iPhoneNewsBlog.com

A sneaky someone found a link to the iPhone software v2.0 before it's been released here in the US! You can download iPhone software v2.0 here

Software build 5A347

NOTE: If you are using Safari to download this, it will uncompress and dump the original file into the trash. The original file is named iPhone1,2_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw.zip You need to retrieve the file from the trash and rename it. Simply remove the zip portion of the file name.

Before you update, please read Apple's support document: Updating and restoring iPhone and iPod touch software.

To install the update, simply connect your iPhone to iTunes then go to the summary screen. Hold down the option (alt) and click "Check for Update". Then select the file iPhone1,2_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw.

Be sure to make a backup of your phone! The update takes about 10 minutes.

A video created by a user called lonelysandwich shows how a cut and paste function might work on an iPhone. It's a well put together video and features the iPhone narrator guy with a custom voice-over.

I think this is a pretty good solution but won't be the solution that Apple comes up with. Apple's solution may be similar but probably a bit more intuitive. Nonetheless, this is a very interesting and well put together video. Check it out:

iPhone Copy and Paste from lonelysandwich on Vimeo.

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!

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.

Those crazy hackers at ZodTTD have been able to get the iPhone to successfully emulate a PSOne. So far the program is only in its beta release and of course, only available for jail broken iPhones.

Apparently the authors say that the download will be available via Installer.app later, but currently it is only available via manual download. For more information, be sure to read the ZodTTD forums and FAQs.

Enjoy and Merry Xmas!

The iPhone Elite folks have released a tool that is supposed to rebuild your iPhone's seczon lock table (the one that holds the unlock info for your phone). They call it revirginizer. Supposedly this will return your phone to it's pre-unlocked state so you can safely upgrade to 1.1.1.

iPhoneSIMFree, the guys who unlocked and possibly bricked more than a few iPhones have released another hack to SIM Unlock the 1.1.1 version of the iPhone software. They also believe that their new software will restore and repair bricked iPhones.

From their site:
This now means that SimFree v1.6 release, is now capable of completely restoring/repairing software unlocked "bricked" iPhone

Will you trust them the second time around? Once bitten, twice....

We won't do this to any of our iPhones but feel free to try and report back! iPhoneSIMFree costs about $60 - $100 depending on where you get it from.

Apple using iPhone Software 1.1.2
TUAW is reporting that iPhones are running 1.1.2 firmware in the UK during Apple training sessions.

Apple to launch official iPhone web app directory
It will have the same submission process as Apple's Dashboard widgets. We'll see if this pans out or not.

The other side of iPhone security
Interesting article. Talks about the fact that the iPhone runs on OS X and what the iPhone hackers have done is expose vulnerabilities and how eventually this will help tighten up security on OS X but may eventually mean more folks trying their best to break in.

3% of U.S. Teens Surveyed Already Own iPhone
Piper Jaffray's bi-annual survey of 980 American teenage buying patterns found that 3% own an iphone, 9% expect to buy one and 4.2% of 212 parent's surveyede own iPhone.

If you're into hacking your iPhone, we bring this news to you!

Jailbreak for 1.1.1 Imminent
If we hear the underground correctly, a new Jailbreak for 1.1.1 is coming shortly...

New Mobile protocol handlers in the 1.1.1 update
Eric Sadun over at TUAW has snooped around and has discovered new Safari-style protocol handlers.

itms:// Launches Mobile iTMS store.

maps:// Launches Google Maps. (iPhone only)

feed://, feeds:// Launches dotMac reader

tel:// Dials a number, specified in the URL. (iPhone only)

mailto:// Launches the iPhone mail app. (iPhone only)

youtube:// Launches YouTube.

Springboard hack updated for 1.1.1
Now Springboard has a cool "paging" feature which allows you to have apps on multiple pages or pagination for your apps. To access it you must first Jailbreak your iPhone then access this link from Mobile Safari.

iPhone BSD package updated
iPhone hacker/dev NerveGas has updated the BSD subsystem just in time for the upcoming jailbreak for 1.1.1 update.

'Brick' Enters Formal English Lexicon As Slang For A Useless iPhone
Yes, we've been guilty of using 'brick' as well. Probably from the days of modding the PSP. That got old real fast. An interesting article of how the word went mainstream.

iPhone 1.1.1 hack
Eric Sadun is liveblogging the attempt to duplicate a hack brought about by iPhone hackers "dinopio" and "Edgan".
By using symbolic links before doing a 1.1.1 upgrade, they were able to gain access to the entire 1.1.1 file tree. Says Sadun. So far it looks like she's been successful at getting to the directory structure and pulling out the iTunes Music Store. She tried the app on 1.0.2 but it didn't work. Good luck with hacking the 1.1.1, but I don't think we're going to touch it for fear of 'bricking' our iPhone when Apple's next update comes out!

10 percent of September iPhone sold for Unlock?
If this report is true, then thats great for Apple, bad for those looking to cash in on the unlocked phone. Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray estimates that as many as 100,000 iPhones were sold for unlock. Munster and his team spent 12 hours counting sales in Apple Stores in late September. Munster says the team noticed folks buying the maximum of 5 iPhones/customer which they believe were being purchased for unlock. Let's hope these folks don't all have bricks!

And if you do have a brick, don't forget you can win our brand new 4GB iPhone just by signing up for our newsletter here! The giveaway ends October 31, 2007 so sign up today!

Has the news of Apple's upcoming update to the iPhone got you scared because you unlocked your iPhone? Erica Sadun has posted a step by step iPhone re-locking guide to relocking over at TUAW.

She says she'll be doing a test of her re-locking guide but "This method in no way guarantees that your iPhone will survive the update after being unlocked." You'll need to download the iPhone 1.0.2 firmware to do this and it doesn't look like it will be an easy thing to do if you've never used the terminal.

We're sure someone will come out with a GUI version shortly though...

Tonight, hot on the heels of iPhoneSIMfree, a group of iPhone hackers have duplicated the technique used by iPhoneSIMFree for unlocking the iPhone to run on any SIM card.

From the looks of it, this hack depends on a buffer overflow of sorts and we here at iPhoneNewsBlog.com all agree that this will probably break with the next iPhone upgrade. So do this at your own risk!

The hack involves uploading a few files to your iPhone and following step by step guide. You can download them here. The whole process looks easy enough if you are accustomed to using the terminal app, if you aren't then this might NOT be a good time to learn.

We haven't tried it out ourselves but please report your findings if you try it out! [via Macaper]

MacRumors today posted info from a forum member cleverboy on how to create custom ringtones in iTunes 4.7.

Cleverboy posted instructions on our forums on how to "convert" AAC music files to ringtones in iTunes 7.4. He states that ringtones and song files are only distinguished by file extension. The file extension for Ringtones is "M4R".

Click here for some screenshots and a step by step.

Tonight as I was killing some time with the iPhone, I started up the Installer app and noticed a brand new application called SummerBoard. SummerBoard's description said:

SummerBoard extends SpringBoard to add scrolling, wallpaper and soon more!

For those of you who don't know what the SpringBoard is, it's the launcher that appears once you power on your iPhone. Currently, if you're using Installer and putting in tons of cool apps, you're limited to just 16 apps on that one screen because the SpringBoard doesn't scroll at all.

On a whim, I installed it and was pleasantly surprised at how well it worked! SummerBoard is version 1.01 but will probably see tons of updated before the end of the week just as all of the applications do that are handled by Installer app. SpringBoard really works and even shows your wallpaper! Get it by installing Installer.app which we talked about here.

Erica Sadun over at TUAW posted footage of Nate True's Dock Package that allows iPhone hackers to display more than 16 applications at once by creating a scrolling left to right listing of the application icons.

Jailbreaking is the term folks are using to describe an iPhone thats been hacked to allow third-party native apps like Lights Out to run on the iPhone.

In the past (oh about a month ago!) jailbreaking meant you had to use the terminal and do a bunch of different things to hack the iPhone. This spawned a variety of different applications that did the same thing easier, but not quite as easy as the common iPhone user would have liked.

Finally theres an application called Installer that makes jailbreaking the iPhone easy to do. The folks at nullriver have designed an application that actually installs itself without needing to know an command line or terminal geek speak at all. After the Installer.app jailbreaks your iPhone and installs itself, it allows you to see a whole world of applications that are out and about in iPhone hacker / developer land!

We've played with the installer over the last week and must admit that it's the best thing to happen to the iPhone yet. So what exactly does the Installer.app do? Quite simply, the installer is very much like a software update on a mac with a twist. Not only will the installer app check for updates to it's own software, but it will look for updates to anything else the Installer.app has installed as well. The Installer.app constantly checks various sources for new iPhone "packages". The packages are applications that can be installed at anytime on your iPhone. Most of the packages are still in beta / developmental stages but it gives you a chance to play with the apps and see what developers are doing.

So what happens after you've installed an application and decide you no longer want it on your iPhone? Simple, just select uninstall and the Installer.app will take care of removing the application for you. It really is the easiest thing!

Currently the Installer shows a list of Development packages such as Perl, Python and Ruby, a few games like a nintendo emulator and iPhoneDoom. Theres also a bunch of network utilites like DNS Tools and you can even compile an Apache web server on your iPhone!

The nullriver team is constantly updating the Installer.app software and the packages are always registered and checked for updates each time Installer.app is launched.

Download the Installer.app here.