Eventually the iPhone Dev Team released QuickPwn 2.1 for Windows. They really don’t seem to sleep never. It supports firmware 2.1. It jailbreaks, activates and unlocks iPhone 2G devices and jailbreaks iPhone 3G. It sadly still does not unlock iPhone 3G. Using is very straightforward. Kudos to the Dev Team :-)
» Download QuickPwn here (sha1 f8124d0e8f31f64ef3272de8fbc679e1dd1f93a7)
Starting on 1st of october, 2008, T-Mobile Germany is going to offer the iPhone 3G with a prepaid plan for 569€ including 100€ calling credit. Following features will apply:
The iPhone will still have the SIM Lock and will not work with other german or international carriers.
Storyline
The new game “Spore” by Electronic Arts hasn’t got much positive news since its release. In the first place potential customers would not buy it, because of its copy protection. Electronic Arts decided to combat potential piracy by applying a new version of the SecuRom copy protection.
Technical Details of the Protection
This new version requires to activate your legally purchased copy online. That’s nothing new. Many games and software applications nowadays require online activation. The point with this SecuRom protection is: it forces the players to re-validate their activation every 10 days. Thus meaning the stand alone game would not be playable for users being not connected to the internet.
The Reaction of the (potential) Customers
In the eyes of the customers this was unacceptable. Thousands of customers reviewed “Spore” with a single star on Amazon.com:
Anyway, by investigating this “Spore” issue a little bit deeper the german Golem.de (original article here, german only) found: people really like “Spore”, but they don’t like the copy protection. Within a week “Spore” has been transferred to 500,000 computers worldwide via the well known Pirate Bay Bittorrent Tracker. “Spore” currently ranks first on Pirate Bay downloads:
EA managers must feel this is real irony. Instead of protecting their investment into a very good game, potential customers are now downloading the already cracked copy without any protection from the internet for free.
Our Comment
Although we can’t tell from reality, we expect more people would have bought this game, if the protection wouldn’t have been so annoying to the masses. Anyway the “Spore” issue is one of the best case studies for the question how DRM is recognized by potential customers. In our opinion, media industry should begin to face four basic facts:
Otherwise the problem of the music industry will repeat itself for the movie industry and the gaming industry aswell. Protections will never stop people from cracking and distributing digital goods on the net, but that’s not the point here. Everything here with DRM in general is about a feeling.
If customers feel like they are taken seriously as partners of the industry and consumers of their products, it’s more likely that they buy something they feel it’s worth it. People will never feel something worth buying if the limitations are so big that getting it the illegal way is much more stressless
Finally Apple released update 10.5.5 yesterday. Features of 10.5.5 include Apple’s recent security updates, Addressbook bugfixes and lots of other fixes (read all details here). To sum things up: Apple recommends to apply this update as soon as possible. And yes we will obey.
All genuine Mac users can safely update. There are no reports about problems. You may do so using the Software Update App.
OSX86 user may wait some days, we are just examining the steps. Most likely best thing is to download the Combo Update from here and use our instructions here. People report broken audio drivers on ALC883 chipsets (AppleHDA patcher solved this). We’ll get back to you once we checked out all the details.
Abstract
Avatron Air Sharing allows copying files from and to the iPhone wireless, thus allowing to use the iPhone similar to a portable harddrive. The only condition is to use a WebDAV compatible up- and download program (find a list below the picture).
Supported File Formats
Air Sharing also allows to preview files on the iPhone itself. It supports the following formats as previews:
Prices and Availability
The software is available for free in the introduction phase. After 22nd of September, 2008 it will cost 6.99US$. So hurry up, guys :-)
WebDAV programs
Windows:
Linux:
MacOS X
Nullriver reports, their tethering software Netshare remains banned from Apple’s official AppStore. Netshare allowed MacOS X users to use the iPhone as a wireless modem to connect to the internet. While most of nowadays’ cell phones include such functionality, the iPhone still doesn’t.
Besides Nullriver many other developers critisize Apple’s AppStore policies for being too vage. In the past weeks Apple banned several Apps or even disallowed them in the first place. Apple argued the banned apps had a limited value of benefit for the AppStore customers. Developers argue Apple doesn’t want real competition.
Abstract
As Holger Meyer puts it: “Karajan is an easy to use music and ear training application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It provides lessons for learning to recognize intervals, chords, scales, pitch and tempo (bpm) with detailed statistics. Karajan is a great tool for music theory students, whether they are in junior high, high school, or college. It is also very useful for every hobby musician.”
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What we say
Karajan is our APP OF THE WEEK. Karajan is pure fun. Improving our music skills is fairly easy with this program. Karajan includes:
Karajan is available in two versions. The beginner version does not include all functions, but is free of charge. Get it from the AppStore (links are provided below). For first testing purposes this is the app of your choice.
Karajan is really easy to handle. See this video here:
Suggestions
We wonder, why this has not been released for a Mac yet? Holger, come on…
Download
» Get “Karajan Beginner” for free here…
» Get “Karajan” (14.99US$ or 11.99€) here…
We read all over the net and found some solutions to the most common issues that occurred. If you are kinda conservative user, we’d recommend not to update to firmware 2.1 and wait until a PwnageTool and QuickPwn update has been released. Since the iPhone Dev Team is reacting very fast, this should take only some days.
Known Workarounds:
Error 1600 and Error 6: restore with stock firmware 2.1, then QuickPwn (you may then put into restore mode and install custom IPSW, but it’s not necessary- credits to “HomeGrown”).
Error 1600: when Pwnage asks, if already pwned your device, answer NO, no matter if you pwned if before or not (credits to “Maurofoto”)
Error 1600: let iTunes download firmware 2.1 again (you may delete it from the local folder if you already downloaded it via iTunes. Folder on a Mac: ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Update/), then exit iTunes, prep a custom IPSW using Pwnage, delete the iTunes downloaded firmware from the above mentioned folder again and copy your custom IPSW to that folder, but name it exactly as the original firmware was named (credits to “Markat”)
Loading ...The iPhone Dev Team did it again. Firmware 2.1 has been released yesterday and PwnageTool and QuickPwn are yet updated to support jailbreaking and unlocking. Nice! Besides support of firmware 2.1, the iPhone Dev Team found a way to even fool the new iTunes 8 pwnage detection (read our recent article here). Now iTunes 8 will install custom firmware compiled with PwnageTool again – no patching or modifying of iTunes 8 required…
[Update] 14th of Sept, 2008: People report issues with different errors. We are just prepping a collection of workarounds. Find them in some minutes here.
Kudos to the Dev Team !!!
» Download QuickPwn here… (SHA: 0b2dcb51e224b12590793e8a758dd80c450e5b64)
» Download PwnageTool here… (SHA: 92487230c66296ec1e414260b5f107e5d351923f)
Windows Vista users complain about complete operating system crashs resulting in blue screens. iTunes 8 for Windows seems to have the following issues, when using under Vista:
But Apple already reacted and distributes now a fixed version. This implies you need to uninstall your current iTunes 8, then download the fixed iTunes 8 and install ii.