While Europeans are still eagerly awaiting the arrival of the iPhone on the continent, there's not much concrete information to be had. All we have to go on is fairly vague information from Apple that the phone will make its way to European markets sometime in Q4. However, the initial rollout will be limited to just a few countries, likely the UK, France, and Germany.
German wireless provider Deutsche Telekom today confirmed that it's engaged in talks with Apple over providing service for the iPhone. That would seem to gibe with a Financial Times report last week that named T-Mobile International (a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom) as the German carrier, with Orange carrying the phone in France and O2 as the British provider.
One possible venue for the announcement of deals with European carriers would be the upcoming IFA consumer electronics show, due to take place in Berlin from August 31 to September 5th. Or, this being Apple, we could wait until the very last minute. It's anybody's guess.
We noted way back when that the iPhone lacked the ability to display either Hebrew or Arabic characters in Mobile Safari. Fortunately, a group from Israel has taken matters into their own hands to enable the display of Hebrew on the iPhone so you can browse the Tanakh until your heart's content.
They've posted instructions which seem to merely involve copying the appropriate fonts from your computer onto your (jailbroken/hacked) iPhone. Or at least I've divined from the screenshots: the instructions themselves are actually in Hebrew, so I can't really confirm or deny. But that does seem to gibe with what others have written about the lack of Hebrew and Arabic, and it makes sense, given that the iPhone can display other character sets with little problem.
If you can read Hebrew and care to shed some light on the process, drop us a note in the comments below.
[via Gizmodo]
Methods for unlocking the iPhone seem to be coming out of the fake wood paneling around these parts, but that doesn't mean that there isn't room for more. A anonymous group of donors has offered up a $100,000 bounty for the code to unlock the iPhone, as long as said code is released for free by midnight Wednesday (no timezone was specified).
The donors are said to be open source advocates who believe that releasing the code for free is the only solution to avoid issues with AT&T and to benefit all users. Whether or not doing so would be legal is hard to say. While the DMCA exemption allows you to unlock a cell phone in order to use it on a network, money complicates everything.
As if that's not enough, a couple more groups have published claims that they've come up with ways to unlock the phone. Gizmodo reports on a trio of Israeli programmers and a Swiss hacker. Finally, a movement is also underway to fund a free unlock solution by the iPhone Dev team that has done so much work to hack the iPhone already.
Update: Turns out the Israeli hackers did not come up with a new unlock method, they just used the existing hardware hack.
[via Business 2.0]
We know how you feel: If it's not iPhone unlocking-related, it's something about the interminable hacks. Face it: with little new from Apple that doesn't contain the words "bug" and "fixes," mad hax0ring is the hottest thing going right now.
Since its release, we've been eagerly awaiting the day that we could instant message directly from our iPhones, without having to resort to any of the numerous web-based Internet client. And with the arrival of Apollo IM, the iPhone's first native instant messaging client, I am here to tell you that today...is still not that day.
Admittedly, Apollo is pre-beta (version number -1, to be precise), so the fact that it doesn't really work very well at all is to be expected. I did, on one attempt, get it to load t least part of my buddy list, but when I tried to add a second account, it objected strenuously. At that point, it basically froze whenever I tried to use it, requiring that I uninstall and reinstall the app (tip of the hat to the Nullriver folks for making this a breeze). Besides the crashing, the fact that you need to hit a "keyboard" button to bring up the keyboard, and other sundry bizarrities, it's pretty clear that this isn't going to sate anybody's thirst for MobileiChat...yet.
That said, I'm glad the Apollo team is hard at work on this, and I wonder if they'll beat Apple to the punch (murmurs say MobileiChat is on its way).
Keeping up with the thrill-a-minute world of online news is tricky: by the time you write something, it's pretty much out of date. So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to see, only moments after I posted a story about how to unlock your iPhone via hardware, a vastly similar software-based solution to the same exact problem.
The team over at iPhoneSIMfree.com has been working on finding a way to unlock the iPhone that doesn't require cracking open the case and messing with soldering irons, and they appear to have succeeded. Their website claims that their tool will allow you to use any SIM card for any provider in any country. Sounds like a dream come true, doesn't it?
The software will be commercially available in the near future, and currently iPhoneSIMfree.com is offering trials of its software to some publications, including blogs like Engadget. Rest assured, we'll be keeping an eye on this as it developers, and will endeavor to bring you whatever information we can find.
[Image via Engadget]
By now you've heard the news. Town criers are shouting it from the rooftops. People passing in the streets are whispering to one another, and even the animals have sensed that something is amiss. But in case you've just emerged from some sort of ursine-like hibernation, allow me to tell you this: a teenager has managed to unlock the iPhone.
Seventeen year old George Hotz of Glen Rock, New Jersey is said to currently be using the iPhone on T-Mobile's network, with all features of the iPhone intact, save the Visual Voicemail that relies on AT&T's network. Hotz worked with a group of four others, some in the US and some elsewhere around the world to figure out the unlocking procedure.
Unfortunately, if you're planning on following Hotz's example (full instructions are posted on his blog), you'd better be handy with a soldering iron and not worried about potentially voiding your iPhone's warranty. Otherwise, looks like you may be better off waiting with the rest of us.
[Thanks to everybody who sent this in]
At least according to Amber Schroader, CEO of forensic-software developer Paraben, interviewed for a Wired article about the iPhone and forensic evidence. You see, it appears that the e-CSI community can't extract forensic evidence from the iPhone in a way that guarantees the data hasn't been altered -- a requirement for the information to be useful in court. Says Schroader, "The iPhone is evil...It's Mac OS X, and it's a completely closed system."
Hyperbole aside, Wired notes that the actual issue seems to be that "currently, the iPhone is not compatible with existing forensic software and data-extraction systems." In other words, a brand new device using a new (to mobile phones) operating system is, well, new. It's going to take a bit of work to master the device. Evil, indeed.
On the other hand, Derrick Donnelly of Blackbag Technologies -- a company that specializes in forensic solutions for Macs -- notes in the same article that, because much of an iPhone's data is synced to a computer, you may not need access to the iPhone itself to gather some information.
Still, given all the iPhone hacking going on, I'd be surprised if the smart people in the forensic-software industry don't have iPhone-compatible solutions before too long. (And perhaps Paraben will hire a few people clue-ful about the Mac, as well.)
Reader Leo points us to an article in today's USA Today about the tying of handsets to wireless providers. As we're all intimately aware, the iPhone requires a two-year contract from AT&T unless you want to undergo some sneaky trickery. This enforced "locking" of the phone annoys may consumers, especially those who want to use their phones in Europe or with other compatible US providers.
But what caught fair Leo's attention (and ours), is the following quote from Jim Cicconi, an AT&T senior executive vice president (there he is at left):
Once a contract has been fulfilled, Cicconi says AT&T will "gladly unlock" a customer's phone, if requested.Oh reeeeeeally? Well, we'll have to test that theory in, oh, two years. Blast.
The Terminal's a scary place—I understand. For those of you who decided to forego hacking your iPhone if it required delving into the land of green text on a black background, the time for excuses is now over. The folks at Nullriver, who brought you the iPhone Installer, have now released a GUI installer for the installer, meaning that bring third-party apps to your iPhone is now as simple as it's going to get without help from Cupertino.
You can download the new installer, AppTappInstaller, from their site, and you'll be well on your way to installing a handful of nifty third-party applications. I haven't gotten a chance to try this out yet, but as soon as I restore my phone and upgrade to the 1.0.2 firmware (with which the Installer is totally compatible), you can bet it'll be the first thing I fire up.
Now, Apple: are we going to keep playing this silly game of cat and mouse? I don't want to have to reinstall my apps every time you come out with new firmware. I think it's time for you to let go.
