iphone

My blog is still here! With the upturn in Facebook and Twitter over the last 12 months I've not posted much as I guess l've become a bit of a FB'aholic and am fascinated by it from a professional point of view. The introduction of AJAX powered chat in a browser has seen a lot of my friends contacting me via FB chat and the private message system provides more personal messages than I get through email. From a cynical standpoint, FB is potentially very sinister as they've got too big but the same could have been said about Google a few years ago but their star has waned slightly. Twitter was also meant to take over the World but within my group of friends it's been eclipsed by FB too. It's going to be interesting to see what comes next and in the meantime I'm very interested in L7 firewall appliances... Getting geeky now so I'll move on!

2010 brought us the iPad.. No surprise that I have one and I'm sat in Starbucks typing this on it. I'm trying hard to justify having an iPad. It's a gorgeous piece of kit but I think I could have happily managed without it, using a combination of my smart phone and my laptop. I don't need a middle device. The iPad is useful in the office on my own 3G connection though. Sometimes there's something I'd like to do on my own kit and my own net connection but feel once again that it's overkill.

I mentioned smart phones. This year I've been rocking an iPhone 3GS as my main phone and have had a few different work phones. A Vodafone 360 handset was the least useful during an eat my own dogfood phase. No surprises that Vodafone have stopped developing their own handsets. I had a HTC Desire - that was a highlight. The functionality and feature set is much richer than the iPhone but it doesn't have the same polished user experience as the iPhone. I did like the portable wifi hotspot feature though; something I'd consider jail breaking my iPhone for.. My latest work phone is an iPhone 4. Nice upgrade to the 3GS. Finally a camera flash! The battery life is better and the screen is good but it's not worth paying for an upgrade. I'm eligible for an upgrade at the moment but that would reset the timer on my 24 month contract. No thanks! The future is SIM free, maybe Google Nexus S shaped and powered by giffgaff.

2010 saw me finally get rid of the Beemer. I'm running around in a Golf and whilst it's nice with a hefty punch and gokart handing I miss the comfort of the old girl, especially on long motorway runs. I also miss getting the back end out around roundabouts plus VW traction control doesn't understand that I want lift off oversteer!

I've still got the R3. Thinking about an upgrade but will have to see how finances are looking when Spring approaches. I know what I'd like but it depends what sort of part-ex I can get for the yellow beast.

So 2011... What will it bring? I dunno! But I do know that I'm in charge and I'm going to make it a good one! Please join me for the ride!!

On New Year's Day the iphone Dev Team released version 0.9.5 BETA of their yellowsn0w unlocking software. Just had a nose at it and the interesting part is that it's a soft unlock that you install on a jailbroken iPhone. You add an apt source in Cydia and away you go.

It's been coded as a daemon that runs at boot time which means that it doesn't have to exploit holes in early versions of the baseband code and it'll work on the 2.2 software that is available from Apple (after you quickpwn it).

The application is a small daemon that is launched on boot. It injects the payload at boot and also whenever there is a baseband reset. You won’t notice anything about it other than that your third-party sim now works. It’s a small program and unobtrusive...


More info here:

http://blog.iphone-dev.org/post/67797811/dont-eat-yellowsn0w

I finally gave in to temptation and jailbroke my iPhone about two weeks ago. It's a 3G iPhone running 2.1 firmware. I followed the following guide that is suitable for OSX:

http://www.iphone-hacks.com/forums/about1709.html

The Monty Python'esqe pointy hands were a great help!

The only problem I encountered was that I needed to have iTunes able to connect to the Internet and to my iPhone at the same time which made it difficult as I was using my 3G Internet dongle to access the Internet at the time and the fat USB dongle covers the second port on the side of the Powerbook.

All in all it took about an hour to get it all done. I've got two firmware files as a result. One is the original Apple firmware that I can return to at anytime and the other is the Pineapple firmware that is installed.

Jailbreaking the iphone has given me access to Cydia. It's a gui for the ported Debian apt-get package management system and is great. It's like the App Store but it's all free! One of the first things I installed was OpenSSH so I can now get onto the iPhone over the network and fiddle with things.

At the moment the big plus points are:

1. All of the App Store apps work - I can still use the App Store if I need to too.
2. I can install my own themes and customise them to my heart's content. Boss Prefs and Winterboard allow me to show/hide icons, move things around, customise text etc.
3. SwirlyMMS brings picture messaging to the iPhone. Just got to persuade O2 to enable it on my account but that's a story for a different day!
4. I've got a Bluetooth on/off button on the front screen. This makes toggling Bluetooth much easier so I can get a lot longer out of the battery.
5. I could use the iPhone as a modem if I wanted to. The modem apps on the iPhone create a SOCKS proxy that you can connect to over an ad-hoc wireless network. Not tried it yet but can't see why it wouldn't work.
6. The FStream app allows me to stream BBC Radio streams meant for Windows Media Player
7. I can go back to Apple's firmware at a moment's notice.
8. Macman is great!

Note: If you want to Jailbreak your iPhone and your brick it then on your own head be it! I'm not responsible if it goes wrong!

Note 2: This is jailbreaking, not unlocking. It will allow you to customise the iPhone and the apps that are on it but it won't allow you to use a different mobile provider's SIM card in your iPhone.