What are some caveats - as somebody who uses a Raspberry Pi as a home server for many apps and has thought about expanding, what should I know about using a smart device for a server?
Exactly. The big thing that seems to have been forgotten about the Pi is all those exposed pins. It was designed that way, not just as a small computer.
Yeah, I love the Pi for this reason, most upgrades are a matter of ordering the parts, like building a PC back in the day. Sometimes I look at my web server though (rpi 4), with its small size and touch screen already looking like a smartphone, and wondering if I could have just used an iPhone to host these sites & APIs on.
iPhone 12
Apple A14 Bionic @ 2.99 GHz
1 Processor, 6 Cores
5.60 GB
Raspberry Pi 4
ARM BCM2711 @ 1.50 GHz
1 Processor, 4 Cores
1.77 GB
I've used old Android smartphones with DroidScript and QPython as a music server, lighting controller, time-lapse camera. More recent smartphones I simply use WebAPI functionality.
I've tried using some old iPhones, but I find them too locked down. Perhaps I gave up too quickly, jailbreaking might have opened up more opportunities.
I run a server on a Raspberry Pi at home, but since I have an iPhone 12 with a lot better specs than the Pi I wondered why not just run it on that (with Ubuntu ofc not iOS).
The hardware support isn’t there. The iPhone is not an open platform, so it will take a long time before there is anything worthwhile. Apple moving to their new chips on the desktop helps, but it will be a long road, and it’s questionable how much of that development will make its way back to old iPhones.
Unless you’re interested in joining a community trying to develop Linux on the iPhone, it’s really not worth it. There are thousands of better ways to go.
Yeah I generally agree - kinda like the Hackintosh days. Aside from novelty, it ended up being better to just build what you need from scratch for a lot cheaper, and with better support.
