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OK, one day, like any geek would, I was in the car messing with my iPod touch. I was playing in Safari, typing in email addresses and such to get the exciting "WARNING - PHISHING SITE" screen. So I then tried typing "/" into the address bar, and when I hit "go", something interesting happened. The "/" changed to "file:///", and it tried to load it, but then popped up with an error message that said "This page could not be opened because it is a local file". Now I'm not new to the "file:///" thing, and I've used it to access folders using Chrome that Explorer wasn't showing for some reason. So, what if that tag used for? Obviously Apple has a use for it somehow since they included a little shortcut to get to it. I'll post some screenshots below so you can see what everything looks like:
So if this happens to have any use at all, I'd like to know about it! |
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Since I don't have enough knowledge of Apple products, I may be wrong, but I'm guessing that both Mac OS X and iOS have a file structure similar to that of Linux, in which the top most directory, or "root," is represented as "/". You can then drill into subfolders like "/somefolder/somefile.txt". When you type "/" into the address bar, Safari interprets that trying to open the root directory on the local filesystem. Local files are prepended with "file://" (notice only two forward slashes) in most browsers, as a sort of "local profile protocol," similar to how webpages are prepended with "http://". The third forward slash in "file:///" is the root directory, but since the directory is not a webpage and/or (more likely) you do not have permissions to view the root directory, Safari gives you the message about not being able to open the page. I'm guessing you can only open a few local files, such as the one that gives the Phishing Site warning. Those are my thoughts, hopefully someone with more knowledge with come around and enlighten us all. |
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They have thing like that to open file in apps in apps and stuff like that as far as I can tell. There's also a protocol in Safari you can use to start a facetime call and even more. They're all things that developers can use to make their apps. |
hmm... if we can figure out what exaactly it does... people may be ablle to use it to jaillbreak.
I sincerely doubt that. Apple wouldn't hide cydia in their firmwares.