Archive for 2010

Shareholders meeting started at 1 p.m. EST Thursday. For almost 2,5 hours they discussed different topics and revealed some interesting information.

First of all, Apple is going to open 25 retail stores in China. As you know, the first Chinese store was built in 2008, and since then only plans about revealing another store were announced.

Secondly Steve Jobs told Apple will build its reserves to make big investments in the future. He also mentioned it is a better way of dealing with profit than paying dividends or doing stock buybacks. At this moment Apple has ~40 billion dollars in their chest.

An interesting fact was revealed by Admob Mobile Metrics when they ran an opt-in surveys on iPhone, iPod Touch, webOS and Android devices to understand how they are engaging and interacting with applications.

As you see on the photos below, it becomes obvious that iPod Touch is more popular for teenagers. Moreover, as latter are mostly supported by their parents, they use these devices differently, and that is why the number of free downloads is so high for iPod Touch users.

Apparently, iPods make a high profit to Apple, but is this so because of children?

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Gull1hack, the tool that promises to jailbreak all iPhones and iPod Touches with the latest iBoot, is a fake. Here is a twitter comment from MuscleNerd, hacker from DevTeam:

It looks like the guys who created Gull1hack used two different iPhone 3GS's (or perhaps 3GS and 3G) - one with the old iBoot and one with the new one. Here is a quick conversation between MuscleNerd and Gull1hack:

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Antonio De Rosa is creating something new every day. Today he shows us a new image and a 3D video which shows both the iPhone 4G and a new docking station called AluStand. There is also a new Remote Control with multi-touch surface.

Here's the video:

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Macrumors found interesting information in the latest Beta 3 iPad SDK. Apple's private framework which controls the camera, has 3 additional camera characteristics that are not found in the iPhone 3.x SDK:

It looks like Apple built in API support to test if your iPad had a Front Facing Camera, Zoom and a Camera Flash. The front facing camera could be used for video chat, while Zoom and Camera Flash are often requested features for the iPhone's back camera.

9to5Mac made further investigation and found the following icons which clearly show an interface to accept or decline a video chat:

The size of these buttons show that they will be used on the the iPad's screen rather than the iPhone.

It is still unknown, if these new features will be available in the first version of iPad. We hope to see them in future versions of the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

Apple has added the ability to set the wallpaper for iPad Home Screen in the latest beta 3 of the iPhone OS 3.2 SDK. Such functionality is not currently available for iPhones and iPod Touches.

On iPad in the Photos app when you select an image, you can choose to set it as the "Lock Screen" or "Home Screen" wallpaper (or both). It is also possible to have different images as the lock screen and home screen wallpapers. Here are the screenshots:

Yesterday Apple released new firmware and new SDK. Today 9to5Mac has posted an interesting video walkthrough of the Photos app from the latest iPad SDK (iPhone OS 3.2 Beta 3). Take a look:

Apple released the third beta of the iPhone 3.2 SDK for iPad. There are no official reports on what changes are included in the update. Here are several screenshots: the newly included Photos app and the Camera tab in the same application:

Rumors that iPad could have a camera have been around for a while. These new photos might be one more evidence.However the iPad has a USB interface for camera and SD card reader, so this might just be the interface for importing pictures.

Update: According to MacRumors Apple pulled the Beta 3 release shortly after its initial release due to a major bug.

Update2: It's back.

Update3:

• iPad SDK 3.2 Beta 3 Photos.app video walk-through
• iPad SDK adds ability to set home screen wallpaper
• Front Camera, Flash, Zoom and Video Conferencing found in latest SDK

A few hours ago we wrote about new group of hackers who claimed to have found a new exploit for the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch with new iBoot. With this Gull1Hack utility you should be able to perform the untethered Jailbreak even on new devices. Here is a new demo video:

What do you think? Fake?

Apple has posted three new iPhone ads on their website. "Family Travel" and "First Steps" utilize a female first-person narration rather than the standard male voice.

First Steps:

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A few days ago in an IRC channel the DevTeam and GeoHot discussed and summarized the state of the exploits found in the new baseband 05.12.01 in firmware 3.1.3. GeoHot explains that an exploit that had previously discovered and used in blacksn0w is still present in the new firmware released by Apple. It appears that both he and MuscleNerd are working on the same exploit, and if this were true, it would be a really good start to team up and release a new unlock tool.

Here is their discussion:

< visnet_ > What does geohot tweet mean?
< %geohot > its my bb exploit for safekeeping
< %Par4doX > geohot: did you turn that over to the dev team or are you doing something with it?
< %geohot > my days of turning things over are done
< %geohot > i hope its different from the one they have
< %geohot > but they prob already have it
< %geohot > its the one i orig wanted to release blacksn0w with
< %Par4doX > it’s still there in the new bb
< %geohot > yep, just checked
< %geohot > but then opted to use xemn since it was public
< Evan > Oo, it carries over from 05.11 to 05.12?
< %geohot > why wouldn’t it, apple doesn’t fix things proactivly
< @MuscleNerd > geohot we prob should figure out a way to know if we have same exploit double blind, otherwise we may release 2 different ones at same time
< %geohot > any suggestions?
< @MuscleNerd > not sure how to do that without making it easy to brute force tho
< %geohot > yea, i salted the hash
< @MuscleNerd > yeah
< @MuscleNerd > hmm maybe if we both hash the stack dump
< @Confucious > Can you two take this out of public sight?
< @MuscleNerd > the stack itself, not the header before it or the registers after it
< Her > muscle: any notice about the exploits are the same ?
< %geohot > we are working on it
< %geohot > cryptography, perfect for people who don’t trust each other

We should not expect much for the firmware 3.1.3 since the rumors predict the firmware 3.2 for mid-March. However these news are really good for owners of locked devices.

Couple days ago Antonio De Rosa posted a very beautiful 3D concept for the future iPhone 4G. Now there is a video available. Take a look:

A new group of hackers claim they found a new exploit for the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch with the new BootRom. This means that jailbreak for iPhone 3GS (late models) and iPod Touch 2G (MC) and iPod Touch 3G will be available.

We just found an amazing Exploit in the Boot-System of the 3GS with the new Bootrom! This Exploit works on ALL iPhone and iPod Touches!

The tool will be called Gull1hack. The operation is very simple and the code is sent when the device is in recovery mode, just like Blackra1n and Redsn0w do. This jailbreak tool has been neither confirmed by Geohot nor from the DevTeam. Many users think this is fake. We'll see.

Here's a video with Gull1hack in action:

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ScreenDimmer is a new app that provides longer battery lifetime for your iPhone by either dimming the device’s screen or switching off the backlight.

Auto-lock setting can be an alternative method of saving the battery, but it is not convenient to lock and unlock the device while you are waiting for something. It also provides power save by backlight reduction if not to use the phone for a time predefined by the user.

In whole ScreenDimmer is a convenient and easy in operation application for your iPhone. You can download it in Cydia Store via BigBoss repo, and its cost is only $.99.

Someone who calls himself Epoc is the author of this new concept of Time Machine integration on the iPhone/iPod Touch.

Time Machine, the utility created by Apple was primarily designed for the Mac. It is intended for the automatic saving of the latest copies of documents, settings, videos, photos, music, etc. you happened to work with. In case you delete something you can always take a step back and restore everything.

The iPhone variant of Time Machine will be a very much welcomed application. Initially it is sure to consume much power and data, but we can expect its further modifications will be very interesting.