We mentioned the release of iTunes and Quicktime in our podcast yesterday, but haven’t provided any release notes. There’s not a lot in terms of content for anyone deciding to update or not. Ambrosia reports that iToner still works — though the initial update will wipe out iToner ringtones, you can easily sync them over. The iTunes doesn’t touch a user’s library file, so there shouldn’t be any risk of anything. The QuickTime update includes improvements for converting video for the iPhone. Are you excited about this? Yah, me neither.
Changewave released information from their latest survey, and the iPhone is tops again. 2% of the 3654 people surveyed have iPhones. Of the people that have iPhones, 82% are “Very Satisfied,” up 5% since the last survey in July and tops in the list. The only company with “Very Satisfied” ratings above 50% is RiM with the Blackberry series. Best yet, the iPhone is set to capture a bit more than 2% — Changewave reports that a full 16% of all people surveyed intend to purchase an iPhone within the next 6 months. Quoth Tobin Smith, founder of Changewave:
There’s no longer any doubt about the staying power of the iPhone. The continuing embrace of the iPhone by the public is a stellar example of how a new product can forever alter its own playing field.”
It’s unfortunately kind of a high and low quote; he’s right about the ‘alter its own playing field’ bit. But show me anyone who thought the iPhone was just going to go away.
Unlocking has been going on for about a day now. What are the various gadget sites saying about it?
tuaw.com doesn’t care, claiming that only Europeans care. Everyone else is too worried about their warranty.
Gizmodo reports that various hacking groups are already hard at work reverse-engineering the software unlock. Jon Lech Johansen, widely known as “DVD Jon” for the work he did unlocking DVDs, is supposedly hard at work reverse-engineering the hack. At least a part of the iPhoneDevWiki hacking crowd is still working independently on their unlock. Gizmodo is not happy about the software unlock situation, they want it to be free. But you can get a free unlock just by commenting on their web page. Even if you do get it, it’s not like iPhoneSimFree’s unlock is without its own set of problems. Did I say is? I meant was. A new version of their SIM software that has no problems available:
“It has been brought to our attention mainly through this article that there was a small bug in our code. This bug has now been resolved we will be forwarding the new simfree.app to all our currently registered resellers.”
There’s some posts at hackint0sh that indicate the iPhone might have a hardware unlock code, and some entries at iPhone JTAG that might corroborate that. Might, you have to take this with a big grain of salt. A BIG grain; iPhoneDevWiki lists nothing new. Except for their new jailbreak app. Oooh, new jailbreak app! [via]
Some of the Finnish folks of F-Secure decided to freeze an iPhone. Why? To see what would happen, and nothing really did. If you want proof, there’s a dull YouTube video.
The iPhone Blog merged with the Phone different site in May of 2008. Both sites were founded on a premise that comes one from one of Apple's old slogans: Think different. The iPhone Blog: for people who dare to phone different.
