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Yup Apple will be in a big hurry to patch as it certainly does leave the phone wide open for other nasties to break it. The jailbreak doesnt patch the hole, but it does allow for the installation of a package that can provide some protection. More info here. http://www.cultofmac.com/software-hack-to-plug-jailbreak-pdf-hole-is-released/53557

Now, just need a fix for iOS4 being slow and shit on the iPhone 3G....

Try doing a hard reset to the 3G phone x2. My wife's phone was unusable after the iOS4 update. This did the trick. It's worth a try.

There's no indication of something like that happening anytime soon. Not sure? Then ask Steve Jobs:
He actually said there won't be any Mac App Store, and that the rumors about the Mac dying are "completely wrong". Furthermore, rumors about the iPhone 4 cutting into Mac OS X development are false.

I haven't eaten Cheerios in years; can we please stick to the car analogies?

Heck, I'll start:

Steve Jobs left the keys in his Mercedes SL55 AMG after parking it in the usual handicapped space. A Good Samaritan quickly discovered this abandoned vehicle and yelled out "Finders keepers!" before driving it straight home.

It then took more than a month of negotiations before Steve Jobs finally got his car back, but not before the Good Samaritan disassembled the vehicle and put it back together again.

75% of iPad Own Macs so you should change: "and hate the way their PCs work" to "and hate the way their Macs work", and since this is true, you should really replace "HP" with "MacBook*" since that's actually closer to the truth about the average iPad owner

Don't be surprised to see a spate of patent attacks on Ogg Theora... which we may or may not fund ourselves.

Didn't Steve Jobs just say someone was preparing a portfolio to go after Theora?

Seems like they have a monopoly on mp3 players and smart phones IMO.

• Monopolies are not inherently illegal
• Apple clearly does not have a smartphone monopoly. Indeed, some claim Apple's marketshare even fell recently.
• Regular iPods don't even have a publicly available SDK. Downloadable game support only came to the 5th generation iPod (2005), and only a few dozen games were ever released for it.
• I don't know how much evidence there is of Apple abusing its iPod position. They haven't stopped other online music services from selling music from major labels. They haven't stopped other companies from making and selling MP3 players. iTunes Store sells unencrypted MPEG4 AAC music. The only thing they do is make a single program that syncs music with their music players, and this application only syncs with Apple devices.

Another way to look at it is that iPhone provides a solid single platform that developers can concentrate on features rather than UI and input differences.

Yes, because if Apple allowed pictures of women in bikinis, uncensored dictionaries or mentioning the name of a competitor on the iPhone, the "solid single platform" would fragment into a dozen incompatible versions, right?

NO! they do not "do the same thing".

Why then does the link the Cnet article links to say this "Not all the Wi-Fi finding apps have been removed however. There are still a couple of Wi-Fi finders, including JiWire's Free Wi-Fi Finder and WiFi Directory"?

Because, to quote an update to the Cult Of Mac article, "Perhaps the private framework is the iPhone’s built-in 802.11 radio? The remaining Wi-Fi finders in the App Store aren’t stumblers, but lists of free hotspots that are found using the iPhone’s GPS or network triangulation capabilities." (emphasis mine).

NO! they do not "do the same thing".

Why then does the link the Cnet article links to say this "Not all the Wi-Fi finding apps have been removed however. There are still a couple of Wi-Fi finders, including JiWire's Free Wi-Fi Finder and WiFi Directory"?

i don't see the usefulness of this kind of app in either implementation. if you open the wifi section in the iphone settings screen, you get a list of all networks within range of your phone and whether they are secured. in my experience, MOST pay networks seem to be secured in some way, so that's a fairly accurate indicator of whether you can get free wifi.

If as you say the iPhone lists access points it detects then I don't see a use for these apps either. I don't know if they do that though, I don't have and have no interest in getting an iPhone, but whenever I'm out and I launch a browser on my Mac I am asked if I want to join any of the access points it detects.

Falcon

Flash player is open source, companies can make it work with their devices ... and have been doing so. Flash on Apple won't cost them money, but will take away from their app store when people can play games online. http://www.cultofmac.com/adobe-theres-no-flash-on-ipad-because-apple-is-protecting-content-revenue/28564 Also Flash CS5 can export to iPhone app, so I guess there will be Flash running on the iPad. http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/mobile_demos_fp10.1.html Research your topic before you post ...

Well there is a response from AT&T:

We understand that fakesteve.net is primarily a satirical forum, but there is nothing amusing about advocating that customers attempt to deliberately degrade service on a network that provides critical communications services for more than 80 million customers. We know that the vast majority of customers will see this action for what it is: an irresponsible and pointless scheme to draw attention to a blog.

http://www.cultofmac.com/att-responds-to-fake-steves-operation-chokehold/23509

One other thing that Microsoft doesn't have that Apple does: cultists. Microsoft has never come close to building the same level of insane fervor in its customers (just its CEOs.) Perhaps by luring the Apple Store's top performers away, they're hoping to dress themselves up with happy people with happy infectious attitudes. Or maybe they're just hoping to water down the Apple pool.

Either way, it'll be interesting to see if this plays out as the next iteration of "Embrace and extend." (I'm not going to even suggest that "and extinguish" makes sense in this context.)

It's possible. In that case, by keeping the deals they make to different developers secret, they will have better negotiating power.

But this could also be more about Apple wanting control of what the media journalists, bloggers, and commenters on internet forums can say about Apple, their policies, and decisions. (E.g. the secrecy requirements may be "defensive" in nature, standard language they could use for all developer tools, possibly)

For example, if Google revealed certain information, it could result in the media publishing critical things about Apple.

Apple is very sensitive and aggressive in controlling their public image, and they are well known for their secrecy.

They are also well known for sending armies of lawyers at web sites or people revealing information they don't want puiblished, or that are excessively critical of them. Their tools include cease and decist letters, DMCA notices, threats to sue, and actual lawsuits....

Examples in recent years:

• Apple Computer ordered to pay more than $750k in attorney fees and court costs in a case that pitted the electronics giant against a group of online journalists who posted information about an unreleased Apple product on the Web.
• Apple Broke the law by lying about Steve Jobs' health
• Apple product failure results in gagging order
• Apple Lawyers set sights on new prey (after sending cease-and-decist letters to "Podcasting" websites over alleged dilution of the "iPod" mark)
• Apple Lawyers bully bloggers over iPhone skins
• Apple Lawyers Tried To Cover-Up Exploding iPod Stories,
• Microsoft Cows To Apple Lawyers, Changes 'Laptop Hunters' Ad
• Apple's lawyers shut down rumor site, 2 (Think Secret)
• Apple lawyers nix box pix
• Apple's lawyers attack everyone over iPhone icons - "Apple's lawyers also sent letters to journalists who simply reported on the fact that the skins were available."
• Apple's lawyers threaten fake Steve jobs (Parody site)
• Apple sued for threatening fan wiki - 2
• Apple sues Victoria School - over the use of a logo that is shaped like an Apple. [...] students are now afraid to give their teachers apples now because of the fruitâ(TM)s striking resemblance to the company logo.
• Apple Lawyers shutting down Iowa Bar's iPod Mondays
• Apple Cease-and-Decists Stupidity Leak
• A

This is rubbish, and those who modded that insightful will hopefully get slapped at metamoderation.

Mentioning moderation is a well known method of increasing your own moderation. :-)

There is no public API for iPods.

While you are rather correct in your iPod analysis, the rest of us are debating Palm PRE's disabled syncing with iTunes. Feel free to join in at any time:

if you know a description of the public unencumbered API for managing the music database on an iPod, post it's URL, and I will apologize.

It's already been mentioned that Nokia phones sync their calendars (through iSync) and iTunes music (through the public and unencrypted xml files) from mobile phone to your PC/Mac.

20 seconds on google gives you:
http://europe.nokia.com/get-support-and-software/download-software/isync
http://europe.nokia.com/get-support-and-software/download-software/nokia-multimedia-transfer
http://cultofmac.com/sync-itunes-with-mobile-devices-from-sony-nokia-sony-ericsson/2682

Feel free to apologize now.

Sorry to puncture your balloon so easily. Oh, you asked for "unencumbered API" - sorry, that's not how the world works. But maybe the HURD people will release a music player and desktop app once the kernel is out...

Both the big guys (Nokia) and the small fish (Salling et.al.) are allowed to play nice with iTunes. Palm chose to pretend to be something they weren't, through unpublished APIs, instead of putting their money towards getting a stable, supported solution for their customers. Is it that hard to pick up the phone and CALL Apple? Even I can find Steve Jobs' email address. He might be out, but I betcha someone is answering his phone and checking his inbox.

Well, if you're going to have a Windows cult, then I (and everyone else under the spell of the Reality Distortion Field) want equal time.

If some crook swaps out a battery pack for a fake one, how is the crook going to drive the car? It's not like you can just show up with a case full of cinder blocks and try to pass it off as a battery.

http://cultofmac.com/fake-russian-iphones-are-an-empty-promise/4516

This requirement is actually already in practice in Japan. In fact, Apple recently had to adjust the Japanese iPhone software to accommodate this. http://cultofmac.com/to-prevent-upskirts-japanese-iphone-3g-always-alerts-when-taking-photos/2356

I know I shouldn't look at coming to slashdot for anything that is ermm.. 'unbiased' wrt msft. But, if some guy from cult of mac can say that the commercial was not that bad -- ahh well that day can still come.

http://cultofmac.com/microsoft-debuts-new-pc-ad/2896

"The hype surrounding any product Apple unveils"