December 2007: Monthly Archive

The unlocked German iPhones are no more — the Judge for the Vodafone vs. T-Mobile lawsuit reversed the injunction that required T-Mobile to sell unlocked iPhones. And now that they don’t have to sell the iPhone unlocked, they’re not going to — the unlocked iPhone is gone from Germany. The officially unlocked iPhone is still available in France for much less than it was in Germany anyway. Vive le revolution!

The iPhone edged out the entirety of all Windows CE-based devices in web usage according to data provided by Market Share at Hitslink.com. The iPhone came in at #10 with 0.09%, whereas Windows CE weighed in at 0.06% for #11. You read that, Dieter? We’re #10! We’re #10! The iPod on their list, which I’m forced to assume is the iPod Touch, shows up at around 0.01%. We’re #10 and #20! We’re #10 and #20!

Of course, the list is dominated by the big desktop operating systems, but there are a few other interesting gems on the list: The Sidekick / Hiptop shows up at #13 with 0.02%, and Nokia’s S60 Symbian OS shows up at #14 with 0.01%. The PSP just edges out the iPod Touch for #19 at 0.01%, and what appears to be a mobile version of Apple’s WebCore shows up again at #24 with 0.00% — possibly one of Nokia’s internet tablet devices.

Raffi Krikorian of Synthesis Studios wrote to inform me that they’ve reverse-engineered how the Starbucks button works. Most of the Starbucks shops out there aren’t going to get the hookup with wi-fi for about a year. I asked them about it, and they’ll be disclosing the process soon.

“we managed to figure out how to get the starbucks button to show up on our iphones — [if you happen to be in] Boston, MA — then you can pop by our offices to check it out. we were too impatient to wait for the starbucks in boston to get the starbucks button our iphones, so we took matters into our own hands

It’s always nice to see folks making their own fun. This fun was apparently done with a laptop, an iPhone, and a train ticket to NY, as you can see here. Thanks to Raffi for the tip!

Gizmodo reports that the creators of iPhone unlocking app AnySIM have considered open-sourcing their application to spread their code far and wide, hopefully picking up many new coders and eyeballs in the process. They’ve apparently floated the idea about for a while, and found that no one objected to the deal. They then put the idea to the community at hackint0sh, a popular iPhone hacking forum and AnySIM’s main site. Reading from the threads on hackint0sh, it appears that initially most folks advocate keeping the source closed; if you’d rather read a more open-source friendly version of the same discussion there’s always slashdot. [image credit Jesus Diaz of Gizmodo]

George Hotz, the eminent iPhone hacker that was part of the team that first unlocked their iPhones, continues to hack away at the security that prevents iPhone users from mucking around with activations, unlocks, and unofficial 3rd party applications. Specifically, he found a couple of errors in the bootloader that theoretically should allow folks to install custom firmware to their iPhone, or just re-flash earlier, less locked versions of their cell radio. One of the hacks uses hardware, the other uses software. It seems that he’s doing well at RIT and I’m glad to see that he hasn’t moved on to other devices.

Mark Sullivan of PC World compiled a list of five technology groups that frequently conspired to be anti-consumer. That, or they were really just a bunch of jerks. Well, AT&T makes the list twice, showing up in the list for various groups they belong to at #3 and #4. Well, they kind of show up in #5 too — #5 is a critique of most wireless carrier parties involved in the 700 MHz auction that Google’s part of. What kept AT&T from being at #1 and #2? Big pharma and the recording industry. Not too shabby!