Salvatore Iovene

Dear Mr. Jobs,

Although I’m just a sporadic Apple user (used to have an iBook - but eventually sold it -, I have an iPod Nano), and although I’m not using any of your software (used Linux on the iBook and use Linux again on the iPod), I truly appreciate the products of Apple Inc., software included. I like OS X very much and I’ve been very keen in following Apple’s events even not being a great user myself.

I heard about the iPhone, saw the pictures and heard the rumors. At first glance, following the official presentation through Engadget’s website, I was stunned and greatly surprised, in a very good way. The iPhone looked exactly like everything I’ve always wanted. All the ideas in there, all what that kind of gadget represents, have been unconsciously floating in the backyard of my mind for some time, and suddenly all was true.

After a few days, though, some rumors said that the user won’t be allowed to install 3rd party applications. That shocked me again: the first thing I thought, when I saw the iPhone, was “Oh gee, this is the ultimate geek tool, must have it!”. In the line of Apple’s gorgeous designs, with a great software load, and fundamentally a BSD system where I could load anything I wanted. I was already dreaming of porting my favorite applications to the iPhone. Then the rumor. I’m no well known marketer, but something has been bugging me. In my humble opinion, the iPhone is (or should be) basically two great things, that represent great innovation if merged in the same device. One is the simplicity of use, which Apple is famous for. The clean and neat usability, I loved it in OS X, loved it in the iPod software. That feature, as usual, hits the greatest share of the market. Millions of people who want something that just works, and is easy to understand. Apple is always been great with that. The second thing is that such a gadget undoubtedly attracts the power user: a single device which is a beautiful phone and has the capabilities of getting to the net through WIFI. I think I’m not the only one, out there, who wished for such device. The Nokia 770 was a good start, but it wasn’t a phone. Now, there is something that we power users, or geeks, if you prefer (I don’t mind), like to do: that is tweak, customize. Having such a possibility with the iPhone would, in my opinion, gain an extra share of the market, i.e. those power users that don’t like the idea of being constrained in any way.

I surely understand that Apple’s designers and engineers know what they are doing, and there are very good reasons not to open the iPhone to external applications. A lot has been said, around, about the risks of releasing a development platform, or the threats that this would bring to the mobile operators (like Cingular), even though, I must admit, none of the articles got technical enough to convince me. And I’ll be up to take all of this as true, of course. There is, though, something which I, and a lot of other people, would really appreciate in a device like the iPhone. That is a Terminal program with an SSH client. Imagine the potentialities: I do most of my things through an SSH connection to my machine at the office. I work from home or from anywhere else in the World, that way. I use IRC that way, I read my Usenet messages that way. I read my emails that way. What’s the advantage of all this? I like to have a central and safe place where I can keep an organized and, above all, centralized way of managing my resources. I don’t need to configure email clients everywhere I go. I don’t need several webmail systems to check all my email addresses. I keep my Usenet article organized and synchronized on one single machine. I keep all my IRC logs on one machine, and so on. With an SSH client in the iPhone, I could do all this even from a bus, now that in my city wireless connections are becoming available on some buses.

I’m sure there are lots of more uses of such a thing, and literally tens of thousands, if not more, of power users like me will love it. I really hope that you will consider this issue, and give us power user an SSH client for the iPhone, or the possibility of installing custom software.

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