In the world of Apple, 2010 has been the year of mobile. The iPad has become such a household name it's amazing that it was only first announced 10 months ago. It's hard to imagine using an iOS device now without multitasking. And let's not forget about a little something called iPhone 4. There was in fact so much activity on the Apple mobile front, you might have forgotten they were once a computer company. That's why Apple's special media event being held tomorrow is aptly titled "Back to the Mac"- to remind us that "Hey, we still make computers too!"
Yesterday, Apple released a statement highlighting significant changes to their iOS Developer Program license, re-opening the platform to third-party development tools such as Adobe Flash. Additionally, Apple posted their full App Store review guidelines. The move has already been touted as a positive step towards App Store review transparency- which in the past has been criticized for its ostensible inconsistency. But why now? And what does this mean for Flash developers?
Hot on the heels of the U.S. Copyright office declaring jailbreaking smartphones legal, a new web-based iOS jailbreak tool has surfaced. The new tool makes the jailbreaking process leaps and bounds simpler than past PC-based tools.
Today, Apple began seeding an iOS 4.1 pre-release to developers. As per usual, the beta requires an iPhone Developer account and an Intel Mac running the latest OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.4. Included is Xcode 3.2.4, which mainly brings support for iOS 4.1 iPhones and iPod Touches (still no iOS 4 for iPad), as well as a few new features designed to make life easier for iOS developers.
With a pre-order reservation and an early arrival time of 6:55am to New York's grandiose West 14th Street Apple Store, I still expected a long wait for a factory-fresh iPhone 4.
The new iOS 4 is now available to the general public, bringing a slew of great features to iPhone and iPod Touch. Multi-Tasking, along with home screen wallpapers and app folders are all features jailbreak users have been loving for a long time. Now that they're here officially, is there any reason to keep hacking your iPhone?
It's finally here! After weeks of buggy and crash prone betas, the Gold Master version of Apple's newly renamed mobile Operating System has been seeded to developers. Just from using the GM the past day I can already safely say it is a great bit more stable than even beta 4- which felt largely complete, despite the occasional crash. One minor disappointment is the absence of the iBooks app, though I guess technically it isn't a part of the core OS that needs to be tested by developers, so Apple is leaving that out until the general release.
There's been a lot of buzz regarding Apple's new iPhone Developer Agreement the past couple days.
Last week, an observant member of the Valve forums pointed out that there were resources and code added to the new Steam beta that pointed to a possible port to OS X. The forums were churning with rumors and speculation of the gaming giant's future Mac plans. Some disregarded the additional resources as either just a new OS X-like theme or simply a coding experiment for the beta.
It's finally here! The new iPad is almost exactly what the rumor mill has been churning up for months but somehow seeing the thing officially announced still makes my jaw drop a little. Why? Because it opens up some new opportunities for iPhone developers without making them jump through a lot of hoops.
Between the harmless but cautionary Rickrolling worm and the much less friendly iPhone/Privacy. A worm that was able to access personal data without any indication, iPhone jailbreaking has been getting a lot of coverage lately- though not necessarily the kind of coverage the community wants or needs. On top of the recent influx of worms, jailbreakers also have to worry about Apple's repeated attempts to shut it all down via software and hardware updates, as well as all the usual security issues that any wi-fi enabled mobile device may be susceptible to. To those who have already jailbroken, or are considering making the jump- fear not! Your jailbroken iPhone can be just as, if not even more secure than any stock iPhone. Here are a few tips.
iPhone "jailbreaking" has been a hot topic since Apple released its smartphone more than two years ago. While the amazing little device does indeed have applications for "just about everything," Apple's sometimes arbitrary or self-serving rejections of apps such as Google Voice has turned more people on to the idea of freeing themselves from dependence on Apple for these resources (and also, in some cases, from AT&T for a network signal).
Late last week, an Australian hacker dubbed ikee deployed the Rickrolling worm - a harmless and humorous worm that installs a picture of 80s one hit wonder Rick Astley to affected users' home screens. Rickrolling serves not so much as malware but as a warning to jailbreak users who have installed SSH in order to gain root access to their iPhone's file system from the internet but have neglected to change the default password, even though not doing so is clearly warned against in the installation documentation.
Apple released the new iPhone 3GS with an updated bootrom, many reports claimed it rendered the handset "unhackable" or "jailbreak-proof."
Apparently, Apple isn't taking this whole iPhone jailbreaking hooplah too lightly. Last week, Apple began shipping 3GS iPhones with an updated bootrom (iBoot-359.3.2) that effectively blocks the current 24kpwn jailbreak exploit.