Archive for March 26th, 2012

FOSS Patents reports that it has seen a letter sent by Apple to the European Telecommunications Standards Institutes (ETSI) committing to offer royalty-free license to its nano-SIM design patents. Apple pushes “nano-SIM” design as the official next-generation standard to further reduce the size of the removable cards.

A perfectly reliable source that I can't disclose has shown me a letter dated March 19, 2012 that a senior Apple lawyer sent to ETSI. The letter addresses the primary concern of critics of the proposal. The FT said that "the Apple-led proposal has caused some concern among its rivals that the US group might eventually own the patents". But Apple's letter has removed this roadblock, if it ever was any, through an unequivocal commitment to grant royalty-free licenses to any Apple patents essential to nano-SIM, provided that Apple's proposal is adopted as a standard and that all other patent holders accept the same terms in accordance with the principle of reciprocity.

Such “nano-SIM” standard would enable Apple to design smaller and thinner devices or to utilize some of the space within existing device volumes for other components.

TechCrunch on Saturday reported that Apple has reportedly started rejecting apps which access UDIDs (A unique device identifier, is basically a serial number that a mobile network uses to identify mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad.)

In August 2011, Apple warned software makers that the company would be killing off UDID access with iOS 5, suggesting that developers begin work on app-specific tracking mechanisms. Removing the feature effectively ends OS-wide user tracking and forces developers to create their own proprietary opt-in identification systems.

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iH8sn0w, developer of sn0wbreeze and iFaith, has found a way to downgrade the firmware on A5 devices - iPhone 4S, iPad 2.

Using saved SHSH blobs, iH8sn0w was able to downgrade his A5 iPad 2 from iOS 5.1 to iOS 5.0.1. He says his method will also work with the A5X processor once firmware updates are released for the new iPad. That means that it's possible to restore to any firmware you want on A5 devices, as long as you have the SHSH blobs saved.

This is great news for those with the iPhone 4S and newer iPads. As it stands now, if you have to restore for any reason, you will be forced to upgrade to the latest firmware. This could leave you without the ability to jailbreak for some time.

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