Our friends at Boing Boing Gadgets showed us an interesting piece about master Vietnamese phone-unlockers. The author reports that the iPhone virtuosos of desoldering manage to painstakingly unlock iPhones so that they can be used on any network. Not for the faint of heart though…
Tony Fadell (otherwise known as the real creator of the iPod) has left Apple for greener pastures. Many believed that Steve Jobs was the mind behind the iPod but in truth Tony brought the idea and design for the most popular personal music device in history to the world and helped change the face of Apple. It has been widely reported that Fadell introduced his MP3 player design to the Apple team in 2001.
I reported this as a rumor months ago but now can report that the popular do nothing game Line Rider is officially coming to the iPhone. For those who don’t know, Line Rider has enjoyed a healthy cult following since its introduction to the web several years ago. In its original form the instructions are simple, just draw a line vertically from top left to bottom right, hit the play button and watch a little guy try to ride a sled down your line and fall off the end.
Ben Reitzes of Lehman Brothers says that all US Apple retail stores had 16GB iPhones in either color ready to sell for the following morning. Something that Apple hasn’t been able to do since the July 11th launch. It doesn’t seem that the demand is falling, Apple just appears to be finally making more of these devices. Also be on the look out for much lower Ipod touch and general Ipod prices. Apple insiders report that their prices will get cut so they don’t canablize the new iPhone 3G. This lines up nicely with the rumor about getting refreshed Ipods in September.
The talented guys at RipDev never seem to be hindered by the fact that to this point you really are not allowed to have an iPhone on the Russian networks but that all may change soon. It looks like Russian iPhone cravers may not have much longer to wait for their piece of the iPhone pie. Russian communications company VimpelCom has announced that they are working to bring the iPhone to Russia which will make them the first company to do so. They have not released any details yet, but VimpelCom representatives said they hope to be selling the iPhone “…later this year.”
RoughlyDrafted is reporting that a “source close to AT&T” says that the reason for these connectivity problems is a result of iPhones demanding that cell towers devote more power than necessary to their connections. Whaa? 2.0 and 2.0.1 firmware don’t help much, most users are reporting that the effects and data loss are still there. Supposedly 2.0.2 firmware addresses the issue with mix results. There is a hope however of a rumored firmware update to be released in September will fix the issue. Don’t get your hopes up to much, there is no way to confirm this as of yet and we don’t know if this is real or hype from the marketing machine that is Apple.
Don’t start counting your chickens yet but it’s being reported that the Apple iPhone team is working on a deal with AT&T that may allow for legitimate tethering on the iPhone 3G.
Of course if you were on your toes you could have created a Wi-Fi hotspot with your iPhone using NetShare, but that app has long since been pulled then returned then pulled again from the Apple App Store and if you don’t have it now you probably won’t get it.
We are now officially in hurricane season and with one large tropical storm under our belts already we now have Gustav headed our way. Fortunatly, Weather Underground has developed an iPhone-specific version of their mobile site including a tool that tracks tropical storms. The Weather Underground mobile site’s URL is http://i.wund.com, and you can access their tropical storm page at http://i.wund.com/tropical.
A new UK iPhone ad has been banned bythe U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority (who knew?). They received reports of misleading claims. The ad which was made for television claims that “all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone.” The complaints stated that the iPhone doesnot support Java or Flash which could be required on some websites. ASA (Avertising Standards Authority) concluded that the “ad gave a misleading impression of the internet capabilities of the iPhone”.
Apple of course responded by saying that it could not ensure compatibility with “every third-party technology in the marketplace”. Adobe are you going to take this?
Gizmodo reported an iPhone passcode flaw which was also reported by MacRumors. This flaw is schedlued to be fixed in the next iPhone update, however in the meantime there is a simple fix to remedy the problem. Users should set their “Home Button” double-click preference to “Home” or “iPod” rather than the default “iPhone Favorites”. While getting a fix in the new update is great, we are more interested in fixing those iPhone 3G reception issues.
If you happen to be following the news yesterday you might have caught the story from Gawker. Gawker reported that Steve jobs died yesterday, as did several news outlets including CNET. The mess up which was a computer glitch from Bloomberg. Don’t be alarmed that an obiturary was released, most notable persons already have obvituaries created with news outlets. This saves them time and money when the actual story unfolds. Our concern if this wasn’t caught as fast as it was, would Apple’s share price drop? Then if so would Bloomberg be held legally accountable?
Once again the Dev Team has pulled through with some very important updates to both the Pwnage Tool and QuickPwn. Their latest comes in the form of PwnageTool 2.0.3.1. You can download it here.
Also, QuickPwn Release Candidate 3 has been released. Supposed to be fixed in this release is the issue for 64-bit Windows users and the new version is supposed to work for all Windows versions. Download QuickPwn RC3 here.
If you’ve been having a problem with jailbreaking, these releases should address your issues and as always, as much as we love the dev team we cannot guarantee that they will work properly. Please understand that you will use these programs at your own risk.
The cost of data plans in Canada have been a much talked about subject since the arrival of the iPhone 3G in Canada and the United States. After taking much heat for their unpopular iPhone 3G data plans in Canada, Rogers announced their six gigabytes for $30/month deal at the last possible moment. iPhone 3G users in the States can surf all they want with no data limitations for the same $30 a month. So what happens with a United States based iPhone 3G crosses the border into Canada? A good ole fashoned wallet gouging that’s what.
When the iPhone 3G and the App Store were released it was not long before some people began questioning whether it was still necessary to jailbreak the phone. The new firmware and App Store now allows users access to Apple’s huge library of applications but the question we ask is why would you not want to jailbreak your iPhone?
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ifonenation members are reporting that they received a text message from AT&T about their 3G iPhones. The message, they report, reminds users to upgrade to iPhone software 2.0.2.
