Independent phone vendors have been illegally selling unlocked 3G iPhone in Hong Kong since its launch but, today Apple has quietly sneaked an unlocked version of the iPhone 3G themselves in to their Hong Kong Apple online store. It looks like their deal with Hutchison Telecom, the exclusive iPhone 3G carrier at launch has expired and the phone is now available online at $5400 HKD ($692USD) for the 8GB model and $6200HKD ($794USD) for the 16GB model. Apple states that phones when purchased online can be activated with any wireless carrier. Simply insert the SIM from your current phone into iPhone 3G and connect to iTunes 8 to complete activation. The price is a bit steep but, competitive compared to the Nokia N95 which goes for $600USD or Blackberry Bold at $750USD unlocked.
Pegged by the numerous issues I encountered when upgrading from Wordpress 1.x to 2.2, I have been hesitant to upgraded to the much talked about v2.6. However, with the release of their Wordpress iPhone app, I was force to make the transitions. I completed the update last weekend and the process (kind of) painless. The only issue that I ran into was my categories table got deleted in the DB upgrade, but it wasn’t all that difficult to resolve. A bit manual, but David Cumps has the solution here. Overall, the update has been really great. The media library is intuitive, the plugin manager is a godsend, but even more the ability to blog from your iPhone via the new app is worth the upgrade alone.
The iPhone Dev Team has released PwnageTool 2.0. This jailbreaks iPhones/iPod Touches running firmware 2.0 to support non-App Store third-party application. The first-generation iPhones can also be unlocked, but the iPhone 3G cannot be unlocked or used with BootNeuter.
I tested this and the Pwanage Tool is flawless. Everything has worked for me so far and I provided an outline of what I did to get my iPhone 1st Gen unlocked and jailbroken with the 2.0 firmware.
Warning: Jailbreak / Unlock at your own risk. I will take no responsibility what so ever for what may occur before, during, after the Pwnaing process. I tried it myself and was successful. Please proceed with caution.
To Jailbreak and Unlock a first-generation iPhone:
Open iTunes 7.7 and connected the iPhone. When the iPhone is detected iTunes will ask you to upgrade your firmware, select the download only and disconnect iPhone after the download starts.
Open the Pwnage Tool
Select expert mode
Chose iPhone 1st Gen / iPod Touch
Browse for the 2.o firmware
Browse for the boot loader
Further customize the third party installer, custom boot / dfu screen, etc and select build (Optional). This will create a custom ipws for you to restore your phone from in iTunes
When the custom ipws file is created, the Pwanage Tool will instruct you on how to put your iPhone into dfu mod. Follow the on screen instruction , dock your phone, and close the Pwanage Tool.
Once your phone is in dfu mode and docked, iTunes will not recognize your iPhone and will ask you to restore. Select “alt” and the restore button, browse for your the custom ipw file you created with the Pwanage Tool and sit back and relax.
Once iTunes successfully restores your iPhone, it will reboot and bootneutral will opened automatically. First, it neutral the boot and then flashed the baseband.
Your iPhone 1st Gen / iPod Touch is Jailbroken and Unlocked
Engadget is reporting that GPS turn-by-turn directions is possible for the iPhone. This is just another reason for me to upgrade my first gen iPhone to the 3G model. It seems that their is no way to avoid the lust over this magical device.Despite the good news, Apple has stated that cut and paste is a low priority feature for them. Lets just hope someone can address this need with an app.
Gizmodo has just reported the new iPhone OS 2.0 software has been unlocked and jailbroken. The software itself has not even been officially released by Apple yet and it has already been cracked by the iPhone Dev Team. Here’s some proof for all you non believers.
The iPhone Dev Team have been working on this since the beta version and now that the iPhone OS 2.0 is out, they will release their Pwnage tool for everyone to unlock and jailbreak their iPhones soon, although the specific date/time is not firm yet.
Gizmodo also questions the usefulness of this unlock because iphones are nolonger widly sold without a contract and is freely avalible is major countries now. It’s true that it may not be benifical to iPhone 3G owners, but for the vast community that are still using their unlocked 1st gen iPhone, this means they can take advantage of the software update as well. I for one am very happy because I relocked my first gen phone yesterday just to try the Apps and would really like to have it unlocked again
TechCunch just broke the news that Apple’s App Store is now live. To access it, download iTunes 7.7 here. Once iTunes has upgraded, you can access the App Store here.
You can buy apps on iTunes now, but you’ll need the iPhone 2.0 software to actually use them on the iPhone, which isn’t yet available.
Micheal Arrington over at TechCrunch made an awesome intro video demoing the App stor, which is embedded below:
There are 27 pages of applications currently available, 7 of which are FREE applications. There are also a lot of books being listed as applications as well. I went through most of the apps and below are some of the ones I found interesting:
AIM (free) - Instant messaging finally on non jail broken iPhone or iPod Touch.
Moo-Cow-Music Band ($9.99) - Visual instruments that allow you to create music from scratch. Each instrument was created to leverage the power of the iPhone or iPod Touch (i.e. touch interface).
Battle at Sea ($3.99) - Brings back of the classic strategy board game, Battle Ship. Users can play against the computer or friends via LAN.
Bloomberg (free) - Gets you up-to-date with stock quotes and related financial news.
Movies (free) - Browse movies and Showtime, read reviews, watch trailers, buy movie ticket, and get directions to the theater all from your iPhone or iPod Touch.
Brain Challenge ($9.99) - Similar to the DS’s brain age but for your iPhone or iPod Touch.
Checkout Smart Shop ($4.99) - Read reviews, and compare prices online and at local retailers while at the store. If this isn’t smart shopping I don’t know what is.
Evernote (free) - documents and media synced to the web and accessible anywhere with an Internet connection.
iLingo ($9.99) - Awesome language learning tool. Each language is sold separately as oppose to the buddle they sell in retail stores.
NetNewsWire (free) - Get syndicated with your latest blogs / RSS feeds.
Jott (free) - A mobile note pad. Notes crated by speech translated into text and synced over the cloud.
Mobile Flickr ($2.99) - Easy way to post photos to your Flickr account (supports tags, sets, and groups) and elopers others photos.
Numba ($9.99) - A numbers brain game. Can’t tell for sure if it’s really awesome yet, but looks very appealing.
Super Monkey Ball ($9.99) – Game that uses the iPhone accelerometer to guide a little monkey encased in a ball to victory through various obstacles.
Twittelator (free) – A twitter app that lets you post messages, photos and find your friend utilizing maps.
Stage Hands ($7.99) - Control your Keynote. Have live notes of the current side and utilize the highlight and spotlight function for a particular slide all from the iPhone or iPod.
Apple’s .Mac service is offering 10x storage increase for individual accounts from 1GB total for .Mac mail, iDisk and websites to a whopping 10GB. The total monthly bandwidth transfer was previously at 25GB, Apple has increase that to 100GB per month. The attachment size limit on inbound/outbound .Mac email messages has doubled from 10MB to 20, bringing it up to par with Gmail, Yahoo and other services. The service is expected to be rolled out by the 14th of August; however, current .mac users have confirmed that their accounts have been updated with the new features.
Apple iWork ‘08 is now available. It contains Keynote, the presentation application; Pages, the word processing program; and Numbers, the new spreadsheet app. Like iLife, Apple is also offer a bunch of tutorials for their newly refreshed productivity suite. Along with the free tutorials, you can also test drive iWorks from Apple for 30 days.
Today, Steve Jobs announced iLife ‘08. The newly refreshed software, which includes iPhoto, iMovie, iWeb, iDVD and GarageBand, was described by Jobs as totally new, and the “biggest jump since we introduced it”. It will sell for $79 and is available immediately. iLife ‘08 tutorials are available and free. Watch the guided tour to see what iLife 08 can do.
For customers who bought an Apple computer on or after Aug 7, Apple is offer an iLife ‘08 upgrade for $9.95 through their iLife ‘08 Hardware Up-To-Date program.
iPhoto ‘08 - watch video
iPhoto ‘08 adds a new way of thinking about your photo libraries by organizing them into events–birthday parties, family reunions, graduations, and so forth. Instead of sorting through thousands of photos and rolls, you collect each group of photos into specific events. iPhoto ‘08 also adds “hide photos” feature allows you to pick which photos you want to feature and hide the rest. iPhoto ‘08 also supports web galleries, for sharing images with friends, family and colleagues. It’s still unclear whether this feature is dotMac only or can be used for other web servers. You can also send photos to your web gallery from your iPhone.
iMovie ‘08 - watch video
iMovie gets a new icon in this release to show it’s a completely new application. Unlike previous version of iMovie, all your video now goes into a common iPhoto-like library, so you can access all your video archives, not just what you import into your project. You can also now send video to YouTube. iMovie encodes and uploads it for you. Video export now supports an iPhone resolution.
iWeb ‘08 - watch video
iWeb now supports live web widgets including one for Google Maps. You can also use personal domains with dotMac and you can change themes for installed sites. iWeb ‘08 contains a number of new themes. iWeb also supports Google AdSense.
iDVD ‘08.
iDVD ‘08 introduces pro encoding and new themes enabling users to create Hollywood-style DVDs featuring your movies and slideshows.
Garage Band ‘08 - watch video
A new feature, called “Magic Garage Band” allows you to create genred tracks, like reggae, latin, rock and jazz.
The Microsoft BU has just announced that Office 2008 for Mac will be released in the second half of 2007. Office 2008 will be Universal and include a number of Mac only features:
Publishing Layout Views - Let’s you create newsletters and things by presenting the related Office tools in a new layout
Ledger Sheets - Makes managing your finances even easier in Excel
My Day - A new stand alone application that lets you stay on top of your activities across Office applications
From the looks of it Office 2008 for Mac run and generate in the new Office Open XML Formats so it’ll be compatible with Office 2007 on Windows. For more details check out this interview with Roz Ho, general manager of the Mac BU.
