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There has been so much jailbreak/unlock news as of late, it’s enough to make your head spin. So let’s end this week with two more tidbits of news from the community.

The Dev Team has released yet another demo video. This time they are showing off their iPhone 3GS 3.0 ultrasn0w unlock. Please keep in mind for the unlock to work you cannot update to 3.1 — and yes, this includes the 3.1 beta.

It’s pretty well known in the jailbreak community that the Dev Team delayed releasing their iPhone 3GS jailbreak for their own reasons. Well someone else has stepped up to the plate to bring you a iPhone 3GS jailbreak alternative. iPhone original hacker, George Hotz, has released purplera1n which is currently only available to Windows users (not Windows 7 though). Mac users don’t panic, your version is coming soon!

In his latest blog post, not only does George explain the steps you must take to jailbreak your iPhone 3GS, he is pretty vocal on why he has decided to release purplera1n to the public.

Normally I don’t make tools for the general public, and rather wait for the dev team to do it. But guys, whats up with waiting until 3.1? That isn’t how the game is played. We release, Apple fixes, we find new holes. It isn’t worth waiting because you might have the “last” hole in the iPhone. What last hole…this isn’t golf. I’ll find a new one next week. Also your purplera1nyday files ensure that you can always get back to a jailbroken state, so if you have it it’s just a matter of tools.

Has this brought back to life a heated rivalry? It’s time to sit back, relax, and jailbreak!

And as always, TiPb and staff take no responsibility for any bricking, failures, security risks, etc… that may occur during the jailbreak process. Proceed at your own risk!

[Not iPhone-friendly video -- we know -- please encourage them to post video to YouTube in the future. Thanks to everyone who sent these in!]

Turns out that if you jailbreak your iPhone you remove most of the Apple’s security protections — 80% to be exact — and are vulnerable to attacks. At least according to Charlie Miller:

“If you care about security, don’t use a jailbroken iPhone,”

Miller, speaking at SyScan in Singapore, believes that by jailbreaking you open your device some major risks. The operating system on an iPhone is basically a watered down version of Mac OS X. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Macs, Mac OS X is the latest OS that Apple computers run. Macs are generally known for pretty risk-free machines with a few exceptions. Those exceptions being Java, Adobe Flash, and PDF files. The major risk on the iPhone is opening your device up to any application available on Cydia/Icy. iPhones will generally only run applications that are digitally signed by Apple, this is not the case when jailbroken. So if you don’t know what you are installing, there is a possibility you can be in for a world of hurt.

Of course just a few hours ago Rene told you about the huge vulnerability within the iPhone’s SMS application that Charlie found, so nothing is completely safe.

Does this scare you away from jailbreaking your iPhone? Perhaps you are thinking about doing a restore and going legit from now on? Let us know if this warning from Charlie sways you to avoid the jailbreaking life!

[Via Macworld]

The latest piece of hardware to come out of Cupertino, Apple’s iPhone 3GS, has claimed the honor of being ranked number 1 in Consumer Reports new smartphone ratings. Now does this come as a surprise to anyone? In all actuality, it was pretty close within the top 8 devices: (Device/Overall Score):

• iPhone 3GS (16 GB) 73
• iPhone 3G (8 GB) 70
• Samsung Omnia 69
• BlackBerry Storm 69
• HTC G1 69
• BlackBerry Bold 69
• Samsung Epix 69
• Palm Pre 67

While the race to top honors was anything but a blow-out, the iPhone shined when it came to it’s 3.5-inch widescreen display, top of the line multimedia, ease of navigation, web browsing, and battery life. Devices like the Palm Pre, among others, beat out Apple’s gem when it came to messaging along with superior multitasking capabilities.

So the iPhone ranked number 1 this year as it did almost two years ago, congratulations goes out to Apple for a continuing job well done!

Update - We love our friends over at PreCentral.net so to be fair we wanted to let it be known the Palm Pre did not come in last place, we simply just cut the list off after the Pre. For the full list please visit the Consumer Reports site.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

We already knew Apple sold — and upsold — 1 million iPhone 3GS devices opening weekend, but an internal memo shows just how big an event that was for AT&T. Massive summer blockbuster, thy name is iPhone 3GS.

On this year’s launch day, iPhone sales exceeded sales recorded on 2008’s iPhone launch day, Black Friday 2008 and Dec. 26, 2008 — all heavy-volume sales days. In fact, this year we surpassed 2008’s launch day sales at about noon Central time, and sustained our previous peak hour record, also set in 2008, for 11 straight hours.

Now imagine how many they would have sold if MMS and tethering were ready, and they’d expanding their network to better handle iPhone traffic.

(What, the dead horse had it coming!)

[Via MacDailyNews, thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

In an ideal world, Mac and iPhone hacker Charlie Miller would discover vulnerabilities, inform Apple, and Apple would then patch them before they had any chance of being exploited “in the wild”.

Miller, however, prefers to keep them to himself so he can win MacBooks and detail them at Black Hat conferences. The good of the hacker obviously outweighs the good of the users, every one. So be it.

Miller’s latest iPhone-related find was disclosed at SyScan in Signapore:

a hole that would let attackers “run software code on the phone that is sent by SMS over a mobile operator’s network in order to monitor the location of the phone using GPS, turn on the phone’s microphone to eavesdrop on conversations, or make the phone join a distributed denial of service attack or a botnet.”

Apple, for their part, is hoping to have this patched before Miller’s upcoming Black Hat gig.

We hope so too.

[via Engadget. Thanks Travis for the tip!]

Rolando 2 Quest for the Golden Orchid [$9.99 - iTunes link], available now for the iPhone (and iPod touch) shows that Ngmoco not only takes great gaming concepts and beautifully renders them on the iPhone, but that they can make those great concepts and renders even better.

New gameplay includes a 3D stylized world, driving, swimming, and flying, and — now the Rolandos can fight back!

The first Rolando game won TiPb’s Editor’s Choice Award last time around, how does the new one stack up? If you give it a try, let us know!

Well, well, what do we have here? Seems one Britney Spears is using an iPhone in her new music video, Radar. Leanna assures us it’s at the very beginning, so if your head is turned more by gadgets than starlets, you can get your fix early before you lose an ear or anything.

However, if you love some Britney vids, enjoy the double pop-culture dose.

A slew of new Apple patent applications have come to light covering a rather odd range of functionality that may — or may not — make it into future iPhone software and hardware models.

First up is haptic feedback via a “grid of piezoelectronic actuators”, which would provide a varied tactile response when touching the iPhone screen to better orient users (and let them type without locking their eyes on the keyboard, ideally).

Second is a technology that seeks to identify fingerprints — i.e. not only that a user has touched the screen, but which specific finger touched the screen. So, for example, touching with the index finger would produce a different reaction than touching with the middle finger.

Third is for placing a RFID (radio frequency identification) reader in the screen so that, in addition to finger touches (and multi-touches), it could identify the unique tag given to objects as well.

Lastly is a method for letting users sing to the iPhone, and having the iPhone provide feedback on tone, pitch, etc. Basically, rating the quality of your karaoke — or of the latest pre-packaged Hollywood auto-tune single, we imagine.

Again, there’s no telling when, or if at all, Apple will release real-world products based on these patents, but they do give some hint as to which direction(s) Apple’s thinking.

Anyone want any of the them now?

[Via MacRumors twice]

Whether the idea of push notification for the iPhone Facebook app makes you want to do a happy dance, or just run screaming for the delete button, according to a recently published note, you won’t be getting it in the 98% completed Facebook 3.0 anyway:

Push Notifications, is in development but it won’t make it into 3.0. You can expect it in a 3.1 update later this summer.

So what will Facebook 3.0 bring? The “new” news feed, ability to “like” status, events with rsvp, notes, pages, better photo management and browsing, a new home screen, fixed comment notifications, SMS and call from friends screen, and auto-save so incoming calls don’t kill your unfinished messages.

[via Facebook, thanks @sil3ntrid3r11 for the tip]

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber posted the following last night:

A decade ago, my first PowerBook was a secondary machine to the desktop anchored at my desk. Now, my main machine is my MacBook Pro, but it feels a bit like an anchor now. My mobile secondary computer is my iPhone

A couple of friends of mine who work in IT administration have been telling me the same thing since the iPhone 3G launched. One of them recently left his laptop behind and took only an iPhone with him on a motorcycle trip and conference, and was still able to keep on top of his servers.

While the sheer volume of writing and editing demanded by TiPb still keeps me chained to a laptop, I’ll also admit to leaving the MacBook behind and running out with only my iPhone whenever I can — and yes, I’ve been likewise amazed at not only how much I can now accomplish with a mobile computing device, but how easily I can accomplish it.

Have you been using your iPhone as a laptop replacement? How does it fit your work needs, and what have your results been so far?