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The iPhone Dev-Team has released PwnageTool 3.1.5 for Mac OS X. It allows iPhone and iPod Touch users to safely upgrade to firmware 3.1.3. With PwnageTool you can preserve jailbreak and ultrasn0w unlock. But if you’re using the blacksn0w unlock with baseband 05.11.07 you will need to stay at firmware 3.1.2.

PwnageTool 3.1.5 creates a custom 3.1.3 IPSW for the following devices:

• iPhone 2G
• iPhone 3G
• iPhone 3GS with early bootrom
• iPod touch 1G
• iPod touch 2G with early bootrom

Warning! Don’t try to use this tool if you have  iPhone 3GS with firmware 3.1.3 – it just won’t work. If you have iPod Touch 1G, iPhone 2G or factory unlocked iPhone 3G , try to use redsn0w – is would be much easier.

You can download PwnageTool 3.1.5. here.

Credit Suisse analyst Bill Shope recently met with Apple executives:

Apple wants the iPad to be the best device for a few key use cases. For instance, the company believes it could eventually be seen as superior to both handheld and notebook devices for browsing the Internet, using the App Store, and consuming mobile media (video, photos, and e-books). Nevertheless, in other areas, notebooks, the iPhone, or an iPod may be more appropriate. This clear segmentation of capabilities suggests that cannibalization may be less of a concern than most currently believe.

Shope writes about the price:

it remains to be seen how much traction the iPad gets initially, management noted that it will remain nimble (pricing could change if the company is not attracting as many customers as anticipated).

Sounds great. What do you think about $200 iPad? Would you buy one?

ZoomIt is the first SD card reader for the iPhone and iPod Touch. This peripheral together with ZoomIt application gives iPhone users the ability to load photos, music, PowerPoint, PDF and other files directly from SD card.

ZoomIt is a great way to extend iPhone’s storage or simply backup photos during vacation. It will be available in April for $50.

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19 percent of all game developers are writing for the iPhone and iPod Touch, according to a new study from Game Developer Research. It is more than twice as high as for the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS and results in 3/4 of all mobile game developers writing for Apple’s gadgets.

Developers claim their choices of platform dictated by the level of market influence and ease of writing code. The cost of development and the ability to port code are important too.

The transition to the iPhone is evident through the number of ports. While many companies are producing original titles, games like Civilization Revolution and Assassin’s Creed series are actually Nintendo DS versions modified to use the touchscreen and the better performance of Apple’s devices.

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H8sn0w has just released the new version of Sn0wbreeze 1.4. Sn0wbreeze is a jailbreak utility with functionality similar to PwnageTool. The new version supports firmware 3.1.3 jailbreak for the following devices:

• iPhone 2G
• iPhone 3G
• iPhone 3GS – old bootrom
• iPod Touch 1G
• iPod Touch 2G – non MC

Sn0wbreeze is a Windows application, so Mac users have to wait for the upcoming release of PwnageTool by the DevTeam. Alternatively, both Mac and Windows users can use Redsn0w to run jailbreak (no custom firmware though).

You can download the new version of sn0wbreeze here.

MuscleNerd continues to argue that we should not use sn0wbreeze. Especially users who have unlocked their iPhone with blacksn0w utility:

Fraser Speirs posted a large collection of iPad UI conventions to help application designers. Most of them are from Apple promotional videos. The collection is viewable as a notated Flickr set. Here is the link.

MuscleNerd, a member of the DevTeam, posted an interesting tweet. He claims that a new version of PwnageTool to jailbreak the Firmware 3.1.3 will be released soon.

However he also warns the owners of an iPhone 3G or 3GS, suggesting not rush for firmware update. In other words, the improvements of firmware 3.1.3 are minimal, so if you are comfortable with firmware 3.1.2 just stay with that.

A few days ago Epocrates Inc., the developer of mobile software for healthcare professionals, revealed a new study of more than 350 clinicians who were asked about their opinion about iPad. The results were stunning – 9% said they will buy an iPad when it will be available, another 13% plan to purchase one in the first year. That means that one in five physicians will likely have an iPad in a year.
Epocrates Inc. also announced that it intends to improve clinical reference applications so it could run on iPad.

By optimizing our software for the iPad, we are capitalizing on the larger screen real estate and interactivity provided by this sophisticated device. We are committed to providing the most productive experience at the point of care, keeping physicians informed and focused on the patient rather than searching for answers.

- said Epocrates SEO Rose Crane. The company’s software has more than 275,000 subscribers among physicians in America and over 900,000 worldwide.

As time passes by, more hospitals look at potential of the iPad. One San Francisco program even aims to use tablets to provide charts, X-rays, notes and prescriptions to hospital workers at the touch of a finger. That looks like a whole new way of enforcing last technologies to make our life better.

Geohot has tweeted  saying that the jailbreak is easy but it only helps those who are dumb enough to upgrade.

I hear rumors going around that the 3.1.3 jailbreak is hard. It isn’t. But the only people it helps are those dumb enough to upgrade. Sorry.

These words indicate that it is unlikely the BlackRa1n jailbreak will be upgraded soon to support the new firmware.

The official Mobile Spectator Guide for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games is now available for iPod Touch and iPhone. It can be downloaded for free from the App Store.

This application is a location-aware schedule that details more than 2,000 sport and cultural events taking place for 17 days between February 12 and 28, 2010.

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Apple has improved their new iTunes Preview service by activating in-browser previews for iPod and iPhone applications.

iTunes Preview was launched by Apple in November. It worked for those iTunes links, which used to simply open the application. Before that your browser would open a blank page and prompt you to open the link with the iTunes application. Now you are also able to view screenshots, changelogs, descriptions and reviews for iPod Touch and iPhone applications.

Besides, last month Apple also started using QuickTime to offer 30 second song samples encoded in 44.1 AAC 300+ kbits/second.

Debra Shinder from TechRepublic posted an article about 10 reasons why she won’t buy an iPad. As time passes by her thoughts provoke more and more passionate discussions on this topic. So here are these 10 reasons:

1. There is no physical keyboard (or you need to buy an Apple Bluetooth Keyboard).
2. One size doesn’t fit all (it doesn’t fill the gap between mobiles and netbooks as 9.7” inches is an exact screen size of netbook, and you cannot put it into your pocket).
3. It runs iPhone OS (so there is no multi-tasking).
4. There’s not enough storage (and you cannot expand it via USB-flashdrives).
5. There’s no HDMI output or camera (if you can watch video, why you can’t make videoconferences with your friends?).
6. There are no USB ports (and you would not be able to connect your own web-cam, for example).
7. There is no flash memory slot.
8. The price is not right (it just seems to be illogical to pay 200$ for additional 48 GB )
9. It is locked in. All apps are in AppStore, and good ones cost money.
10. It is all about network (why should people change their internet provider to AT&T just because of purchasing some new device?).

While Debra compares fully-equipped 829$ iPad with a powerful and though compact laptop, it seems like she’s looking for an ability to make use of all its capacities. On the other hand, TUAW critics and Apple fans say that iPad is designed to be an enhanced ebook-reader that makes it easy to handle everyday operations like checking e-mails or surfing the web.

What do you think?

SlideToPlay published several interesting videos where popular games are shown on the iPad in action. You can see games like Need for Speed Shift, Super Monkey Ball 2 and NOVA played on the big screen. Some of them are optimized for the bigger resolution, others are just a 2x bigger rendering of the exact same iPhone game you can buy now.

The titles of the first movie are Assassin’s Creed, Sims 3, Tetris, and Paper Toss:

Here’s the video of NOVA:

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The software company RATP gave an interesting presentation called “How to successfully market your iPhone application”. This presentation gives advice to AppStore developers how to increase sales and learn new marketing strategies.

Let’s watch:

Google released a software update for Android-based Nexus One smartphones. The update offers a number of enhancements, but the most interesting one is a support of the multi-touch technology in phone’s Browser, Gallery and Maps applications. The new functionality is called “pinch-to-zoom”.

Google previously had an agreement with Apple, that Android OS would not support multi-touch in the U.S. Now it looks like all the agreements are gone.

Engadget posted a video of the Nexus One’s pinch-to-zoom functionality: