Squeak on the iPhone!
11 June, 2008
John M McIntosh announced on the squeak-dev mailing list that “I’m pleased to say that I’m one of the 1.5% of the iPhone developer population that has been accepted to officially build applications for distribution via Apple’s iPhone Application Store.”
He’s prepared a 93-day plan to build a new fully documented Objective C based source tree to host the Squeak VM on the iPhone and in addition as a 64bit VM on OS-X. He’s already collaborating with Impara who are looking at adapting the Squeak UI to the iPhone’s multi-touch paradigm and platform widgets, and is looking for further support (and funding) for this work.
John is also looking to offer support for Squeak developers hoping to make their applications available through the iPhone Store, although he notes that Apple has a number of restrictions limiting the types of applications that can be made available in this way.
The screenshot above shows a “visually exciting” 3.4 image running on an iPod Touch, the result of 15 days’ work. John does sound a note of caution: the VM is currently running at a speed equivalent to a 233Mhz 603e PowerBook, and 64MB of memory use is pushing the Apple’s imposed safety limits right to the max, so developers may have to relearn all those optimisation techniques they may have forgotten in recent years!
The Weekly Squeak 
11 June, 2008 at 16:10
Why do developers play Apple’s “restrictions limiting the types of applications” game? If they succeed at gaining marketshare with this, other vendors will start to do it as well and the lock-in will be complete. The solution is to not buy their pretty baubles. This will break their game. Apple is more evil than Microsoft or Google in this respect.
11 June, 2008 at 19:28
[…] John is also looking to offer support for Squeak developers hoping to make their applications available through the iPhone Store, although he notes that Apple has a number of restrictions limiting the types of applications that can be made available in this way. [From Squeak on the iPhone! « The Weekly Squeak] […]
11 June, 2008 at 19:59
Pretty cool… Too bad that Apple will restrict the ability of non-Apple VMs (like Flash, Java, and, yes, Squeak) that can run/launch other applications from being distributed in the AppStore.
11 June, 2008 at 21:23
As for speed, the work Eliot Miranda is doing may be helpful later on.
How does Squeak qualify for the iTunes store at all since it is interpreted, or am I misunderstanding the issue?
11 June, 2008 at 22:52
[…] Voir également l’annonce sur The Weekly Squeak. […]
11 June, 2008 at 23:41
Cool! Now it almost makes sense for me to get one! It’s a shame the iPhone doesn’t multitask, at least not for GUI apps. Something I have done on CE (vanilla CE, H/PC 2000 and PPC 2k to WM6) is run Squeak in the background for various tasks, usually as a simple wiki/logging server with Pocket IE as the GUI. I guess I won’t be able to do that on the iPhone, at least not with Squeak.
12 June, 2008 at 00:30
Squeak for iPhone?
This reminds me of OLPC. If iPhone get a larger screen and loses cellular functionality it’s practically a smaller OLPC. With the price point for iPhone coming down to $199 it might be cheaper than how much current OLPC costs.
12 June, 2008 at 01:36
@Tim Locke Says:
give this man a cupie doll as he is 100% correct. Apple really does have a disturbing fortress of solitude feel to them.
12 June, 2008 at 03:49
Some cool stuff. Glad to hear people that the conversation surrounding applications is starting to REALLY take place. The only other information I’d found til now was via video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=irXCMdRprfw&watch_response
12 June, 2008 at 07:16
Doesn’t it make more sense to build it for an openmoko telephone?
http://www.openmoko.com
http://www.openmoko.org
16 June, 2008 at 12:27
bookhling: the new iphone is not $199! its $199 plus an 18 to 24 month expensive contract! If you can get them for $199 then show me where and I will buy 4 of them tomorrow. It would be cheaper than an ipod!
The lower pricepoint of $199 meme shows how effective the apple doublespeeak is. (actually a bit creepy to see intelligent people repeating it as a fact – and I see the same techniquies used in UK politics more and more.)
20 June, 2008 at 16:45
what about Googles’ Android platform? Are there any plans to write a Squeak VM for that? Android is much more in keeping with the opensource model than Apples Death Star wrapped in Choc-Bunny coating. I’m sure Android would be a better home for Squeak.
20 June, 2008 at 17:00
[…] will Squeak auf das iPhone portieren. Offiziell! Und Apple scheint einverstanden. [The Weekly […]
18 July, 2008 at 15:17
[…] Squeak, la única máquina virtual autorizada hasta ahora por Apple en su iPhone […]
1 September, 2008 at 12:27
[…] populair is 🙂 . Dat het erg leeft blijkt ook wel uit de ontwikkelingen die er plaatsvinden om een Smalltalk VM op de IPhone beschikbaar te krijgen. Uit een heel andere hoek komen totaal andere interactievormen. Dan hebben […]
11 September, 2008 at 12:55
[…] Rueger and John MacIntosh are proud to announce that their Squeak iPhone/Touch port is now available for download. The source code, along with installation instructions and other […]
30 September, 2008 at 11:06
[…] Dat smalltalk springlevend is blijkt wel uit de ontwikkelingen die er plaatsvinden om een Smalltalk VM op de IPhone beschikbaar te krijgen. Uit een heel andere hoek komen totaal andere interactievormen (Open […]
20 January, 2009 at 17:42
@marco, the iphone is not $199, since it requires a contract, but the iPod touch is $229; same hardware as the iPhone except the phone, so for app development, it is the same (yes, the platform is still closed, which sucks but …)
18 May, 2009 at 18:29
[…] his success in getting Squeak running on the iPhone last year, John M McIntosh has announced on the Squeak-dev mailing list that he has had two […]