With the increasing amount of new apps coming to the App Store every day, it's getting harder and harder for developers to be noticed and to potentially make thousands of dollars, like Trism developer! A good way to get some free advertising is to have an "app sale". See, it's working, I'm already talking about these apps...
Trism, Band, Pianist, and Guitarist are currently on sale in the App Store. So if you were on the fence about buying any of these apps, this might be the right time!
Apple is going nuts on these NDA! After receiving a lot of bad publicity for its rejection policy of application in the App Store (see MailWrangler and Podcaster), Apple apparently extended today its Non Disclosure Agreements to rejection letters. Meaning that when you get rejected from the App Store, you can't even talk about it!
Aparently, Apple has now started labeling their rejection letters with Non-Disclosure Agreements statements:
THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS MESSAGE IS UNDER NON-DISCLOSURE
Sounds crazy? Sounds like Apple's usual way of doing business to me....
As I reported yesterday, Apple has started to offer an online signup process for the iPhone 3G. This new process allows you to:
Enter your billing information. Review eligibility and pricing. Select your AT&T rate plan.Once you’re done, choose your closest Apple Retail Store and let us know when you’d like to come in to complete your purchase. An Apple Specialist will be ready to help you personalize your new iPhone 3G, make calls, browse the web, receive email, and more.
This "at home" option generated a lot of rumors over the weekend but it turns out that you will still have to go an Apple Store to complete the activation of your device. Apparently, you can't go through the online process and activate in an AT&T Store, but this option may come soon.
A MacWorld UK article quotes AT&T chief technology officer John Donovan saying that the US carrier was "unprepared for the US success of the iPhone 3G". When making these statements at the Goldman Sachs technology conference last week, Donovan admitted that AT&T's network had seen demand for 3G services that exceeded their expectation.
Seeing the amount of complains from users all around the US about the poor quality of AT&T 3G network, I find it very honest from Donovan to admit they were unprepared. Hopefully they learned a lesson.
Qantm College has announced the launch of an iPhone Game Development course, tailored specifically for designers to produce work for Apple's mobile. [via GamesIndustry.biz]
Apple released today the iPhone configuration utility 1.0.1 for Mac OS X. If you don't know what that means, don't worry, most people don't and most people don't even care about it...
iPhone Configuration Utility lets you easily create, maintain, and sign configuration profiles, track and install provisioning profiles and authorized applications, and capture device information including console logs..
Configuration profiles are XML files that contain device security policies, VPN configuration information, Wi-Fi settings, APN settings, Exchange account settings, mail settings, and certificates that permit iPhone and iPod touch to work with your enterprise systems. For instructions on how to use iPhone Configuration Utility, see the iPhone and iPod touch Enterprise Deployment Guide, available for downloading at:
Enterprise Deployment Guide
A private beta of iTR has been released by Torrent Relay. This application allows you to download torrents on your iPhone and even play them, if the file is supported by the iPhone.
[via iClarified]
As prevously reported, everytime you tap press the home button to close an application, your iPhone takes a screenshot of the screen your on in order to provide the zoom out effect of the application closing.
Jonathan Zdziarski, author of iPhone Forensics, and iPhone Open Application Development found a way to prevent your iPhone from saving those screenshots:
I found that the screenshots themselves actually get written to /var/mobile/Library/Caches/Snapshots. If you delete this folder and symlink it to /dev/null, 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. On a jailbroken iPhone, you can disable these screenshots with the following commands:
# rm -rf /var/mobile/Library/Caches/Snapshots # ln -s /dev/null /var/mobile/Library/Caches/Snapshots“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.
Credit Photo: Gizmodo
There's been quite a bit of noise over the weekend about the possible return of the iPhone home activation. This process was available with first gen iPhones and let you buy your iPhone in store or online and activate ot from the comfort of your home, using iTunes.
Well, it's not really what we expected but a similar process will be in place soon and will not activate your iPhone per say, but it will help streamline the activation process. How this will work?
Prior to purchasing your iPhone, you will go online and you will enter your mobile contract details, social security number and billing information if you are a new subscriber. From there, you will head to the Apple Store (maybe AT&T?) and purchase your phone. A rep will load your information and actiavte the phone from there.
[via BGR]
If somehow you have managed to pay only $15 for AT&T’s MEdia Net Unlimited to use with your iPhone 3G, enjoy while it lasts...
Boy Genius Report posted about this AT&T user who received an email from AT&T to kindly ask him to switch to a standard iPhone 3G plan.
Subject: Important information regarding your iPhone 3G
The new AT&T - Your world. Delivered.
Our service records indicate that you are using an iPhone 3G with a data plan designed for other devices.
To avoid unexpected data overage charges and enable Visual Voicemail, please contact your telecom manager, or an AT&T representative at 1-800-331-0500.
Thank you for choosing wireless from AT&T. We appreciate your business.
Sincerely, AT&T Customer Service
Apple did it again. Once again they rejected a usefull application from the App Store because it "duplicates the functionality of the built-in iPhone application Mail without providing sufficient differentiation or added functionality, which will lead to user confusion".
Last week, it was Podcaster that was rejected and now it is MailWrangler, a Gmail account email manager, that is not approved by Apple's shady acceptance process...
The developer of MailWrangler wrote a post on his blog about this and he cynically jokes that he should have created a flashlight application as Apple doesn't seem to have any problem with those types of apps (see the 20 different flashlight apps in the App Store).
Jailbreaking your iPhone has become more and more relevant since the App Store opened. Yes you can download thousands of applications from the App Store. No you can't have the most useful application from the App Store. I really hate how Apple does business.
After posting the QuickPwn 2.1 tutorial yesterday, I got many emails from people asking me if the method worked for unlocking iPhones. The answer is yes! It does work to unlock the iPhone. It only works with the 1st Generation iPhone though. So if you have an iPhone 3G, it's not gonna work.
In the guide I posted yesterday, I show you how to jailbreak an iPhone (no matter what iPhone you have) but many people that are not really tech savvy asked me for a tutorial on how to unlock the iPhone 2G. So here we go...
Before starting, do not hold me responsible if something goes wrong. If you follow these instructions carefully, chances are you won't have any problem. So read everything!
Now before we start the process, you need to make sure you have downloaded and installed iTunes 8 and backed up your iPhone. And there are a few files you need to download too. Create a folder on your desktop and save all these files in there:
QuickPwn 2.1 for Windows BL 3.9 BL 4.6 iPhone 2G 2.1 firmware Connect your iPhone to your PC and open iTunes. Hold the Shift key and click "Restore" at the same time. You could click "Update" but that would eat up your disk space for nothing. See my previous post about that. So, when you click SHIFT + RESTORE, a window will pop up asking you to choose your firmware. Select the firmware you downloaded before Step 1. iTunes will then restore your iPhone to 2.1, which may take a while. Once iTunes has restored your iPhone to 2.1, launch QuickPwn. Make sure your iPhone is connected to your PC and click the blue arrow. Click the BROWSE button to locate your iPhone firmware you downloaded before Step 1. Select the firmware. QuickPwn will automatically check and make sure the ipsw (firmware) is correct. Click the blue arrow to go to the next step. Now select what you want to do. You HAVE TO install Cydia. Using custom logos and installing Installer is pretty useless at the time. Also make sure you check the "Unlock Phone" checkbox. Click the blue arrow to continue. You will then be asked to choose your BootLoader files you downloaded before step 1. Select them and click the blue arrow to continue. QuickPwn will ask you to confirm that your iPhone is connected to your computer. Make sure it is and click the blue arrow to continue. QuickPwn will now put your iPhone into recovery mode. Once it is in recovery mode you will be asked to: a) Hold the Home button for 5 seconds, b) Hold the Home and Power buttons for 10 seconds, c) Release the Power button and continuing holding the Home button until your iPhone is in DFU mode. QuickPwn gives you very detailed instructions to make it even easier for you! Once QuickPwn detects your iPhone in DFU mode, it will start the pwning process. Once pwned, QuickPwn will informa you that you successfully completed the pwnage process. Your iPhone will then proceed to run BootNeuter, which may take a few minutes, so be patient! Once done, your iPhone will reboot. Done!How easy was that?
I closed the comments on this post but if you have any question about unlocking your iPhone 2G, please ask in the forum.