We can jailbreak the 3GS right now. But making our jailbreak public at this point in time would benefit relatively few people. It would in fact be detrimental to many more people than it would help. So we feel it’s best to keep our version of the jailbreak out of Apple’s sights for the time being.

They also note if you have done a USB dump or got your img3’s signed with your ECID using purplera1n you will always be able to jailbreak in the future.

If you already have a 3GS phone and have already done a full USB dump or captured your img3’s signed with your ECID, then you’re in great shape. You will always be able to jailbreak.

[Source - Dev Team]

Apple has added a new layer of security to the iPhone 3GS. I mentioned it several posts earlier; it’s the ECID field. When iTunes starts the restore process, they contact Apple servers to generate signatures just for your device. It’s important you get these signatures for your phone before a new version of the software comes out. I had previously suggested doing this by dumping usb while the iPhone restores. But this is complicated.

Fortunately, the good folks at purplera1n are here for you, the end user who wants a jailbreak. Follow these instructions to generate a unique certificate for your phones iBSS. And don’t delay, Apple may change their minds. To clarify, this is instead of a usb dump. Do this, and you are good!

1. Put your phone into recovery mode and connect it to your computer.
2. Using usbview on Windows(enable Config Descriptors), System Profiler on Mac, or lsusb on Linux, read your phones ECID. It’s the 16 digit hex number after “ECID:”
3. Go to purplera1n, type it, and hit enter
4. Save the generated file for a purplera1nyday…

[Source - On The iPhone]

About 5 hours ago (Thursday evening, less than a week after the 3GS launch), we were able to verify that the 24Kpwn exploit that the hybrid team used on the iPod Touch 2G is still applicable to the bootrom of the iPhone 3GS. That means we can use the same sort of technique used by our current redsn0w tool to jailbreak and unlock the iPhone 3GS.

This is great news, but how did it happen? Why didn’t Apple fix this in their normal cat&mouse fashion? Well it seems this bootrom was cut in about the August 2008 timeframe, so the unintended early reveal of 24Kpwn earlier this year didn’t affect the iPhone 3GS.

And yes, ultrasn0w will be able to be used on the iPhone 3GS for you unlockers! (In fact, without any modifications whatsoever!)

Keep your eyes peeled folks, I predict the jailbreak coming out in the coming weeks!

[Source - Dev Team]

Ultrasn0w for iPhone 3G is ready!

1. Ensure you have upgraded to iPhone OS 3.0
2. Jailbreak your iPhone 3G using redsn0w or PwnageTool (this will also install Cydia/Icy)
3. Run Cydia or Icy
4. Please add the repo repo666.ultrasn0w.com to Cydia or Icy. That last “o” is actually the number zero “0”! If you use the letter “o” you’ll get an error.
5. Search for ‘ultrasn0w’ in cydia or icy and install ultrasn0w
6. Reboot your iPhone 3G
7. T-Mobile USA users should disable 3G before using ultrasn0w
8. Enjoy

If you relied on yellowsn0w to use your iPhone 3G you’re now able to upgrade to OS 3.0 and use Ultrasn0w to unlock your device!

[Source - Dev Team]

The title says it all, iPhone 3GS is on sale today at Apple stores and AT&T stores. When a jailbreak and possible unlock is released we’ll let you know right here.

Today iPhone OS 3.0 is being released for all users. Free for iPhone 2G and iPhone 3G, $9.95 for iPod Touch. Let’s recap on all the features you’ll expect to see but remember do NOT upgrade to iPhone OS 3.0 yet until a proper jailbreak is released or risk being unable to jailbreak and unlock in the future.

Copy and Paste – Took long enough for this basic function to be built in. We’ll not be able to select text by extending a bubble around it then tap again to cut, copy, and paste.

Landscape Keyboard – The stock apps, Mail, SMS, and Notes, will have a landscape keyboard mode now.

CalDAV calendar support used by Google and Yahoo, and subscriptions for the .ics format used by iCal.

MMS – Yet another feature the cheapest phones can do. We’ll be able to send pictures, audio, vcards, and video if you’re on an iPhone 3GS.

Stereo Bluetooth A2DP – iPhone 3G and 3GS will let us use our bluetooth for wireless audio via A2DP for speakers or headphones.

Spotlight Search – With a swipe to the left from the first page of the springboard we will now have a universal search that goes through contacts, email, apps, songs, etc.

Improved Stocks app – Includes a landscape mode to show even more data you’ll enjoy.

Notes sync with iTunes now.

Improved Parental Controls – Filters can be made to movies, TV Shows, apps, web pages, and music.

Shake to shuffle – Starting in the lastest iPod Nano, it’s shake to shuffle feature will be in OS 3.0.

Safari – Now remembers login information for web sites, and can now warn you against malicious sites.

Wi-fi Auto-login – For those of you with subscriptions to paid hotspots.

A new file transfer app will be dedicated to share files between iPhones and iPod Touches

Voice Memo App – Can record any voice or any sound and edit them on the fly.

Voice Control – Only featured in the iPhone 3GS. Just hold down the home button for a second and speak your command.

Record Video – Another iPhone 3GS feature, it’s self explanatory.

Browse remote content via Bluetooth.

Peer to Peer Bluetooth connectivity for playing games, sharing files, etc.

Maps will be able to be used in third party applications

Turn by turn directions – Developers can now make turn by turn GPS apps but can only use their own maps, not Google’s.

Third party accessories can now interact with apps through the dock connector or bluetooth.

Push Notification – Finally it’s here. Push Notification will automatically alert you when say, you’ve got a new instant message on AIM. It can either make a sound, vibrate, display a message on screen, and in any combination of the three.

VoIP in games – We can talk with someone we’re playing with live, for example, Xbox Live voice chat.

Rumble – Games can take advangae of the vibrate to make the phone rumble like a controller.

Access Music from apps – A good example here is a racing game that lets you turn on the radio, but it will access your own library and play that.

App Store – The App Store will be upgraded with some new features. Subscription to apps, purchase content for apps within apps.

The keynote is over and we have a new iPhone people. The iPhone 3GS is the name of the new model. It’s claimed to be faster in every aspect, loading apps, web browsing, and faster wireless data with built in 7.2MBps HSDPA.
More features after the break…

The new model also includes a 3.0MP camera with video recording support. The new camera has auto-exposure, light balance, macro, and tap to focus feature. To supplement the new camera, you’re able to share your video “over the air” via MMS, email, MobileMe, or Youtube.

The new phone will feature a built in digital compass which has the ability to orient maps based on where you are facing.

Voice Control will be in the iPhone 3GS (I don’t know about the 3G or 2G model). Simply holding the Home button for a second brings up a dialog with all the commands scrolling behind it. Just say your command “Call Evan” or “Play all songs”.

Find My iPhone was announced for MobileMe customers. Like the jailbreak app FindMyI, it will locate your device from any web browser and give you the ability to play an alarm for someone to find it for you. You can also send a command to remotely wipe it. That’ll be included in OS 3.0.

Improved battery life: 9 hours on wifi, 10 watching video, 30 hours of audio playback, 12 hours of 2G talk time, and 5 hours of 3G talk time

Nike+ Support
“Hardware Encryption”

Price: iPhone 3GS 16GB – $199, 32GB – $299. Both in black and white.

iPhone 3G is lowered to $99 starting today.

The iPhone 3GS will be available for purchase June 19th, iPhone OS 3.0 will be avaliable June 17th.

Frankly, the iPhone 3GS to me, is disappointing. Owning a jailbroken iPhone 3G, the new hardware features are a minimal upgrade and some of it like video capture has been around for jailbroken phones for a long time. In my opinion it is not worth the money if you own an iPhone 3G already, but going from a 2G iPhone or being your first iPhone, the 3GS would be a good fit if you can afford the extra price over the lower priced iPhone 3G at $99 on contract.

The nearly 30 different poker games available for download at the Apple App Store are a testament to poker’s addictive appeal, offering poker fans a ton of alternatives when it comes to playing poker on their iPhone. We’ll be examining two of the most popular poker iPhone games available: Zynga Texas Hold’Em and Apple Texas Hold’em.

Zynga’s Texas Hold‘Em game is one of the most popular iPhone poker apps, and for good reason. Zynga’s status as a leading provider of social games for Facebook, Myspace, and the iPhone means that it’s always easy to find a seat at the poker table, with up to 200,000-300,000 poker players online and slinging chips on their network at any given time.

The look and feel of Zynga’s Texas Hold’Em also comes closest to mimicking what you’d expect to find at an online poker site, as far as both the lobby for finding a game and the action at the poker table itself:

Another popular iPhone poker app is from Apple itself: Apple Texas Hold’em. Apple’s entry into the iPhone poker arena is very slick and elegant, and supports single player action versus computer opponents (something Zynga Texas Hold’Em lacks) as well as multi-player action via Wi-Fi for you and up to eight of your friends.

Apple Texas Hold’em lets you toggle between table views as well as turning animations and graphics on or off, depending on your preference. You can also choose different playing backgrounds such as Las Vegas, Aruba, and other exotic locales.

As far as comparing the two offerings, each largely caters to a different market. If you’re an online poker fiend looking for a similar experience, Zynga is definitely the way to go, as it’s built from the ground up to offer a very similar experience to playing online.

If you’re instead looking for a way to brush up on your poker skills solo or to get a game going among friends, then Apple Texas Hold’em gets the nod, as it caters much more to the casual player.

But if you’re daring you can download the Windows only software here.
QuickPwn

Skip forward in time to iPhone OS 2.0 release. All the developers are working hard to get the new software jailbroken and make unofficial third-party apps to the masses. The first to become compatible was what is now the default and preferred source of jailbreak apps, Cydia. Now Cydia is in every jailbroken iPhone and iPod Touch, essentially swapping places with Installer to become the preferred source of apps. The very late to be released Installer for 2.0 has now become a waste of time to install.

Now I’m sure you’ve seen iPhone 3.0 Beta jailbreaks from QuickPwn, we’ve featured them on the site before. All of the beta jailbreaks include Icy, RipDev’s latest jailbreak app manager. If this trend continues when iPhone OS 3.0 is officially released I have no doubt in my mind once the 3.0 jailbreak is discovered Icy will be the first thing on your iPhone/iPod Touch. Now the question is, will Icy bring RipDev back in the spotlight or will Cydia maintain it’s reign?

Not long ago the iPhone 3.0 Beta 3 was seeded to developers and promptly QuickPwn was updated to jailbreak the newest beta. Like the last Beta 2 Jailbreak you’ll permantly lose the ability to use yellowsn0w forever, not all jailbreak apps work (like WinterBoard), and it does not install Cydia, it installs Icy. This QuickPwn release can jailbreak the iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G, and First-gen iPod Touch. If you want to go ahead and try out the new software you can get it here.

Yesterday the Dev Team released an official beta of Redsn0w to jailbreak the iPod Touch 2G.

Today at exactly 2 minutes past Beta O’Clock we are releasing a beta version of redsn0w. The release hopes to simplify the jailbreaking of your iPod touch 2G.

redsn0w is currently in beta as it relies on the user running it from the command line, but this new redsn0w functionality is being added into our GUI applications.

If you are not fully confident with using the command line, then hold off for those simpler tools that will be released sometime soon.

I don’t currently have an iPod Touch 2G around to test this out, but if you’re daring it can be downloaded here.

[Source - Dev Team Blog]

The Russian hacker Vortex has recently announced an unofficial QuickPwn to jailbreak the iPhone 3.0 Beta 2. The process of jailbreaking is just the same as other QuickPwns. Unfortunately, this only installs Icy, not Cydia. Once you’ve finished the jailbreak and have gotten OpenSSH on it through Icy, you could manually install Cydia on it though.

This will jailbreak iPhone 2G 3.0 Beta 2, iPhone 3G 3.0 Beta 2 (Need UUID on a Developer account, and does NOT unlock), and iPod Touch 1G 3.0 Beta 2. You can download QuickPwn here. If you are successful in jailbreaking drop us a comment. I’d give it a whirl, but I don’t want to lose the ability to use yellowsn0w in the future.

So the issue(in my eyes) is that we don’t need 3, or even 2 different ways to install these 3rd party applications. I mean it’s not like it takes some special technologies to install them. The only differences(when you really look at it) between the 2 are how they install. If setup correctly you can install every application on Cydia as you can on Installer(and Vice Versa).

I always thought that RipDev should setup Installer so that you could add Cydia sources and install the applications. Yes it might take a pretty big re-write, but there could be a way to detect which source is for Installer and which one is for Cydia, and treat it accordingly.

Instead we’re going to be forced to deal with yet another application on our home screen(if we choose to install it). Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if the iPhone Dev team lets you install it right when you jailbreak it. . .but even if they do it’s just going to be another thing to complicate things for the new Jailbreakers.

As you can tell I’m pretty mixed on this issue. I just miss the days when it was simple with 1 way to install things. The introduction of Cydia, while it was needed when Installer wasn’t being managed correctly, it really only split the community up. Now there are Cydia supporters and Installer supporters. Even though most of the current(and active) people in the community are behind Cydia, I still get questions every day about Installer(and the 1.x firmwares).

So what do you think of the Icy project? RipDev seems to have slimmed down the entire application(Cydia is 32MB and Icy is 1MB), but is that enough of a reason to use it instead of Cydia?

Today is the day Apple unveiled the new iPhone OS 3.0 and Apple gave us a lot of new features. Especially some of the most wanted like Copy/Paste, and Push Notification.

1000 new APIs in the SDK
In-App Purchases
Peer to Peer connectivity (Bluetooth auto connectivity to nearby users)
App to Accessory communication (I.E. App to control FM transmitter. Use with 30-pin dock connector or bluetooth)
Google Maps API Integration with App Store apps
Turn by Turn navigation (Finally)
Push notification (again, finally)
Cut and Paste (System wide)
Landscape Keyboard in key apps (Notes, Mail, SMS)
MMS (Photos, Contacts, Audio, or Location. No word on Video)
Voice Memos (Record, edit, and share using a built in or external mic)
CalDAV Support
Updated Stocks app (Streaming news headlines, highs, lows, and PEs. Also a landscape mode)
Search (For all key applications, Mail, Contacts, iPod, SMS, Notes, Calendar, etc)
New Home Screen called Spotlight (Similar to QuickGold, accessible by making a left swipe from your standard home)
Notes sync
Audio/Video tags
Live Streaming
Shake to Shuffle (iPod Nano feature)
Wifi Auto login
Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP)
LDAP
iTunes account creation
YouTube ratings
Anti-Phishing
Call Log
Parental Controls
Media Scrubber
OTA Profiles
VPD on Demand
Languages
YouTube Subscriptions
YouTube Accounts
Encrypted Profiles
Tethering
Send/Receive files between devices

The 3.0 update is NOT out yet, the Developer Beta is available today how ever.

The 3.0 update will be free for both iPhone generations, BUT the original iPhone will not have MMS or Stereo Bluetooth. It will be $10 for both iPod Touch generations.

There were a few good tidbits of information from the Q and A session.

Q: Where do you stand on tethering?
A: There’s two pieces needed to support that: client side and working with carriers. We’re absolutely supporting tethering in the client side in iPhone 3.0, but we’re working with carriers around the world to see when they can add tethering support on their networks. But we are building that support into iPhone 3.0.

Q: Is there a physical hardware problem on the first-gen iPhone that prevents it from doing MMS.
A: It’s a different radio, so it is a physical issue.

To win you must find the ‘Easter Egg’ that I have placed inside 1 of the 20,000(and growing) pages that you can find on the website. This Easter Egg is very easy to see, so when you find the right application you’ll know immediately. Like I said, 20,000 pages. . .this isn’t going to be easy but you can tell your friends about it and have them help you(I can divide the prize if you get help).

The first person to send me an email, and can tell me which page I put the Easter Egg on, wins the gift card.

Note – This is only valid for people who have a United States iTunes Account(Apple won’t let me send gift cards to other countries).

If you’ve loaded up Cydia this weekend you’ll have noticed a new update, the Cydia Store. This is the latest update in Cydia to allow charging for jailbreak apps if the developer desires. I think it is going to be great for the jailbreak community and entice more developers to build applications for it. A post over at ModMyI outlines the purchase process.

Just to test it out I decided to pick up the first paid Cydia App: Cyntact. The first thing you will notice after installing the new Cydia is Cyntact up there in changes. You’ll also notice that the title and description is in the color blue instead of black like normal applications
. This blue color indicated that it is a Cydia Store Application. That is the only difference you will see in the new Cydia as nothing else menu-wise has changed.

On to the buying. This process took me ages here the first time around. First I had to sign in with my google account, go through some steps to link the account, etc. Next was signing in with my amazon.com account and going through all the various steps (including remembering my password ) to buy the app. Finally I had purchased the app and was able to install it.

All said in done the entire process took me about 10 mins including one password lookup in the keychain on my computer. I noticed while authorizing Cydia on my google account there was a button to remember Cydia for later use with my google account so I hopefully wont have to go through all those hoops again. I also noticed a similar option when finally paying with amazon.com to keep my information on file. Something to note is the fact that amazon.com is the only current payment option so users without a US address can not purchase from the Cydia Store right now. When questioned about this Saurik said, “I am going to work on PayPal support for next week. (I did Amazon first as PayPal has a worse experience and is more expensive).”

I can not say for sure whether or not the process is as streamlined as it should be or not. The first purchase takes a long time. Is all my information saved for future purchases? I guess I’ll have to wait until I buy a second app from the Cydia Store. Assuming it doesn’t require me to login a couple times etc then the Cydia Store looks like it could be a big win in convenience for the end user when purchasing jailbreak apps.

[ModMyI]

Bleep Bleep!

AppBoxx.com will track new applications, updated applications, and applications that are on sale(reduced in price). You will see the front page lists all App Store activity, and tells you if it’s new, updated, or on sale. And if you’re looking for something specific like just new apps, just apps have been updated, and just apps you can get for cheap. App Boxx can literally save you hundreds of dollars a day in applications on sale.

I think it is time to launch the website myself and this freelance coder has been working on. It’s almost been almost 2 weeks since we started working on it and now the main features are up and running.

Just remember, this is an early version of the website. I have a lot of plans for new features and even things that need to be tweaked and modded right now. If you have an idea or find a bug please contact me with as much detail as possible.

BTW – I want to thank everyone who voted in the poll that I ran asking what I should name this website. The domain I thought was the best actually got the least amount of votes(shows what I know!). Thanks again!