iPhoneRoot.com
Archive for 2008
QuickPwn and PwnageTool for 2.1 firmware
Dev Team released QuickPwn and PwnageTool for firmware 2.1 (, ). It doesn't work with new iPod yet. Mac OS versions only for now.
Direct Downloads - QuickPwn
Direct Downloads - PwnageTool
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Firmware 2.1 screenshots
Theiphoneblog just published first screenshots of the new iPhones firmware 2.1.
Running 2.1 (5F136) now, and here’s what we’re noticing: WiFi works fine (tried on Apple and Linksys routers). New icons for connection type (3G/Edge) in the top bar. New blue filled and half-filled dots to describe state of video and podcasts (watched/listened to). Genius Playlists don’t seem to work as well as iTunes 8, at least for me, with lots of songs coming back as “not related”.
iTunes 8: If Windows Vista displays a blue screen error message when connecting iPhone or iPod
Apple published a kb for this case. Here it is:
Symptoms
After installing iTunes 8 for Windows, some users may see a blue screen error message when connecting iPhone or iPod to a Windows Vista computer. In some cases, the computer may immediately restart when connecting iPhone or iPod to the computer.
Products Affected
iPod, iPhone, iPod touch, Windows Vista, iPod touch (2nd generation), iTunes 8 for Windows, iPhone 3G
Resolution
iPhone 2.1 firmware is out
The iPhone 2.1 is out. It contains the following updates as listed by Apple:
- decrease in call set-up failures andcall drops
- significantly improve battery life for most users
- dramatically reduced time to backup to iTunes
- improve email reliability, notable fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts
- faster installation of 3rd party applications
- fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes if you have lots of 3rd party applications
- improved performance of text messaging
- faster loading and searching of contacts
- improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display
- repeat alert up to two additional times for incoming text messages
- option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts
- Genius playlist creation
The 2.1 firmware is build 5F136 (weighing in at 237.8MB) and can be directly downloaded through iTunes. The new firmware also contains a number of security fixes including the well publicized passcode flaw.
Jailbreak for 2.1 is not avaliable yet.
iPhone's security issue
It's amazing, how curious some people are. iPhone hacker and data-forensics expert Jonathan Zdziarski explained that iPhone snaps a screenshot of your most recent action -- regardless of whether it's sending a text message, e-mailing or browsing a web page -- in order to cache it. This is purely for aesthetic purposes: When an iPhone user taps the Home button, the window of the application you have open shrinks and disappears. In order to create that shrinking effect, the iPhone snaps a screenshot, Zdziarski said.
The phone presumably deletes the image after you close the application. But anyone who understands data is aware that in most cases, deletion does not permanently remove files from a storage device. Zdziarski demonstrated that if you know what you're doing (and you've got over an hour), you can recover the file system and see many, many of these grabs.
"This flaw can only be exploited by somebody with physical access to a device, but your phone could get into the hands of someone with more malicious intent," he said. "Obviously, you don't want to trust any of your data to a passcode."
Gadget Lab is also reporting that Zdziarski said forensics experts have actually used this method to solve serious crimes.
via gizmodo and gadget lab
iPod nano internals
After folks from iFixIt disassembled iPod Nano:
Separately, iFixIt dissected the new iPod nano and observed that the unit's 3.2 mm wide dock connector "looks pretty big compared to the iPod" itself, making it unlikely that Apple will be able to slim down player any further without developing a new dock connector.
A particularly surprising find was that the new nano uses a real piece of curved glass, "about .7 mm thick on the edges, and 1.7 mm thick in the middle," to cover the LCD display. The glass is said to be completely separate from the player's anodized aluminum enclosure, with nothing holding it in place outside the force of the adjacent components.
The LCD itself "is actually almost exactly the same size as the 3rd Gen Nano LCD," iFixIt said, with the only difference being a resolution of 240x320 rather than 320x240.
Among the nano's internal components are a Apple-branded ARM processor manufactured by Samsung in July with on-board DRAM on-package, three other small Apple-branded chips of unknown origin, and an 8 GB Toshiba flash chip. "Unfortunately, the battery is soldered to the logic board," iFixIt said. "Replacing the Nano's battery isn't going to be easy."
via appleinsider and ifixit
New iPod touch internals
The folks at iFixIt received a brand new iPod Touch, which they disassembled right away.
Both the touch's 3.5-inch LCD display as well as its Lithium-ion polymer battery are held in place with strips of double-sided tape. The WiFi antenna and circuitry, which are located at the top of the unit, are connected to the main logic board by wide orange cable that were designed to prevent external noise from interfering with the digital signals as they travel along the device, iFixIt says.
The specialty online reseller, which offers replacement parts for Macs and iPods, was particularly excited by its discovery of an unpublicized Broadcom BCM4325 Bluetooth chip within the device. The particular chipset supports BT2.1+EDR, and is necessary for the touch's built-in support of Nike+ iPod technology. It's unclear, however, whether the chip supports A2DP, which would pave the way for Apple and third-party developers to introduce stereo headphones for the player.
iFixIt also discovered brown rectangular component centered about three quarters of the way down the touch's logic board, which is suspected to be the device's speaker. Other discoveries include a 3.7 V Lithium-ion polymer battery with part number 616-0404, NAND flash memory from Micron with part number 29F64G08TAA, and an Apple-branded Samsung-manufactured ARM processor with SDRAM that's similar to the one employed by the iPhone.
via appleinsider and ifixit
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Swype: text input from the inventor of T9
Everyone who has owned a cellphone over the last 10 years should at some point pour one out in thanks to Cliff Kushler, one of the inventors of the T9 text entry system. Now Cliff is smartly shifting his focus on touchscreens with Swype—a way to type blindingly fast on a touchscreen by tracing your finger or stylus over the letters you want without lifting up, connect-the-dots style. It looks frankly amazing in a demo:
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Apple vs jailbreakers
The only way Apple can fix the exploit that the iPhone Dev Team has been using to Jailbreak iPhone’s and iPod Touch’s is to fix their hardware, but it seems Apple has figured out a way to program iTunes 8 to detect and prevent the Pwnage exploit. The screenshot below from iTunes 8 using a Pwned ipsw (with an unPwned device attached) is one example.
The Dev Team reacted promptly:
“The nice thing about iTunes decisions is that we can provide you with patches to counter them. We have one such patch already for Mac iTunes 8 for iPod touch. We’ll be working out the full suite of patches for all the combinations over the next week.”
Dev Team also published two interesting screenshots:
2D graphic calculator
This is a very nice and powerfull 2D graphic calculator. User can draw multiple functions in different colors. There are function value inspection, function intersection, solve for root, min/max points.
The multi-touch interface makes it easy to move and zoom. Both portrait and landscape modes are supported.
$1.99
iPhone is evil
Nice and funny. But uncensored, clip contains explicit language...
iTunes 8 + Windows Vista = problems
Gizmodo reports that there might be problems if you run iTunes8 on Windows Vista.
Users of both 32-bit and 64-bit Vista getting the blue screen of death (BSOD) whenever they plug in an iPod or iPhone. Downgrading back down to 7.7 appears to solve the problem. Another workaround is to perform clean install (completely uninstalling previous version of iTunes before installing iTunes 8).
iPhone firmware 2.1 this Friday
Apple announced that v2.1 firmware will be delivered this Friday. Change log is:
- lots of bugs fixed
- fewer dropped call
- big battery life improvements
- no crashes with Apps - hopefully the whole app install process is better.
- backing up to iTunes is faster
- great new performance enhancements
There is nothing said about push notification service, cut/copy/paste or turn-by-turn GPS.
As always, I strongly recommend no one update until the Dev Team releases an upated pwnage.
Text Guru - advanced text editor with copy/paste
This is a very useful advanced multi-function text editor. It is avaliable via AppStore (), the price now is just $0.99 (was $4.99). Among the features are:
- cut/copy/paste support
- find and replace
- pastie.org support (to upload your text to a public site for others or to retrieve later on a pc)
- file sharing
- web previews for HTML
- 22 fonts avaliable for displaying documents
- hex and ASCII modes
- landscape mode support
- MS Office documents viewing support (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint)
- autosave
- character, word and paragraph counts.
Official application's blog: http://brancipater.com/blog
iTunes 8
iTunes 8 includes Genius, which makes playlists from songs in your library that go great together. Genius also includes Genius sidebar, which recommends music from the iTunes Store that you don’t already have.
With iTunes 8, browse your artists and albums visually with the new Grid view; download your favorite TV shows in HD quality from the iTunes Store; sync your media with iPod nano (4th generation), iPod classic (120GB), and iPod touch (2nd generation); and enjoy a stunning new music visualizer.
iTunes 8 and are now accessible with VoiceOver on your Mac.
It is available via Software Update, or download it from
