Mark Dalby

Tonight, After much speculation, deliberation and procrastination (@jason your a git!) our friend Steve jobs unveiled a gadget that will make anybody even slightly tech-savvy sell their own grandmother.

Introducing the iPad…

At first glance the device looks like somebody has had their iPhone on a stretching rack. but once you see a demonstration you immediately see the appeal, The 9.7″ screen is the perfect size for watching podcasts or films on the move and If you have ever tried to read a large email or document on your iPhone your eyes will definitely appreciate the space.

Technically speaking the iPad is nothing short of amazing, it packs a 1Ghz Apple A4 processor that can decode HD video for up to 10 hours on a single charge.  To put that into perspective my 12 month old  Macbook can only do 4 hours before it’s battery dies (and that is pretty good for a laptop.)  It looks like Apple buyout of P.S. Semiconductor is going to pay off pretty fast.

It comes with all the usual bells and whistles we have come to expect from Apple…

• Accelerometer
• Ambient Light sensor
• 802.11 (b/g/n) WIFI
• Built in Speakers
• Microphone
• Multi Touch Screen
• Bluetooth2.1 capability (3G Model Only)
• GSM / EDGE / 3G (3G Model Only)

At the moment thre is no solid release date for the UK but there is a LOT of speculation that it will be hitting our shelves in June.  The release date for America has been confirmed for April 2010.

Pricing for the US models are suprisingly cheap…

WIFI ONLY

16GB – $499

32GB – $599

64GB – $699

WIFI and 3G

16GB – $629

32GB – $729

64GB – $829

Click here for more information.

I don’t know how many of you own an iPhone but I’d like to take the oppurtunity to introduce a great little app we have just released to the store.

The name of the app is Numberstore and the sole purpose of it is to save you money when making 0800 or 0500 Freefone calls from your iPhone.

It is really simple to use, you just open the app, enter the 0800 number you want to dial and then click “Dial”. The app then does some sorcery behind the scenes and translates your 0800 to an 01 or 02 local rate call ( which in most cases is included in your monthly minutes.) The app then handles the connection of the call for you.

Simples!

You can view more information on this app here.

According to Apple the next version of the iPhone 3G and 3GS to be shipped out will have a modified boot rom which is reported to have been hardend against the 24kpwn exploit that so many cracking groups are using to jailbreak your phone (Blackr41n, Purpler4in, Devteam).

I actually find this pretty annoying, I’ve just shelled out for a brand new iPhone (which aint cheap) and I’ll damn well use it how I please!! But not to worry I have faith in “The Scene” to have this broken pretty quickly.

For those of us that already enjoy an unrestricted iPhone it is important that you DO NOT upgrade to the latest firmware.

Hopefully apple will learn that its better to work with these people than against them, Take android for instance, You can run multiple apps at once,  It had copy and paste out of the box and the only complaint I’ve heard is that of bad battery life.  But the next-gen batteries are out soon so that will clear itself up.

Anyway, I’ll make sure to update you guys as soon as the new boot-rom is cracked.

Cheers,

Mark

Lets face it unless you want the Italian operator logo’s there isn’t really much of value to the average joe on Cydia or ICY, The games are about as appealing as susan boyle and a jar of nutella and about as plentyfull as common sense at Microsoft!

Enter Installous, The App store for Cracked IPA’s (iPhone Apps).

Installous takes all the effort out of sourcing, downloading and syncing apps and you can even download apps over EDGE or 3G (Yeah.. even ones over 10mb!!).

Anyway, If you want to install it (strictly for research purposes) follow the following instructions…

1. Open Cydia.
2. Go to Manage.
3. Click Sources.
4. Click “Edit” in the top right hand corner.
5. Click “Add” in the top left hand corner.
6. Enter the following URL  http://cydia.hackulo.us
7. Click “Add Source”.
8. Come out of Cydia and go back in (to refresh source list)
9. Click “Search”
10. Type in installous
11. Click install

IMPORTANT: You must uninstall Safari DL Plugin first, otherwise you will get a source error while trying to install this application!

Happy App’ing,

Mark

Even though OS 3.1.2 Was a pretty pityfull upgrade, A lot of people either accidentily upgraded or felt the need to be “up to date” and as a result were unable to jailbreak their iPhone.

Well there is a now a big shining flood lamp at the end of the tunnel in the form of “blackra1n”  The new iPhone Jail Breaking tool from Geohot (Thanks man!).

The bad new is that it is currently only available on winblows Windows.

The tool can be downloaded from here but please read the following warning first…

3G and 3G S unlockers, do not upgrade to 3.1.2 using iTunes

if you want to keep your unlock. Baseband cannot be downgraded. Check out the dev team’s offerings. Also blackra1n doesn’t hacktivate.

The iPhone Dev Team have confirmed that they are working on an unlock for 3.1.2 and this should hit the interweb very soon.

Happy Hacking,

Mark