January 2008 Archives

Some fantastic news for those of you who use 37signals Campfire web app!

"Today we officially announce that Campfire has been optimized for the iPhone. Just visit your Campfire site with Safari on the iPhone and you'll automatically see the iPhone optimized version.

To scroll back through the transcript you'll need to use the two-finger scroll technique as illustrated below:"

Campfire is a great chat tool and now that it's optimized for the iPhone, it might currently be one of the best out there! Read the blog entry here.

Is Motorola leaving the cell phone business for good? According to research by a Nomura investment analyst in a report published by AppleInsider, it might be true.

While another story circulating states that Apple may have a hard road to selling 10 million iPhones, Motorola is having an even harder time in the marketplace.

"Motorola is already said to be suffering, and in the fourth calendar quarter of 2007 reported a 38 percent drop in its mobile device sales compared to the same period a year ago -- a stark contrast to an industry widely agreed to be growing over time. The departure of Ed Zander from Motorola's chief executive spot in mid-quarter is understood to have been partly driven by the increasingly poor results.

Most of the reasons behind the plummeting welfare of the Motorola division are understood to stem from its emphasis on individual devices. By ignoring software and the platform as a whole, Motorola has essentially given Nokia a two-year lead..."

One thing is certain, each time I look at someone using a Razr I feel sorry for them. While it might have a sleek outer shell and cool design, the OS that runs the phone is so antiquated and lacking and hasn't been changed significantly in years.

I don't miss my Razr, but if Motorola leaves the cell market, I wonder what will happen?

PimpMyNews has released a very cool iPhone app that allows you to LISTEN to your favorite new and blogs via the iPhone!

PimpMyNews instantly converts the web's top text news and blog sites to audio that you can listen to online, or on-the-go on your iPhone, iPod, or any MP3 player. It keeps you current, saves time, and lets you listen to the best blogs from the web anytime, anywhere (in the car, the gym, etc).

Simply create your own personalized account at PimpMyNews.com then access your account via the iPhone or iPod Touch at http://www.PimpMyNews.com/m and you're on your way to LISTENING to your favorite websites!

 

This is a true story.

iPhone News Blog reader Mike Beauchamp sent in this wonderful story about the semi that ran over his iPhone at 70mph... and SURVIVED!

A few nights ago Mr. Beauchamp went to fill up his car with gas, but upon getting outside to pump the gas, realized it was a but cold. While changing into a heavier jacket, Beauchamp took his iPhone out of the lighter jacket he was wearing and placed it on the trunk of his car. Beauchamp put on his heavy jacket and continued to fill up the tank but forgot his iPhone on the trunk!

Driving off, it wasn't until he reached for his iPhone that he realized what he had done! He drove back to the gas station and searched high and low for 30 minutes but no iPhone was found, no one had turned it in either. Giving up hope at the gas station, Beauchamp drove off with the hope that maybe... just maybe he'd find his iPhone out on the road since it probably flew off the trunk of his car. Then suddenly....

Someone has been crafty enough to program a hacked iPhone so that it can be played like an electronic guitar. I'm not sure if this guy is the author or not, but one thing is for sure, when the official iPhone SDK comes out, there will be tons of applications out there making use of the iPhone's unique abilities. Watch the magic below:

The folks over at Inventive Labs have created Tabulate: a bookmarklet for the iPhone. What's the big deal about it? Well Tabulate brings the convenience of 'open in new tab' to Safari on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Using a cool looking hovering widget that you invoke from the bookmarks menu, Tabulate works it's magic! There is also an option of queueing up several links to open in new tabs with just one click.

You're just gonna have to try this out yourself to understand how cool it is. And no, you won't have to jailbreak your iPhone to use Tabulate! It's a bookmarklet after all!

iPhone hacker extraordinary, Nate True was taking a look around inside of the latest iPhone firmware 1.1.3 and found some interesting things:

• SpringBoard no longer needs to be modified (via SummerBoard) in order to show extra applications in the /Applications folder.
• All applications now run as the user 'mobile' instead of as root.
• Preferences are now stored in /var/mobile rather than in /var/root.

What does this mean to you and me in laymans terms?

Today AT&T introduced Business plans for the iPhone. This is great news for everyone who has been waiting a long time for this. Wonder what took them so long?

• Enterprise Data Plan for iPhone 200: 200 SMS, Domestic Data (web/email), Visual Voicemail, $45/month.
• Enterprise Data Plan for iPhone 1500: 1500 SMS, Domestic Data (web/email), Visual Voicemail, $55/month.
• Enterprise Data Plan for iPhone Unlimited: Unlimited SMS, Domestic Data (web/email), Visual Voicemail, $65/month.

If you travel internationally, a Data Global Add-On for iPhone may be purchased in addition to an Enterprise Data Plan for iPhone.

• 20MB Data Global plan (20MB of usage within 29 countries) for $24.99 per month.
• 50MB Data Global plan (50MB of usage within 29 countries) for $59.99 per month.

More details located here: AT&T Business Plans for iPhone

Over the weekend, we heard and read rumors of the iPhone firmware update being jailbroken. Then we saw the YouTube Video. Then we heard the bad news: You have to modify your iPhone hardware to get this to work. Um...no thanks!



So what's next? Well, instead of jailbreaking, we'll just wait for the iPhone / iPod Touch SDK due out at the end of next month.

Google has a warning out for those of you who are using Gmail on the iPhone along with iPhone software update 1.1.3:

via MacNN:

The company says that if users setup mail on their iPhones simply by tapping the "Gmail" icon, the v1.1.3 upgrade will convert access from POP to IMAP. The result is that messages read on an iPhone will also appear as read in the Gmail web interface and any deletions will move messages to the web Trash bin, where they will be permanently deleted after 30 days.

You can always manually configure Gmail's IMAP or revert to POP.

The change is just one of many changes that Google made to Gmail this week. Other changes include: automatic refreshing and contact completion on the iPhone. On regular gmail:  expanded chat, the ability to integrate non-Google e-mail accounts and larger attachment limits.

We were going to spend some time last night writing a hands on with iPhone Software Update 1.1.3 but MacNN already did one and their is pretty good, so we'll just refer you all to them.

They cover everything I was going to cover: new maps, auto locate feature, multiple SMS, and new home page configuration and arrangement! Way cool!

Read more here.

Cool tip we found this evening: If you do the following steps, you can have a default webclip icon for your website when anyone saves it to their iPhone:

• Create a 57x57 PNG.
• Name the png "apple-touch-icon.png"
• Put it in the root folder of your website

We found the information on Apple's iPhone Dev Center. Read more under Create a WebClip Bookmark Icon.

iTunes 7.6 finally brings to iPhone owners what almost all iPods take for granted: the ability to manually manage music! To do this, simply check off Manually manage music and videos in iTunes when you connect your iPhone.

Yes now you can drag and drop music into your iPhone, but it seems like you cannot do this for any type of podcast. Podcasts are still managed by syncing with iTunes.

Erica Sadun over at TUAW did a liveblog of installing 1.1.3 and then attempting to revert back to 1.1.1 to jailbreak mode. Things didn't go so well. You can read all about it here.

So far, there is no jailbreak for iPhone software update 1.1.3... yet.

iPod Touch owners shouldn't feel left out! Steve Jobs introduced 5 "new" apps for the iPod Touch, affectionately known as the iTouch:

• Maps
• Mail
• Notes
• Stocks
• Weather

Basically all the apps you'd get on the iPhone! But theres a catch! It'll cost $20 to get these apps unless you buy a "new" iPod touch. Not a bad deal for these apps though I'd say.

We believe Apple is doing this to test out their upcoming Apple iPhone/iPod touch software distribution system via iTunes.

To download the software click here. (we just tried it but got an error. Apple may be working on the problem or the iTunes server is overloaded)

Checked iTunes and it's available now!

Weighing in at 162.1 megs... it's downloading for me now!

Start your download engines!

Well the cat's out and it was for real.. iPhone Software update 1.1.3 will be released sometime today. So far no updates from iTunes as of yet...

New iPhone 1.1.3 features:

• Enhanced Maps
• Rearrange icons on your home screen
• Make WebClips of your favorite websites
• SMS multiple recipients
• Chapters for video
• Karaoke mode and available lyrics

Hang tight!

What could possibly be in the air?

That's what signs are saying up at Macworld Expo going on today. Active readers in the Mac community did a little sleuthing over the weekend and found that the domain name "macbookair.com" as well as the .org, .us, .biz, and .net were all registered to a company living at 1 Infinite Loop... hmmmm.

What if there IS  a MacBook Air coming out tomorrow? What will it do? Perhaps a wireless feature to use the iPhone as a modem to get wireless signal anywhere? We'll just have to wait and see...

Here's some sites you can check out tomorrow for the Macworld Keynote. Live blogging rules! Play by play news as it happens! Check it out!

• MacRumors
• Engadget
• MacUsers
• Apple Matters

Wired has a fantastic piece on what it took to make the iPhone, and how the iPhone is changing the landscape of the cellphone industry. It's an inside look at a secretive company and their goal of changing the world with a device that broke all the rules.

An excerpt:

"Through it all, Jobs maintained the highest level of secrecy. Internally, the project was known as P2, short for Purple 2 (the abandoned iPod phone was called Purple 1). Teams were split up and scattered across Apple's Cupertino, California, campus. Whenever Apple executives traveled to Cingular, they registered as employees of Infineon, the company Apple was using to make the phone's transmitter. Even the iPhone's hardware and software teams were kept apart: Hardware engineers worked on circuitry that was loaded with fake software, while software engineers worked off circuit boards sitting in wooden boxes. By January 2007, when Jobs announced the iPhone at Macworld, only 30 or so of the most senior people on the project had seen it."

Overall a great read for any Apple iPhone fan, and of course, that means you since your're reading this blog right?

Read The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry

So MacWorld is coming up next week. The iPhoneNewsBlog guys and gals all have a friendly wager going on regarding what will be presented as far as iPhone news is concerned. What will Steve Jobs pull out of his hat?

I'm hedging my bets on a few things to be introduced next week. Namely:

• Upgraded iPhone v1.5. - more memory (16 gigs)
• iPhone update 1.1.3
• iPhone SDK
• iTunes 7.6 with secure iPhone application installer
• iPhone Software developer demos with new software available via iTunes

We'll see what pans out and what doesn't in a few days. Looking forward to it!

So it's finally happened. A trojan horse piece of software has been found out in the wild by Modmyiphone enthusiast forum and then confirmed by security research company F-secure.

The trojan will only affect jailbroken iPhones, so those of you who haven't jailbroken your iPhone have nothing to worry about.

According to the forum, the application masquerades itself as an update to Erica's Utilities and is labeled as "113 prep." When loaded all the app does is display the word "shoes." But after uninstalling the app, it removes files from the /bin directory on the iPhone, breaking valid apps that were installed on the jailbroken phone.

Reportedly, F-Secure said that it was an 11-year-old child playing with XML files who created the Trojan.

This trojan may have been harmless, but no telling what could happen if some malicious hacker decided to try out a few things right?

While we don't want to bash anyone who has jailbroken their iPhone, we do want to mention that you really don't know the people on the other end who are making these applications. Using a third party installer app like AppTap doesn't give you security that you might think it does.

Our advice is to wait for the official Apple SDK and official Apple distribution method before installing third party apps on your iPhone. You have been warned.

With news of the impending iPhone 1.1.3 firmware update arriving soon, the hacker community as well as those who have jailbroken their phones to install third-party software is up in arms.  It seems that the rumored version 1.1.3 update will once again break hacks that worked with the previous firmware according to people who have access to the new firmware.

Hacker "Natetrue", who also created the app "iBrickr", says that iPhone update version 1.1.3 disables both unlocks and third-party software. Most notably broken are any software that tries to unlock the iPhone such as AnySIM 1.2u, although iPhoneSIMFree and TurboSIM techniques have not been tried with the new firmware yet.

According to "Natetrue", Apple has patch a lot of vulnerabilities in the new firmware update. How did "Natetrue" get a copy of the firmware? Well it seems that it was leaked by someone in the inside who wanted to give hackers a head start on unlocking it.

We've been reading many comments on this story on other iPhone sites and think it's funny how so many people who have unlocked their iPhone or even jailbroken their iPhone are up in arms. Relax folks. If you like your jailbroken iPhone or your unlocked iPhone, we said it once before and we'll say it again... just don't upgrade to the latest firmware. Apple is doing what Apple should: protecting it's assets from vulnerabilities. If you don't like it, don't upgrade!

I for one haven't Jailbroken the iPhone since the first firmware update. Heres hoping for that new iPhone firmware 1.1.3 soon! What a way to start the new year!