Recently in iPhone Category

Sad to say, I think this is true, Apple will use the locked cell phone model rather than the open Mac model with its phone, it does mean that 1.1.1 was just the start. IMHO, this is actually bad for Apple, slows down the ubiquity of the device, but it will increase revenues substantially. Maybe it provides an opening for someone to do a really good and high quality open platform that is handheld. Who knows? I doubt it, but it is sad to see that innovation will slow.

More Legit 3rd Party iPhone Applications on the Way? | 9 to 5 Mac

The rationale for Apple's recent complete and total lockdown of the iPhone is that these games would be easy to port to the unlocked versions of the iPhone. Developers could easily sell the applications on their own without Apple taking its cut (which is guesstimated to be about 2/3rds of the take). These pirated applications could also be distributed via torrent sites like music and movies are currently.

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Here is the first revisions of GUI unlock from FreeiPhoneunlock.com and it is a kludge, but what the heck, here are the instructions:

1. Make sure you have firmware version 1.0.2 by going to the phone
2. See if you have the right modem firmware and seeing if Settings/General/About/Version says 03.14.08_G
3. Jailbreak the phone (which means you can install apps on it) by using iBrickr on Windows or the equivalent Mac brea
4. Download the files from
   http://www.theyearbooks.ca/iphone/Unlock.app.zip
5. Use iBrickr to upload these files to /Applications/Unlock.app
6. Download a new iUnlock from
   http://rs205cg.rapidshare.com/files/55177995/dl/iUnloc
7. You should now see the Unlock icon on your iphone
8. Click on it and be patient, it takes 20 minutes (the next version will be 3 minutes, but it will pause at flashing firmware and the percentage bar will hang.
9. Hold the Home button and the power button to restart

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Now there is quite a bit of new about the iphone. Most significant is that there is now someone who can unlock the phone. So you can buy one from apple and then put any carriers sim into it. You still need a data plan with that carrier but no two year contract.

Second is that ambrosia charges $15 for itoner which let you use any mp3 as a ringtone. Again it gets out of another restriction

Well, hackers have been busy, now there are several utilities for hacking around your iPhone according to TUAW and the best is iFuntastic, it includes a full file browser for the iPhone and lets you put in your own ringtones, etc.

They also have some great tips as well and also a good list of "games"

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I just love how rumors seem to start. All of the rumors about the next update to the iPhone seem to come from a single post on Howard Forums so who knows what is true or how much gulp Apple might make us pay for this update. I sure hope they remain customer friendly. What he says makes some sense to me, they jammed the iPhone out fast to make the June date with just enough, but they want to sync it with the Leopard release. Here is an excerpt from the original post plus (my comments):

1. There will be a build in file browser like the new finder in leopard for sorting through files something I wish the Blackberry really had
2. There will be a disk mode it is crazy that they don't have this, everything should look like a hard drive
3. The reason that there currently isn't a file browser + way to save files from web is because there isn't a file browser on the phone, and they wanted to release the same one that's gonna be in the upcoming leopard OS, complete with coverflow.
4. There will even be a special version of "iWork" so you can show your keynote presentations wow, that would be very neat
5. So anyway a FULL file browser is coming so you can browse just like windows mobile explorer only in the cool way leopard's file browser is
6. Full spotlight like search is coming too
7. Widescreen keyboard support will be coming in every app, not just safari this is really, really important, the soft keys are just too narrow
8. Copy & Paste, Select Text is coming too (clipboard) probably the feature I miss the most compared with Blackberry
9. Also mail will see an upgrade so you can add accounts without doing so through itunes.
10. Most of the delays in this is because iTunes is the App Windows & Mac users are familar with for iTunes, so Apple didn't want to do a bad interface that had a file browser hacked into iTunes. sounds lame to me, more like, they had to ship
11. When Leopard FINAL release comes out, plugging in the iPhone will pop open a special window in the finder that has areas for dragging all your files like a file explorer only more advanced and designed specifically for the iPhone, it will make sure that it works so iTunes knows how much space is for data, and how much is for "iTunes" stuff. makes sense that with Leopard, the phone's interface isn't a standalone app
12. Apple will be putting iChat on the phone, very, very soon, before Leopard.
13. Real Applications are coming to the phone shortly.
14. These are all updates that will be software based for the iPhone you already have, so give it a little bit of time. In the meantime enjoy the features it already has.
15. Oh and also there will be Photo Sharing, just like in iPhoto how you can check an option to let other people on the network view your photos.
16. He said .Mac account would eventually sync your accounts to the .Mac server as well from the phone, and so forth.
17. Simplified File sharing when on WIFI networks through bonjour (auto ip discovery) is coming, so once the file system software is up, your buddy in the same room will be able to navigate to his file browser > Network, and grab a file off your phone that you are sharing.
18. Ringtones will be coming very, very soon. hard to believe you can just connect any MP3 to a ringtone a la the Curve
19. The Camera Software will get upgraded soon to have stabilization (software based)
20. Flash is coming eventually, it's just a matter of handling it in a way so when i page has dozens of flash apps running at the same time the page doesn't slow to a crawl, so they have to take the Adobe flash and make some customizations, including for security.

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The Complete Guide to iPod, Apple TV and iPhone Video Formats | iLounge

So what are the different resolutions and formats supported by Apple’s video playback devices? The table below provides an outline of the maximum resolutions supported, as well as the output quality of the device itself:

The new iPhone has an amazing screen double the resolution of the 5G iPod Video. It goes from 320×240 to 480×320, how confusing. As before, the best format from a compression POV is H.264 and it is now complex to figure out what to encode hwere given the formats. Here is iLounge recommendations for what to encode. Basically you do slightly higher than what the device can handle. 640×480 is probably about the right level

For DVD conversion, Handbrake is the recommended tool on Mac OS X and seems to work OK. iLounge like Handbrake for DVD to iPod conversion. It works on Windows and the Mac which is great. I also use autoGK to encode things for PC viewing.

If you are converting Internet content like AVI or DIVX files, then the simple choice is iSquint that makes it easy to convert directly for the iPod Video but it doesn't yet have presets for the iPhone in 320×240 format. The one that loloks quite good is MPEG Streamclip which has a specific iPhone format if you are like me and want the minimum size for each device. That is to get an:

1. iPod 320×240 for full screen
2. iPod i320×180 for 16:9 letterboxed
3. iPhone 432×320 for 4:3 full screen
4. iPhone 480×272 for 16:9

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With the iPhone out, you get pretty board of the stuff there. Apple only allows web applications right now to run on it, so you have to find web game portals according to Joystiq like MacMost, iGiki or fun4phone

The best thing to do is to find sites liek iPhoneHacks.com that will unlock things like the ringtones which are locked or backgrounds like the Matrix running. Folks just love to customize and a Custom iPhone Background is the place to start at their wiki and also seee Hacktheiphone.com

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The iPhone is amazing. Like the iPod, the kids learned to use it in three minutes and the most incredible part is that activation is actually wonderful. A reminder that carriers should stick with high quality networks and not try to be consumer companies. I am sure that no one but Apple could have made activation so simple. It was literally three clicks and two minutes to get the phone actually running. The screen is of course magnificent and the eye candy is quite amazing. There are not many applications on it though and here is a list of the annoyances and fixes for them. The net is that I'd say that RIM is safe with its Blackberry for business users, but everyone else had better watch out for the iPhone:

1. Despite that fact the phones are being sold unsubsidized, you still have to sign a two year contract with AT&T. This is actually outrageous given that there is no logical reason other than the iPhone's popularity not to allow SIM unlock. Even the Blackberry on AT&T can be bought unlocked ($349 vs a two year contract and $200). No word from the blogosphere as to how to unlock it and beside making lots of money, no particular rational
2. Keyboard. I have to say the input is nice, but ain't no Blackberry. Main things are that the calibration of the keyboard is hard. My right thumb is always one over. Folks say it automatically corrects, but typing is frustrating. I'd rate the Blackberry Curve #1 in this regard, then this thing because at least there is a full keyboard. Personally I find both SureType and other predictive typing on numeric keyboards to be beyond frustrating.
3. Headphone Jack. For some reason they designed the thing with a recessed jack so that a standard headphone doesn't work. Instead, you have to pay $11 for a Belkin adapter just because of this recessing. Arrgh. The Belkin by the way is lousy because it is rigid and so looks really wierd. There is also one from Shure which has a microphone and switchf or pausing but it costs an amazing $50. I need this for a cassette adapter in my car and my fancy Etymotic headphones. Or you can take a knife to the plastic and make it work :-) There is even a hack from LessonPortal.com that shows you how to do it by carving the soft rubber with a knife. Good luck, it might destroy your headphones and you have to do it with everything you own.

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So sue me » Blog Archive » iPhone Independence Day

Magic iTunes 7.3.0.54 numbers:

Offset 2048912: 33C0C3
Offset 257074: 28
Offset 257013: 33C9B1

Add “127.0.0.1 albert.apple.com” to c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Download Phone Activation Server v1.0 to activate your iPhone for iPod+WiFi use. Note that this application will not do anything unless you understand the magic numbers as well as add the hosts entry. Phone Activation Server (PAS) requires that you have the MS .NET Framework 2.0 installed.

Alternate Activation Methods - The iPhone Dev Wiki

These guys are clever and have four ways so far to activate

# 1 Activating an iPhone via AT&T Loophole
# 2 Activating an iPhone using another iPhone when you buy them, another loophole having to do with family plans.
# 3 Activation with a Pre-paid-Plan where you sign up for a GoPhone which is actually quite elegant and a loophole it looks like
# 4 Activation via Jon Lech Johansen’s PAS (Phone Activation Server) with detailed instructions on how to use Ultraedit to hack at itunes.exe

Wow, these things are popular. I ordered mine online 5 minutes after the Apple store opened online so here's a compendium of mostly good, but with three bad things (activations are taking a very long time, AT&T won't unlock the phone for a new SIM for you, and the headphone port isn't very standard so it is hard to fit third party headphones in):




Think Secret - Steve Jobs: Free iPhones for Apple employees

Meanwhile, unconfirmed Think Secret reports suggest that while three million iPhones are said to have been manufactured ahead of Friday's launch, Apple will only release about one million into the channel this week, staggering product availability availability beyond that to avoid any perceived major shortages.

iPod News | iLounge

The Times is reporting that cellular service provider O2 has beaten out Vodafone and others to win exclusive rights to offer the iPhone in the UK. According to the report, negotiations are still ongoing with mobile phone retailers like Carphone Warehouse over an agreement to allow sales of the iPhone in their stores after a period of exclusivity with O2. The agreement between Apple and O2 is thought to include a share of revenues generated by iPhone customers, and O2 is expected to make the necessary network configuration changes to support iPhone’s at-home activation and features such as Visual Voicemail. As previously reported, T-Mobile is expected to offer the iPhone in Germany, while Orange is believed to be the front-runner to carry the phone in France.

iPhone hack allows iPod, Wi-Fi use without activation

Well-known hacker “DVD” Jon Johansen has discovered a way to “activate” an iPhone without signing up with AT&T. The hack allows iPhone owners to use the device’s iPod and Wi-Fi features, but due to the lack of an AT&T contract, the device’s phone features still won’t work. In a post titled ”iPhone Independence Day,” Johansen posted Phone Activation Server 1.0, along with several other instructions necessary to run the hack. The hack does not unlock the iPhone for use with other carriers. [Basically iPhones are locked to AT&T, how unfair!]

Teardowns undress iPhone, suggest $200-$265 component cost

Teardowns by iSuppli, Portelligent, iFixit, and iResQ have revealed much about the inner workings of the iPhone. As reported by BusinessWeek, Portelligent estimates the component cost for the phone to be in the $200-$220 range, with iSuppli’s estimate of $265.83 in cost for the 8GB model slightly higher.

Taking the iPhone Apart

The most expensive component on the phone, Carey says, is the touch screen, for which Apple tapped a little-known German concern called Balda

Taking the iPhone Apart

Samsung, which supplied the main microprocessor chip. It was stamped with an Apple logo, but with a serial number that matches closely a chip that Samsung sells. Samsung also supplied the NAND-type flash memory that stores data on the phone, including songs, video, and pictures. Samsung's microprocessor chip, interestingly, is based on a core design that is owned by the British chip technology licensing firm ARM Holdings (ARMHY)

iSuppli Corporation : Applied Market Intelligence

Infineon, a new supplier to the iPod family, was among the biggest winners in terms of semiconductor content. The German semiconductor supplier contributed the digital baseband, radio-frequency transceiver and power-management devices, providing much of the core communications capability of the iPhone.

iPhone activation problems widespread, serious (updated x3)

Discussions on Apple’s support forms now describe quoted wait times of “up to 24 hours” for activation, as well as numerous other issues relating to conversion of Individual Plans to Family Plans. Though 5 of our 7 iPhones activated properly, iLounge’s editors are currently attempting to get activation issues resolved with the other 2, and will update this article as appropriate.

Update: A second AT&T representative has told iLounge that a team of AT&T engineers has been manually working around the clock to process the flood of delayed activation requests experienced last night, which were described as falling into the “change of account type from individual to family” and “number portability” categories. Wait times range from 6 to 9 to 24 hours based on the category of account change; iLounge received a “24 hours” notice on a ported number. More straightforward iPhone accounts are typically set up via iTunes in minutes.

Updates 2 and 3: One of iLounge’s 2 long-activation iPhones was activated successfully after 18 hours. The other took roughly 40 hours, and five phone calls, since the first attempt on Friday night, and has now been fully activated.