Ziphone

ZiPhone.org is For Sale. Goodbye ZiPhone, I Will Miss You

Zibri, creator of ZiPhone just announced on his blog that ZiPhone.org is for sale. Since the birth of his child last month, Zibri is obviously busy with his family, which I totally understand.

For those of you who are not familiar with the ZiPhone, it was the first jailbreaking software developed to make the jailbreaking process a child play. I mean, ZiPhone was and still remains my favorite jailbreaking tool. Hands down! ZiPhone worked under firmware 1.x but wasn't updated for firmware 2.x earlier this year.

So why was ZiPhone my favorite jailbreaking tool? For one, it was the only software that never crashed on me. But most importantly, it was so easy to use that a caveman could have done it... You simply had to download Ziphone, install, plug your iPhone, click jailbreak and wait a few seconds. *Sigh*, I miss those days...

So now the domain name is for sale. If you're a little bit into Internet Marketing, that might be interesting for you. The website has a PR6 and countless backlinks. I would love to buy this domain name but I don't think I have enough in the bank right now to afford it. If you're interested, you'll have to spend $50 on the front end, just to be able to bid on the domain name. The highest bidder will then get it.

Below is a copy of what Zibri wrote on his blog:

It was an incredible ride, guys, and I'm sincerely grateful to everybody who made this happen. As some of you may know, from the 7th of November 2008 I'm a father. All my efforts are now focused on my family then, later, I'll start some other project maybe related with the iPhone, maybe not. So, from now the ziphone.org domain (Pagerank 6 on Google) is FOR SALE. Here's how the sale works: Go to the donation page, donate $50 and write your buy offer in the donation description free text field. At the end of the sale the highest bid will get the domain. Direct emails will not count as bids. If by the end of the sale the maximum bid will not meet my minumum requirement, all $50 donations will be refunded and the sale won't happen. Sale result and winning bidder will appear on this site. The sale will end on 20st January 2009. If the winner won't pay the bid by the 10th of February 2009, the 2nd higher bidder will be the winner. Namaste, Zibri Hint: There is a banner on the right side of this site. That banner links to a site which evaluate other sites. Bids lower than 1/3 of the "Net Worth" will be rejected. The daily ads revenue on that site is pretty accurate. And so is the daily pageview (average in the last months). Happy bidding.

If you guys are interested, hop over to ZiPhone.org and make your bid.

As for me, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Zibri for his involvement in the iPhone community. You did an amazing job and always stood for yourself, even under criticism from the other guys (psst, that's the Dev Team). Good luck to you and your family!

Cydia Store Applications vs. The App Store – The Download Showdown

[digg-me]UPDATE: The Cydia Store is now open! I invite you to read this post for more details.

If you didn't read the title to this article in the deep voice of the movie previews guy, please go back and do so at this time, just to give you an idea of how huge this is. Now, if you've navigated to our blog and are reading this article, hopefully you have some idea of what Cydia and the App Store are. For those of you who don't, I will provide a brief breakdown of each program before I list their stand out features.

Both programs offer a sizeable library of applications and games that can be downloaded directly onto the phone from virtually anywhere you can get a cell phone or wifi signal. Please no hate mail from Installer fans, as it's obvious it has not garnered near as much support as Cydia since the iPhone was updated in firmware over the summer. But now to the main event, the Download Showdown. Who will take home the title as the Champion of iPhone applications? Let's get it on.

You've seen the commercials, you've seen it in the world-reknowned iTunes software, heck you see the icon everytime you look at your iPhone, it's the App Store. Riding the coat tails of success of Apple's enormous online music store, is the online application store that has redefined software distribution for the mobile market. Never before has an online library of mobile software been so accessible, as it can be reached from any mac or pc, or from any iPhone or ipod touch with web connection.

Another reason it is so groundbreaking is the 70/30 deal it has made with iPhone platform developers. That means that Apple keeps 30% of the profit from the software sales, and gives the remaining 70% to the people that make them. On top of attracting big name software companies like EA and THQ, this 70/30 deal has made several independent companies like Tappulous and The Blimp Pilots (koi pond creators) extremely wealthy.

The App Store's main advantages have got to be it's stability and ease of use, two of the most important things you can find in any software.  I can't tell you the last time my App Store crashed or froze, and its interface is about as simple as you can get. You'll also find that most applications fall in the $0.99 - $9.99 price range, keeping purchases from breaking your bank. For the froogle audience, there is also a large FREE section of applications and games that has yet to disappoint me.

Finally, the fact that Apple, is the company behind the App store has its ups and downs. For example, Apple pre screens all apps submitted to the App Store, minimizing malicious code and low quality software epedimics. This also prevents very good software from reaching the App Store due to opinions held by Apple (see R.I.P article). Downloading is also kept very quick and simple by Apple, as typing in your iTunes password, ok's any download, free or not. You also don't have to jailbreak or "hack" your iPhone to access the App Store, how charming. So bottom line here is that the App Store is easy to use, extremely reliable, has a huge library of free and non-free applications, and it's not against AT&T's TOS (terms of service) to access.

Now for the challenger. A product of James Freeman, or Saurik, Cydia has been around since the original jailbreaking days of Ziphone and iBrickr. Originally, Cydia stood in the shadow of the Installer application by the Dev Team, which did the exact same thing (offered 3rd party downloads). Now, thanks to its I-got-to-firmware-2.1-before-you-did attitude, Cydia is flourishing.

But these guys [devteam, Saurik, Spazio, etc.] really opened the eyes of the world to the possibilities of the iPhone, and let users unlock their iPhone's potential with 3rd party applications, a touchy subject in the beginning of the life of the iPhone due to Apple's lack of 3rd party support.

Enough history, how does it stack up today against the colussal App Store. Size? Nope. The size of Cydia's library of software doesn't hold a candle to Apple's App Store. Price? Nope. While a majority of Cydia downloads are free, some are only trial versions that demand paypal payments to continue using them. So then why in the world would you even want Cydia? Exclusivity. Boom. Cydia is the only place to download applications like Winterboard and Cycorder, software that goes against Apple's guidelines for App Store approval. I couldn't have a see-through dock with a customized icon set without Cydia. I couldn't have recorded a video of my dog doing cart wheels without Cycorder, and it's only available through Cydia. Is VIP access to cool customizeables enough to make this underdog a Champ? Let's review.

It seems on paper Apple's App Store should win by a landslide. Thousands of more software titles, the technical and customer support of a Fortune 500 company, and its overall ease of use should give Apple the belt hands down. But you can't forget about the little guy. If a firmware update prevented the downloading of Cydia or a similar program, how many users would be devastated? How many would avoid updating? If you're like me, chances are you have App Store, Cydia, and Installer (at least the first 2) icons sitting on your springboard right now, and aren't likely to delete any of them any time soon. I like having all 3 for the simple fact that if I read about an application and want to download, I know I am covered, and can find it in one of the 3 libraries.

It looks like a split decision here, but I am going to give the nod to Apple's App Store for a number of reasons I already listed. Once again in an ideal world we could have a united application that would offer the best of both worlds. For now, it seems the App Store will hold the download Showdown title. Thanks for reading, this article is a treasure, so digg it!

Zibri not rushing to release new ZiPhone

On a post on his blog today, Zibri, the creator of ZiPhone, said he was not rushing to release a new version of the iPhone that would allow you to jailbreak and maybe unlock your iPhone or iPod Touch. Zibri didn't say he would release a new version of ZiPhone for sure.

Ziphone is my all time favorite application for jailbreaking the iPhone. I've always found it super easy to use. Even though the Pwning tools such as WinPwn and QuickPwn are stupid simple to use, my heart still goes to ZiPhone.

From Zibri's blog:

At the moment I'm testing and tweaking what could be the next ZiPhone version.

As it happened the first time, I'm not rushing and as it already happened in february I'm not even sure I will release it.

Zibri also said he found a pretty big bug in the iPhone and he's not sure what he wants to do with it:

I just found something that can crash any iphone/ipod and exploitability is being investigated. This vulnerability anyhow affects all models and firmwares. I can't tell you more about this.

Since this bug is VERY serious I have yet to decide what to do with it. If Apple is interested I think they know my email address. If they are not... well they will know sooner or later.

Looks like someone is looking for a job at Apple? Haha. Keep rockin' Zibster!

A new ZiPhone in the work

Zibri posted this weekend that he is currently working on a new version of ZiPhone. I have always been a big fan of ZiPhone as it offers a one-click jailbreak/unlock for the iPhone. I really respect the DevTeam and cmw for QuickPwn and WinPwn, but I have to admit my heart goes to ZiPhone...

Here is what Zibri says:

I’m testing at the moment a very preliminary version of the next ZiPhone.. Let me tell you it’s impressive. A very few testers screamed when they saw how simple is this. I can’t tell you more for now.. It’s really to early.

This makes me think that ZiPhone is gonna be much easier to use than QuickPwn and WinPwn, which are already dead simple...

QuickPwn vs. Ziphone

PlanetBeing, a member of the DevTeam, wrote a very interesting post about the similarities and differences between QuickPwn and Ziphone. If you're not an iPhone geek, don't even bother reading this...

Here is what PlanetBeing took into account (as you can see, there are more differences than similarities):

Similarities:

jailbreak payload medium

Differences:

Technique

ZiPhone uses, as the root filesystem device, a pseudo-device that provides a window to an arbitrary section of memory. This memory is not allocated or otherwise reserved by the operating system and hence will be used by other random processes in other random ways and will become more and more corrupted with every CPU clock cycle. The only safe way to use this is to mlock all memory used by the jailbreak binary as soon as possible, and then use data previously uploaded to flash. Anything else will cause either the jailbreak binary to crash at random moments or cause random data to be written to flash. I am not sure why Zibri elected not to implement ZiPhone in a safer fashion.

QuickPwn uses the same mechanism that Apple uses to send its update ramdisk. This memory is both allocated and reserved. It will not crash at random moments, or give you repeating BSD root errors. This is the way the XNU kernel is designed to use ramdisks.

Longevity

ZiPhone hinges on a BUG in iBoot that was quickly fixed by Apple.

QuickPwn uses an iBoot FEATURE that Apple cannot remove without rewriting their own software and undergoing lengthy QA. Even if Apple did change the architecture, it would be straight-forward to simply mimic what they do and adapt to it. The reason QuickPwn can do this is because it relies on a hardware exploit to bootstrap into this phase. Apple cannot fix this problem without changing the manufactured hardware.

Elegance

ZiPhone modifies an existing Apple ramdisk and ships it as a complete set.

QuickPwn contains all-original code and features a very tiny bootstrapper that allows it to use libraries and code that's already on the iPhone.

Not only does ZiPhone's distribution of Apple's binaries violate copyright laws, it also takes up a large portion of room on the ramdisk that could be used for the payload. Keeping its existing algorithm, ZiPhone would never have been able to install Cydia, for example. The maximum feasible ramdisk size is 32 MB; Cydia takes 13 and Apple's library take up a significant amount. With some work, Zibri could possibly make it just under the 32 MB limit, but with the large number of files in Cydia, and the large size of the corruptible area of memory, corruption would be inevitable.

Click here to read the full post.