For those pioneers who've bravely subjected their iPhones to any of the various carrier unlocking processes, Apple's got some news for you. And, it ain't exactly good news. According to a statement the company released today, "many of the unauthorized iPhone unlocking programs available on the Internet cause irreparable damage to the iPhone’s software, which will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed."
Uh oh. Frankly, this shouldn't really come as too much of a surprise to anyone. Of course Apple and AT&T have a vested interest in not letting you use your iPhone willy-nilly, and given how much effort it took for all the different hackers to break the SIM lock, you know there's some seriously funky tinkering going on under the hood.
But keep an eye on Apple's language: if "many" of the programs cause irreparable damage, it implies that some may not. It could be a scare tactic to keep more customers away from the unlock process, or at least the commercial processes. We won't know for sure until the software update drops later this week and we see if unlocked phones start getting bricked left and right (and, of course, if you've tried the hardware unlock method, your warranty's voided anyway). Unless you're willing to let your phone be a guinea pig, you'll want to wait and see reports from the field before you apply the update.
Our friends at TUAW have posted instructions on how to relock your phone, but be warned they're pretty technical. But I'll be starting a pool: how long before we have a graphical "iLock" phone application that lets you relock your phone before updating? My money says we'll see it a few days after the new iPhone software appears. You just can't stop the signal.
Earlier this month, we reported that AT&T was offering a parental controls feature to its wireless subscribers, including those with iPhones. For $4.99 a month, the Smart Limits for Wireless service let parents set limits on how many minutes their kids could use and when they could use the service; other features included blocking calls and text messages from specific telephone numbers.
According to our friends at Computerworld, one of those features is going back to the drawing board. AT&T announced today that it was suspending the call-blocking feature of Smart Limits.
The problem? While a kid using the Smart Limits plan could make a 911 call at any time -- even when phone use was blocked -- if the kid happened to get disconnected, the 911 operator wouldn't be able to call back. AT&T is looking into a work-around.
The Mother Ship has more details.
Watching video on the iPhone is a joy: the screen is vibrant and crisp. But if there's one major problem with video on the iPhone, it's the lack of storage space. Even an 8GB iPhone can only hold a few movies at a time, especially if you also want to store music and photos.
The folks at Embraceware have pointed out one way that you can work around this problem. If you happen to have a lot of movies stored on your home Mac, you can enable Web Sharing on it and then watch your videos on the iPhone by accessing them via Safari (as long as said movies are in an iPhone-compatible video format). They give you a step-by-step set of instructions for doing just this.
Supposedly this method works pretty smoothly on a local network, but if you want to access those videos from anywhere, you'll have to do a little more tweaking on your network setup (port forwarding and firewalling, for example). Also, you'll probably find pretty quickly that performance isn't as good, especially for long, high-quality video files.
Given this a try? Let us know how it's worked for you.
[via Digg]
The wonderful wizard of Woz is a huge fan of the iPhone—he estimates that he's bought about 20 of the handsets so far—but he's proclaimed himself less-than-a-fan of Apple CEO Steve Jobs's decision to significantly drop the price of the phone less than three months after the release.
"Nobody expects a product to drop that much in price in such a short time...Steve Jobs and everyone expects technology to drop in price. The first adopters always pay a premium. I am one of them. I am used to that. But that one was too soon, too harsh."Woz went on to say that he was a little miffed that the $100 credit offered by Apple went to the ultimate user of the phone rather than the person who bought it.
"If I bought it and gave it as a gift they get the discount," he said of the Apple $100 credit policy for early iPhone buyers. "Why don't you just take my receipt and give me the money back? And of course it always comes back to Apple Store credit.True though that is, we imagine that the number of customers who bought twenty iPhones or so is pretty low, so while the Steve Wozniaks and Scott Bournes of the world may find themselves out a pretty penny, I will probably not be crying myself to sleep over their losses. If you can afford to go out and buy twenty iPhones in the first place, you're probably not exactly in dire straits. Financially or musically."So instead of getting US$100 back you are getting US$50 back sort of. It is very optimal to the company. I feel badly about the situation for everyone. I don't think Apple should have even done it. Maybe a very much more gradual price reduction, US$50 at first or find ways to bundle it into a savings on your account."
[via iPod Observer]
Incipio's Orion ($20) is your basic sleeve/pouch case, designed to keep your iPhone safe in transit, but to be removed when you use the iPhone. The Orion is made from a leather-like material stitched together on three sides to form a pocket with an open top, and it includes a soft, micro-suede liner on the interior. There's no additional padding, though the case is reasonably thick. It's available in any of eight colors--white, green, pink, brown (Zune envy?), burnt orange, blue, black, and camouflage--so you should be able to find one that matches your personal preferences.
The Orion also features Incipio's unique EasyReach system, which makes getting your iPhone out of the tight-fitting case quite simple. EasyReach is a strap that's secured to the inside bottom-front of the case but lays against the inside back of the case. When you push your iPhone down into the Orion, the phone pushes down on the EasyReach strap, pulling it into the case, where it winds up nearly flush with the case's top edge. When it's time to take the iPhone out, a quick pull on the strap pulls the phone out about an inch, from which point it's quite easy to pull out with your fingers. (There's a cutout in the back of the case, so you can easily grab the strap. In the photo at left, you can see the top of the strap extending beyond the case.) If you receive a call when the phone is in the case, the EasyReach strap makes it simple to get to the phone quickly. Apple's Leather Case for iPods offers a similar pull-strap system, but costs $99, thanks to real leather and an internal support structure to strengthen the case.
About the only issue I had with this case is that it definitely affects the volume of the iPhone's ring. If you've chosen a quieter ring, and/or you keep your volume low, you may find that the case makes it difficult to hear when your phone rings--there's no cutout for the speaker, and the case and liner do a fairly effective job of muffling the iPhone's sound.
If you're looking for a relatively inexpensive carrying case that offers good protection for your iPhone's screen and other scratchable parts, the Orion is worth a look.
Incipio's Silicrylic ($30) is a combination silicone and acrylic case that provides protection for everything other than the screen of your iPhone. Putting the case on is a two-step process; you first slide the iPhone into the silicone case, and then slip the now-encased phone into the acrylic surround. The silicone case, which has cutouts for the iPHone's dock-connector port, mute switch, and camera, adds a protective layer of padding and helps secure the iPhone tightly in place inside the acrylic. Four color combinations are available: berry red or light pink silicone with clear acrylic, and mercury or black silicone with smoke acrylic.
The acrylic case surrounds the iPhone on the sides and back, with cutouts for the dock-connector port, Ring/Silent switch, volume buttons, Sleep button, and headphone jack. (The Sleep and Volume buttons are covered by molded sections of the silicone case that allow you to press the buttons through the case.) The headphone jack works fine with Apple's stock headphones, but the silicone case interfered with the connector on a set of Bose headphones that I tried. The back of the acrylic case contains four small holes, through which small "nubs" from the silicone case protrude--these four feet mean your iPhone no longer goes sliding across any smooth surface you may set it on. There's also a larger, thumb-size hole in the middle of the back of the acrylic case. There weren't any instructions included with this case, so at first I was a bit stumped as to its purpose. However, the first time I went to place my iPhone in a dock cradle--which requires removing it from the case--the purpose of the hole became apparent: you remove the iPhone from the acrylic case by pressing your thumb or finger against the silicone case through this hole. The iPhone then pops out of the acrylic, and it's then an easy matter to slide the iPhone out of the silicone case.
I didn't have any typing issues near the edges of the screen as I did with the PDO's Reviso case. That's mainly because the acrylic shell doesn't wrap around the front of the iPhone, and the silicone case isn't very thick. The only real problem I had was with the Ring/Silent switch: it's easy enough to flick down (to silent mode), but the combined acrylic and silicone cases made it difficult for my "fingernail challenged" fingers to flick the switch back to ring mode. My only other complaint with this case is that it offers no screen protection at all, but it's not designed to be worn on your belt. So if you toss your phone in a pocket, the screen is just as exposed as if you had no case on the iPhone at all. On the other hand, if you were to drop your iPhone (though I didn't test this!), the combination of the acrylic and silicone cases seems like it would help cushion the fall--as long as it didn't land on its screen on a sharp object, of course.
Overall, I found this to be a good case. I liked the non-skid feet, and the fact that there's not a lot of added bulk, even with two cases on the iPhone. I could still easily slip the iPhone into my pocket (my preferred carrying method), and I had no issues with slippage of the iPhone within the case.
We've talked about iToner--Ambrosia Software's utility for using any MP3 or AAC file as a ringtone on your iPhone--several times here on iPhone Central. We've now gone all out and given it the full review treatment over on the main Macworld site.
The verdict? I like it a lot and it's the only method for adding custom ringtones that's survived Apple's apparently-half-hearted efforts to prevent them. Head on over and check out the Mac Gems review for all the details.
