Apple just published firmware 2.2 beta 1 for developers. It is accompanied by a new beta of the iPhone SDK (build 9M2611). There are not much news about new features and improvements... but iphoneatlas already published a screenshot of new Safari interface, that is in firmware 2.2:
The new MobileSafari doesn't have the magnifying glass and refresh buttons at the top of the screen. There are the URL bar and search fields side-by-side instead. It looks much like the desktop version. Page refreshes are now accomplished via a tiny icon located inside the URL bar.
There are more than 500 000 iPhones in Russia already. But the official sales will start in October. There are tons of news about the prices and tarriffs, but there are no official announcements from carriers. Several resellers posted the following prices on their websites lately: 23 000 RUB ($920) for 8Gb and 27 000 RUB ($1080) for 16Gb version.
According to the South China Morning Post, the carrier wants Apple to supply a custom version of the iPhone which disables both W-CDMA (3G) and Wi-Fi. China Mobile doesn't yet have a 3G network in place and is afraid that customers will buy the iPhone and unlock it for use on more capable networks. This explains the lock-out for 3G, but killing the Wi-Fi is just spiteful.
Given that Apple ships an identical iPhone to every other world market, it's doubtful that China Mobile will get its way. But then, no other world market has a potential customer base of two billion people. If these functions are disabled, it will most likely be done in software.
You probably know about latest iPhone’s security issue. The good news is that there is a solution to fix it.
Jonathan Zdziarski has deviced a way to disable this writing to disk, so that screenshots cannot be recovered. On a jailbroken iPhone, you can disable these screenshots with the following commands in MobileTerminal or through SSH connection to iPhone:
Screenshots themselves actually get written to /var/mobile/Library/Caches/Snapshots. So these commands delete this folder and symlink it to /dev/null, so the screenshots don’t get written to disk.
The side effect to this is that when resuming an application, you’ll get the default screen in the zoom-in effect. Once the application resumes, however, you’ll have your application screen back. For example, your mail application will always zoom to the front as if you had an empty inbox, but will quickly correct itself once the application resumes.
“To return to the default behavior, just delete the symlink and the directory will get recreated. Mind you, this has no effect on the many other pieces of data stored on the iPhone, and therefore your iPhone will always be at risk for leaking private data, especially to seasoned forensic examiners. Use at your own risk.”
This is great news for former Blackberry, Palm, and Windows Mobile users. With this software users can view, edit, or create Microsoft Office content. All of the big apps are covered including Powerpoint, Word, and Excel.
Вумудщзук now has a website you can visit to sign up for release information here in this link.
Be very very carefull. Because there are so many fake web sites came out recently. Do not trust names like quickpwn.com. There sites pretend to be DevTeam. Applications that those sites give you might be dangerous for your iPhone. Some sites ask for donations. Remember DevTeam don't do it.
There is only one DevTeam's site: http://blog.iphone-dev.org. When I publish news about some new version of QuickPwn, WinPwn, PwnageTool and etc, I use links from DevTeam's site. Everything else could be harmful fake.
"Next generation of ZiPhone is in the works.
It will be as simple as Apple would have done it.
A simple one click program.
A 5 seconds run.
Stay tuned."
MSNBC recently spoke with several GPS manufacturers about their plans to develop a turn-by-turn GPS solution for the iPhone. Such a program is likely some months away. Several of the 'bigs' in the business — TomTom, Garmin and Magellan — are interested.
"We have made our navigation system run on the iPhone; it looks good and works very well," said Dutch-based company TomTom, in a statement to MSNBC.com. "We will have to look more closely to Apple’s strategy before we can say more about what kind of opportunities this will bring us,:".
"We’re always looking at new phone platforms to expand into for Garmin Mobile, but we don’t have any announcements regarding the iPhone at this time," said Jessica Myers of Garmin International. Magellan spokesman Raphel Finelli said the company does "not have immediate plans for this, but we are looking into it."
Digital Daily notes that Apple's market capitalization at $159.37 billion is now worth more than Google's which is at $157.56 billion. Apple's market cap first exceeded $100 billion in May of 2007. Apple was included into the S&P 100 index at that time. For interest, MacDailyNews compiled a list of the market values of other notable companies:
ZDNet Australia reports that banking "giant" HSBC is considering ditching the BlackBerry and switching over to the iPhone for its staff. HSBC has about 300,000 staff worldwide and this transition could result in 200,000 iPhone orders.
"We are actually reviewing iPhones from a HSBC Group perspective ... and when I say that, I mean globally," HSBC's Australia and New Zealand chief information officer Brenton Hush told ZDNet.com.au yesterday.
Bad news is that it is still not avaliable. DevTeam postponed their release. The good news is that version 2.0.2 will jailbreak 2.0.1 fimware (and unlock 2.0.1 for old iPhone) and have both Cydia and Installer 4 included. Stay tuned, the release will be in couple days.
On August 22, 20 new countries will start offering the iPhone 3G for sale. Here's a list of the countries that are expecting launches that Friday (and their associated carriers, in parentheses):