"Hello World" Application Runs on Hacked iPhone

Amidst the frenzy to unlock the iPhone to run on networks other that AT&T, lone hacker "Nightwatch" has been working away to run third party applications on the device. He has sucessfully assembled and compiled an iPhone binary (ready to run application) which, in true programming tradition, simply displays the words "Hello World". The whole "ARM/Mach-O Toolchain" is built using free and open source software. This is big, folks. While unlocking the iPhone might never happen, this hack means that full, third party applications can be written for the Jesus Device, not just the janky web based ones.

From the Wiki:

After many, many hours of intense work from "Nightwatch", the first independent "Hello World"* application has been compiled and launched on the iPhone. This was made possible using the "ARM/Mach-O Toolchain", Nightwatch's "special project", that he has been working on so carefully over the past few weeks. Certain parts of the toolchain (such as the assembler) are being refined and tested and these will be released as soon as possible.

It should be noted that Nightwatch has been instrumental in creating these tools, working in near isolation to get them finished. Nightwatch was also responsible for the "jail exploit" that he developed from information he and other members of the the dev team discovered.

Please join us to thank Nightwatch, Tmiw, Darkten and Daeken for making this happen

Wiki page [iPhoneDev via iPhone Unlocked]

Scott Gilbertson over at sister blog Compiler is also on the iPhone Hello World story.