The infamous iphoneunlockuk.com are still going with their commercial ripoffs of the iPhone Dev Teams work.  They have already been found out for taking the iPhone Dev Team’s work and modifying and selling it as theirs, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop.

Think about this - on the 16th of December (New Zealand), the iPhone Dev Team post an update on their blog stating that the iPhone 3G software unlock is completed and on it’s way.  They state 31/12/2008 (New Year’s Eve) as the release date.

16th of December (New Zealand), iPhone Unlock UK post an update saying they have almost completed their software unlock and it will be ready after Christmas.

Here is what the iPhone Unlock UK blog post says:

Just a brief post to inform our customers that the iPhone 3G full software unlock is now in its final stages of development. Estimated release date is just after christmas

Those of you who have already purchased an iPhone 3G Unlocking Solution will obviously receive this software update FREE OF CHARGE. It will negate the need for the piggyback sim cards (so no more roaming issues).

This software unlock works ONLY if you are running iPhone firmware 2.1, or have used our custom firmware to update your iPhones to 2.2. If you updated to 2.2 using Apple Firmware then the software will not work for you just yet.

It probably will eventually however.

Happy XMAS everyone! Go and purchase those iPhone 3Gs as presents - just make sure you get from Carphone Warehouse or O2 (where we believe they are all old stock running 2.1)

[Taken from (my) secretmrx's guide iSeminar: A Beginner's Guide to the iPhone]

Over time things change, and the iPhone is no exception. Back in the 1.0.x days, unlocking was an ugly process, and jailbreaking was a manual process. Flashy tools were not available that did it all in one click, tasks were performed in iPHUC and Terminal/DOS Command Line environments.

When 1.1.1 came along, the iPhone DevTeam (much smaller than they are now) released a manual way of upgrading that involved leaving a symlink to the root partition in the media partition, then doing an “update.” Later on, an exploit was discovered in MobileSafari which allowed code to be run when MobileSafari thought it was opening a .TIFF image. This was truly one-click, and no computer was required to do it. Simply put, you visited jailbreakme.com in your browser, clicked on the link and MobileSafari crashed, sending you back to the “Slide for Emergency” screen. iPhone then rebooted, and woke up fully activated and jailbroken (with Installer.app added).

Now it is a lot different, Apple have patched a lot of bugs, and significant exploits have been discovered. One of those significant exploits was the discovery of the Pwnage Exploit that allowed a patched iBoot to be flashed over, opening up hundreds of doors to users and developers alike. Along with the Pwnage exploit came BootNeuter, the ultimate unlocking tool for first gen iPhones. BootNeuter was great news for everyone, now Bootloader versions do not matter.

How are we doing now?  As of the time of writing, the iPhone 3G has just been unlocked, with the Second Generation iPod Touch to be looked at in the 2008/2009 New Year.  No device is overlooked - iPhone owners, developers and hackers are a determined and hard working group of people.  The Dev Team can be attributed to millions of iPhone sales, for in firmware 1.x, iPhone OS was one of the most boring platforms out there.  Opening it up to the owners of the devices was a great sales incentive, and Apple should never forget this.

The phone market is a tough one to crack. When you think about it, this industry is a very mature one. Jumping on now was a brave decision by Apple, RIM and Nokia have already built up years of trust, reliability and a solid reputation amongst consumers and businesses alike.

So, what is it that makes iPhone so strong in this market? Is it simply Apple Fanboy-ism, or are there more factors to this equasion?

iPhone has many things going for it. Firstly, it has an amazing UI. Steve Jobs is a man of style. He saw a huge problem with Smartphones – they are not smart in their user interfaces. You have a cheap, plasticky keyboard that you use for every application, whether you need it or not. Steve decided that the way to go was with a simple, elegant, clean and yet powerful UI that suited casual and power users alike.
The icons used by the iPhone OS make me want to lick them. They have some luster about them, something that makes me want to touch them. The intelligent design of the SpringBoard meant that all your applications could be showcased on what would seem to be a “desktop” on a traditional computer.

Secondly, iPhone has the best application distribution system of any other mobile OS. Apple have gone from nothing to the best as far as third party application support is concerned. The first version of iPhone OS was, without saying, quite boring once you got used to it. There weren’t any fun things to do on it. Luckily, the iPhone DevTeam brought us methods of getting third party (unofficial) applications onto our phones, without them iPhone sales would have been considerably less.

Thirdly, iPhone 2.0 introduces business and enterprise solutions. The largest users of smartphones are businesses, as they offer a way, coupled with Microsoft Exchange, of reaching out to all their employees at once. Apple missed out on this with the first version of iPhone OS, allowing all those potential customers to remain with RIM’s Blackberry. As of July 11, everything has changed. iPhone is considered by many to be the best business phone out there, something that happened literally overnight.

And finally, iTunes. All Smartphones come with their own, ugly “Sync Manager.” I have seen Windows Mobile’s ActiveSync and Nokia’s Media Manager, both of which seem pointless to me. Why bother purchasing one of their phones if it comes with a half-baked “Sync Manager?” iTunes is something that probably everyone has, regardless of whether they have an iPod, iPhone or not. It is the hub of iPhone’s life, a center point. It automatically syncs and backs up all your data when you connect your device, and will prompt you if a software update is available.

It is amazing at how Apple managed to enter this tight market at such a speed. After only 18 months, Apple has provided a solution to the most common two devices – an iPod and Cell Phone – by merging them into one sleek and sexy device.

With Apple, it all just works. And that can be backed up by iPhone’s sales figures.

• Write them a song

Everybody loves music, but it’s that little bit better when you have composed a piece especially for them. Pull out your iPhone, tap on Band and compose away. You’ll be amazed at how amusing they will find the experience.

Don’t forget the crash cymbal to finish.

• Show your artistic side
  

Art is something that has been used for millions of years to show people stuff. Now, your finger is the pen. Open up Sketches and draw something. Make sure you show them the “Shake to Erase” feature, it’s something that makes people all excited. You could even take a picture of their head and draw genitals on it.

• Control your computer from your phone

Tap into Mocha VNC Lite, get into your Boss’ computer and look up some of the old porn. In fact, you might as well navigate through his whole computer and inbox while you’re at it. Unless, of course, it’s your Boss that you are doing this little demo to.

• Show them your hot new friends

Using Fake Call, hide your screen and program it in for Jessica Alba to call you, very coincidentally, right in the middle of a forced conversation. They will never figure it out, after all, you are demoing an iPhone to them for the first time. This would go great with tip number 10.

• Let iPhone tell them what song is playing

How many times have your mates asked you if you knew the song playing on the radio? Well, now you don’t need to guess. Discreetly open Shazam and hold your phone to the source of the music. Within 15 seconds, your phone will tell you absolutely everything about the song, including album and cover art.

• Take them for a ride in your private jet

With iPhone 2.0 being the complete business solution, needs for a real jet are completely eliminated. Thanks to X-Plane, you can now fly yourself anywhere you want to go. And the best thing? You can crash as many times as you want. Oh, and don’t forget to fasten your seatbelt.

• Go for a spin in Monkey Ball

You know those big ball things that people go in on game shows and roll down hills? Well now you can be a monkey in one of those. Thanks to Sega’s Super Monkey Ball, you can put your monkey in there and drive them round by tilting your device. But, be warned, this game takes lots of practise to perfect. This game has to be one of the favourites for newbies, with it’s colourful interface and accelerometer based controls. Just make sure they don’t drop your shiny iPhone. They will not claim any responsibility.

• Show off your 1337 h4×0r skills

If you’re jailbroken, download and install MobileTerminal. Run through some cool commands, like”ls,” “cd” and “ping.” You will look like a pretty extreme guy after being through all that. It doesn’t stop there. Start telling them about how to pwn a firmware file, they will think you’re one of those Matrix people.

• Get on the piss with iPint

Nothing beats a few beers with your mates. The next time they ask you if you want one, simply say you brought your own and bring out iPint. Oh, and the good thing is, you have unlimited refills + unlimited thirst.

• Reboot your phone and show them that sexy Apple logo

Hold down the power + home and slide the red slider. Then, press and hold the power button. Sit and stare at that yummy and lickable Apple logo. While you’re at it, you might as well show them a restore, too, with that never-ending spinning progress indicator.

One of the biggest frustrations with my iPhone is the fact that I can’t seem to add an existing contact to a group on the device.  Sure, I can go to me.com or do it on my MacBook Pro’s address book, but isn’t the iPhone designed to be an all-in-one portable solution?  There is a workaround, however, to this slight issue.

Here’s how it’s done:

Let’s say you wanted to add a contact from Google Maps for a great café you just visited to the “Eating Out” group already on your device.

1. Go into the “Eating Out” group already on your device (note that groups can not be made on the device, they must be synced over)
2. Press the “+” button at the top of the group window to add a new contact
3. Call it something like Test
4. Open Google Maps and locate the Café
5. Tap it’s name, press the arrow on the right of it’s name to bring up it’s information
6. Press “Add to Contacts”
7. Press “Add to Existing Contact”
8. Choose the “Test” contact you made in the “Eating Out” group
9. When that’s saved, so back into the Address Book app
10. Tap the “Test” contact and press “Edit”
11. Delete the name “Test” and add the Café’s name into the Business section of the Name box

Done!  These will appear in the main contacts section, too.  Next time you sync your iPhone, the contact will be sent right over to your Address Book.

I have written 3 PDFs on the iPhone: iStudy, iSeminar: A Beginner’s Guide To The iPhone and iSeminar Advanced.

iStudy has been discountinued, as it was written specifically for firmware versions 1.0.0-1.1.4.  As of 2.0, the iSeminar series has taken over.

iSeminar: A Beginner’s Guide To The iPhone, assumes no prior knowledge of iPhone hacking.  It focuses on the main thing people want to do to their devices - hack it for their own, personal use.  It goes through that process, outlining WinPwn, PwnageTool and QuickPwn.  It starts off with a Vocabulary section, giving the complete beginner an insight to the words he or she will come accross throughout the guide & on numerous online forums.

iSeminar Advanced is for the more advanced user.  It is designed to be a followup guide to iSeminar: A Beginner’s Guide To The iPhone, so the beginner should be able to confidently start work on iSeminar Advanced with the prior knowledge gained from iSeminar: A Beginner’s Guide To The iPhone.  It too starts off with a vocabulary section, covering some more advanced words.  Section 2 covers some in-depth information, this includes a timeline, lockdownd, outlines the iPhone Restore Procedure and more.

To get a copy of one of these guides, simply click the corresponding image above.

It’s taken a while, but AT&T have finally seen the benefits of listening to their customers.  Christmas is the biggest time of the year for retailers, brining in millions of extra dollars.  The iPhone, being one of the most wanted devices out there, is definately on Christmas wish-lists of millions of people, so the decision to bring back home activation has been the best one made by Apple and AT&T since iPhone 3G’s launch.

But, this doesn’t mean contractless iPhone 3Gs will now be appearing.  Once you recieve the device, you have a limited time in which to sign up for a two year contract.

Check it out on AT&T’s site

Finally, a flicker of hope has burst from the darkness.  We have seen a few copy and paste methods for the iPhone, some being Safari only, with others that were all-talk before they were prevented by Apple.

This one, it seems, is quite simple; it requires no software installation and is perfectly legal.  The service, Pastebud, uses two bookmarks in Safari to do it’s magic.  One bookmark prepares and loads the page - ready for you to highlight the text you want to copy.  From there, it is sent over to the mail app in a new message, ready to send.  Oh, and this also works within Safari, too.

Here’s what I think we may be seeing during the Macworld Stevenote next month:

• News about new iMacs - This news is due
• News about iPhone - Likely a bump up to 32GB
• New 17″ MacBook Pro
• Apple TV
• Possible iPhone/MacBook device (a new product)

Now all we need to do is wait…

Steve Jobs

The recent news surrounding Steve Job’s current health has drawn a buzz around the blogging world. Gizmodo was the first to notice how much thinner Steve looked as he entered the stage at WWDC 2008. Recently, Fortune from CNNMoney.com has an interesting take on who could potentially be the next CEO for Apple. The article breaks down the position and responsibilities for each Senior Executive. From Tim Cook, to Jonathon Ive. According to the article, Tim Cook appears to be the most appropriate for the job although it is evident around the Internet that many believe the next CEO will be Jonathan Ive.

You can find the full artice here: After Steve Jobs: Apple’s new CEO

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The market potential for proprietary mobile processor designs from chip makers like Samsung Electronics and Intel Corp. were dealt a considerable blow earlier this week when Apple chief executive Steve Jobs revealed that his company will start designing its own breed of chips to power the next-generation of Multi-Touch devices that won’t be available to rivals.

South Korea-based Samsung has long been central to Apple’s handheld efforts (1, 2, 3), supplying the primary SoCs — or system-on-chips — for everything from the iPod nano to the iPhone. Meanwhile, Intel has been in the running to assert its Atom processors at heart of a larger iPhone-like Multi-Touch internet tablet that’s also under development at the Cupertino-based electronics maker, and was at one time believed to have sealed the deal.

Unfortunately for the two industry heavyweights, Apple appears to have other plans to further innovation around its Multi-Touch platform that will reduce its reliance on chip designs conceived largely by third parties. In an interview following his keynote address at the Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Jobs told the New York Times’ John Markoff that his firm’s recent $278 million acquisition of a small fabless semiconductor company called P.A. Semi was an investment in the future of its handheld products.

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Missed the keynote for whatever reason?

Catch it all in 60 seconds on Youtube

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Much as developers might have hoped that the WWDC Keynote would unveil the final version of the iPhone SDK, but it appears that there’s still more beta coming down the pipes before we’re ready to get fully unleashed here in July. In the meantime, Apple has released another beta version of the iPhone SDK: lucky number seven.

If you’re wondering what what’s so special about beta seven, all I can tell you is that it brings bug fixes and support for the latest iPhone OS—by which we mean the latest version of OS 2.0 that developers have available.

With a month to go before the release of the iPhone 3G, we’ll probably see the release of the 2.0 software and final SDK somewhere around the same time.

[MacWorld.com]

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Looks like Steve’s WWDC Keynote has already been… check out what happened by clicking on the link below:

An alleged Vodafone employee has supposedly leaked details of the 3G iPhone to iPhoneAtlas, saying among other things that the 3G iPhone is “locked down like no phone has ever been”. Red rag to a bunch o’ bullfighting hackers?

iPhoneAtlas.com has published information provided to them by an alleged Vodafone employee, who says they’ve played with the 3G iPhone.

Of course there’s no way of verifying this information until tomorrow, when Steve Jobs finally launches the 3G iPhone, but it makes for interesting pre-launch information anyway, and it will be fun to see just how accurate it was, or wasn’t.

Here’s what iPhoneAtlas’ source divulged:

- The back is gloss black.

- The 4 models we have have a black skin wrapped around the back and glued into place. This is how they came from Apple.

- All are running v2.0 of the firmware.

- The bootloader hardware exploit is now fixed.

- The phone is running V 04.41.01 modem software.

- The phone is locked down like no phone has ever been. At this stage, you can’t jailbreak it and you can’t hardware unlock it.

- There is an added icon for contacts. This allows you to go straight to your contacts without having to hit the Phone icon first.

- The GPS works very well. It will attempt to obtain your position via WiFi first, cell tower second, then satellite third. The accuracy appears to be within 3 meters.

- We were getting a data transfer of 140kbps on average. It droped down to 70 kbps when we went inside.

- Apart from that, the “feel” is much the same. The phone is smaller (I would say 20 percent) and it is noticable when you pick the unit up.

iPhoneAtlas also say that another source told them that the iPhone firmware “lists an unbelievable number of carriers”.

While iPhoneAtlas don’t actually list any of those carriers beyond some of the handful of carriers that have already indicated they will sell the iPhone “later this year”, it seems obvious, if the leak is true, that many more carriers will be known tomorrow.

Some of the carriers who haven’t been announced probably have mainly, or only, 3G networks, a feature of the next iPhone that Apple has, in vain, tried to keep secret – despite Steve Jobs saying a 3G iPhone would come back in January 2007.

Australians already know that Vodafone and Optus will soon be selling the iPhone, but what we’d also like to know is if Telstra and Three will sell the iPhone, too.

Telstra’s data plans are the most expensive, while Three Mobile’s are the cheapest, but no-one yet knows what new deals Apple has done to ensure officially purchased iPhones come with generous data plans.

Naturally, everyone who wants to buy a 3G iPhone is hoping that Apple has managed to get ‘unlimited’ or very generous data plans for the iPhone, simply because the iPhone is such a data hungry device what with its Safari browser, iTunes store and upcoming App Store.

The only other question now too is how long it will take the hackers to crack the 3G iPhone. Looks like Apple has done everything in its power to keep the 3G iPhone locked down hard.

But is there any lock that hasn’t been broken in some way?

Thanks a lot to iTWire.com for making this post.

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Finally, after the long wait.. WWDC 2008 is round the corner, just a few hours to go… I am too excited about WWDC 08 and I know everyone is…

Anyways, here are some things I expect at WWDC 08…

• 3G iPhone Launch
• About iPhone Launch in many other countries…
• Maybe.. An early version of Mac OS X 10.6 (From WebKit news)
• .Mac Rebranding - to Me.com and MobileMe.com
• I guess a iPhone mini (Because of the increasing rumours..)
• Also look out for a new iTunes to Support AppStore and iPhone 2.0

I would happy to know what do you all expect at this years WWDC… Please post your expectations in Comments…

Here are some Early Pics of WWDC 08…

WWDC08 Flickr Album

Stay tuned at Apple Keynotes podcast on iTunes…

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According to the Whois search conducted, Apple has purchased the domains Me.com and MobileMe.com, the .Mac Mail service had also been down for a while couple of times this week.. What could this mean..? Well, Apple Might be rebranding .Mac to Me.com and its Mobile version to MobileMe.com !

The new 2.0 iPhone might have the Me.com Option in Mail Setup rather than the .Mac !

So, this might one of the announcements at WWDC 08…

Heres what the Mail Setup Screen may look like:

In a singularly uninformative press release, SingTel, Singapore’s largest telecommunications company, has announced that it is bringing the iPhone to “Singapore, India, the Philippines and Australia later this year” through several subsidiary carrier brands: SingTel, Bharti Airtel, Globe and Optus.

The latter confirms our earlier post that Aussies won’t be limited to Vodafone for their iPhone needs. Unfortunately no dates or pricing have been announced; it seems safe to assume this will cover the forthcoming 3G iPhone. In any case, this is good news for some of our Asia / Pacific iPhone brethren.

Via tuaw.com

It looks like Samsung and Sprint are going after some of the iPhone market share as they show off their video recording capability on the Samsung Instinct. As Apple’s competitors are slowly catching up, is it time for Apple to release video recording capabilities for the iPhone? I’m sure that most iPhone users would like to see video recording on the next iteration of the device.

Via tuaw.com

In the days leading up to the 2008 Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple has started making small changes to some of their international websites hinting at the imminent launch of the iPhone in Brazil, Canada and Mexico. In the HTML source code for Apple’s websites for Canada, Brazil, and Mexico, one reader found the following placeholder code:

This represents HTML code for an “iPhone” navigation tab wrapped in HTML comment tags so Web browsers will ignore it. When Apple removes the surrounding comment code, it will reveal an “iPhone” tab (see above) on these country’s webpages. iPhone navigation tabs only appear on country website with official iPhone support. At present, the iPhone has an official presence in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Ireland and Austria.

Rogers previously announced that they would be delivering the iPhone to Canadian customers while America Movil has announced iPhone support for Mexico and Brazil.

Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference kicks off on Monday, June 9th, 2008 where Apple is expected to launch the next generation (3G capable) iPhone.

The Canadian webpage apparently has had this code since August 2007, as first noted by Gene Rayburn, though the Mexico and Brazil changes may be new.

Thanks, MacRumours