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Hackers Finally Unlock iPhone 3G
nandemoari quotes a story at Infopackets:
"2009 has gotten off to a great start for a team of iPhone enthusiasts with little regard for Apple's licensing requirements. They've finally figured out a way to get the phone to work with any cell phone carrier (and not just AT&T). The iPhone Dev Team is best known for their work on 'jailbreaking;' the technique of altering an iPhone so that you can run any applications on it, not just those approved by Apple. Given the company's questionable vetting policy for entry to the official App store, it's not surprising many users approve of jailbreaking."
I can't wait to put Windows Mobile on my 3G!
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
Um, you should probably watch the iPhone Dev Team's recent presentation at CCC if you want to sound like you have any idea what you're talking about. This wasn't some simple privilege escalation coming out of a buffer overflow in the web browser. Apple signs the shit out of every binary on the phone. The kernel won't execute a binary in userland unless it's signed; the firmware loader won't execute the kernel unless it's signed; the low-level bootloader won't execute the firmware loader unless it's signed.
The iPhone 3G is a paragon of embedded device security, at least by way of making sure unapproved code doesn't run on the device, and it's a testament to just how amazing the iPhone Dev Team guys are that they actually found a way to (a) defeat the whole chain of trust in the iPhone firmware in order to jailbreak it. This by the way doesn't even take into account their real genius, the hack into the baseband firmware for the S-Gold radio device, which executes code in its own universe, completely separate from the S5L application processor.
In short, this hack wasn't some bunch of script kiddies having a sleepover and cracking the copy protection on Arkanoid 2 for the C64. This was a brilliant circumvention of some of the tightest security ever found on a PDA or mobile phone. So please don't disrespect the people who made it possible.
Because it meets their requirements, and the manufacturer support and aftermarket accessory selection is second to none.
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Why not link to http://blog.iphone-dev.org/ themselves ?
Oh wait ... this is /.
My Bad.
Because compared to the windows mobile device I had for three years previously, the iPhone's interface and tight integration of functionality feels like having a scented massage from a bikini-clad swedish pin-up girl.
Pretty much *everything* I wanted to be able to do previously is now possible in an elegant way, and I'm serendipitously finding that loads of oh-so-simple intuitive shortcuts have been quietly added and left to be discovered.
I won't bore you with details, but there is a good comparison to be made with open source - you sometimes need the BDFL to bring out the best in a project, simply to avoid the endless conflicts and design by committee which can lead to a product which does everything poorly, rather than doing a small number of things in a superbly polished way.
I have only bought an iPhone in the last three months, having held back since their launch on the grounds that slack-jawed fanboi drivel was not something to take seriously, but I've had to grudgingly admit that Apple have got something very right. Perhaps best summed up with Oliver Wendell Holmes' famous quote (take note, usability engineers!):
"I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity."
And to add to this, they explicitly say they don't want any donations.
We've seen some comments about you lovely people wanting to donate money to us. We'd just like to say that we DO NOT accept donations. There is no paypal account associated to us, there is no way to donate to us, we do this as a hobby and don't want to be paid and we fund all of this ourselves and it works out just fine.
Anyone who says "donate to DevTeam" in our name is lying, so don't send them anything, you'll just fund their crack habit.
Keep your dough for the lovely shiny Apple products, we think you'll need it.
If you do want to send us something, please send a scan of a postcard from your city, handwrite a nice message scan it and sent it over to blog@iphone-dev.com
http://blog.iphone-dev.org/post/41744653/donations-to-dev-null
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I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer.
Haptic response?
If that's the case, why do critics HATE the Blackberry storm and rumor has it that Verizon is dealing with a ton of returns?
Just get firemail for iPhone and type your emails in landscape mode
Those are good reasons, but the most important reason I think is that the user interface just works so damn well. It does for me... I am no Apple fanboy (the only other Apple device I own is an iPod, the rest is all Windows stuff), but I bought one, despite
- no out-of-the-box todo lists
- no notepad that is actually useful (and syncs)
- no cut & paste (a major omission), and poor (if any) communication between apps
- crippled Bluetooth (only works with headsets, can't use it to hook up a Bluetooth keyboard or other peripherals).
- locked down OS (can't replace the standard keyboard with a custom one, for instance).
- rumours of poor battery life and poor reception (I haven't noticed any of these. Tip to increase battery life: turn off location services; the GPS chip is power hungry... like it is on any other cell phone).
So why are people buying despite all this? I don't think having a built-in iPod and some amusing apps make up for this. The following, however, does:
- Form factor. It's small. And I thank Apple for not putting a damn physical keybord inside, which would make it considerably bulkier.
- Ease of use. The UI is simple and responsive certainly compared to WME.
- The multi-touch screen: brilliant not because of the cute "pinch" zoom gesture, but because I can operate it with my fat fingers. Whereas my other smart phones required me to use a fingernail or the stylus, I can operate the iPhone 1-handed using my thumb.
Typing messages is actually pretty good on the iPhone. As you'd expect, typing speed is somewhere between the on-screen keyboard & stylus of WME phones, and phones with a physical keyboard. But that's not what Apple needs to work on to capture the business market. Apple needs to address security by offering a mandatory PIN login that cannot be disabled by the user, and a remote wipe function. Without those two, you can forget about corporations allowing these things to VPN in and access the Exchange server.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...