post about doing this instead of this blog post
about a blog post about doing this? [https://blog.project-
insanity.org/2020/04/16/running-postmar...](https://blog.project-
insanity.org/2020/04/16/running-postmarketos-on-iphone-7/)

~~~
dang
Changed to that now from [https://tuxphones.com/iphone-7-now-boots-
postmarketos-linux/](https://tuxphones.com/iphone-7-now-boots-postmarketos-
linux/). Thanks!

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DeathArrow
PC took over personal computing and server market because it was an open spec.

Apple didn't learn from its own mistakes which almost made them bankrupt.

While now it is doing very good, iOS devices competing with Android devices is
very similar to Apple competing with PC.

People like choice, competition and not being locked down.

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tolqen
Newsflash: the Mac is currently quite successful.

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stevehawk
[https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-
share/desktop/worldwide](https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-
share/desktop/worldwide)

Still less than 20% of the market. And I feel like the main reason they're
even usable as a desktop OS is because 99% of most people's computer activity
takes place in a web browser and not because OSX has a particularly special
native app collection. Hell it seems like the only time I fire up my mac is
because I need to build an iDevice app and nearly every "native" mac app I run
is really Electron based.

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fastball
> nearly every "native" mac app I run is really Electron based.

What does this have to do with the platform? You choosing to use bloated
electron apps certainly isn't Apple's fault.

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duskwuff
Is it really a "smartphone" yet if it can't make phone calls or use the cell
modem? Not discounting the work that's been done, but the title feels a little
premature.

[https://projectsandcastle.org/status](https://projectsandcastle.org/status)

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
I mean, it's a great technical achievement... we'll see when it hits full
support.

~~~
293984j29384
if _

