Apple made their promises come true. Firmware 2.1 is out now. If you are using a pwned iPhone – don’t update now, as it is unclear at the moment, if the iPhone remains unlocked. According to Apple firmware 2.1 should:
Decrease dropped calls
improve battery life
reduce backup time
improve email reliability (POP and Exchange)
allow faster installation of 3rd party apps
reduce hangs and crashes for users with lots of third party applications (we don’t know either what exactly does “lots” mean?)
improve performance in text messaging
allow faster loading and searching of contacts
improve accuracy of the 3G signal strength display
and some more…
Rumors say updating the iPhone to 2.1 and using QuickPwn with firmware 2.0.2 in order to jailbreak should work. We can’t confirm this and moreover: we definitely recommend not to try this. iPod Touch may want to visit QuickPwn to find further instructions for dealing with 2.1.
As conservative users: wait a couple of days. The iPhone Dev Team is most likely on their marks…
Firmware 2.1 will be released today. As of now, it cannot be pwned – no matter if you are running QuickPwn or PwnageTool. We recommend not to update until further notice.
Current Status
The iPhone Dev Team reports iTunes tries to countermeasure the exploits the well known Pwnage Tool is using. After having compiled a custom firmware with Pwnage Tool or WinPwn, you need to install it using iTunes. Now, iTunes in version 8.0 refuses to install custom firmware, thus combatting Pwnage’s way into the iPhone or the iPod Touch. The iPhone Dev Team released the photo below indicating the error message from iTunes 8, when trying to install a custom firmware to a (not yet) pwned iPod Touch. As of now, it is unknown if iTunes can also detect an already installed custom firmware. Thus allowing original unmodded updates to install. This would also allow the use QuickPwn. iTunes seems not to be able to detect already pwned iPhones. Forum reports say, iTunes 8 still can install custom firmware to an already pwned iPhone. For those guys of you who are running a device fresh from the factory (means not pwned), use QuickPwn as a workaround for now.
Interim solution to pwn a new device:
Use QuickPwn to jailbreak and then Pwn/unlock your device
if you like you can then use Pwnage Tool to create a recovery custom firmware (imho: you don’t need it, after having QuickPwned your devices
Next Steps
Anyway the Dev Team reports, they are working on a way to trick iTunes, thus forcing iTunes to install custom firmwares even on not pwned devices. The iPhone Dev Team is currently prepping a whole lot of patches for iTunes 8, no matter if you are on Windows or on Mac. Patches will be released during the next week.
Update May 5, 2009: EPOS I. does pretty much the same like EFI-X, but is free of charge for endusers. Find EPOS I. here.
We today finally received an EFI-X V1 device for review purposes. As our device arrived from Taiwan, there is obviously a swiss dealer who really got some devices for sale, yet. We get back to you a little later, when we setup our testing lab devices. In the meantime, enjoy some photos…
The higher regional court of Hamburg (Hamburger Oberlandesgericht) yesterday ruled in favor of T-Mobile. Sipgate is not allowed to promote or distribute its iPhone application that allowed Voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephony on jailbroken iPhones anymore.
The issue is not the application, but installing Sipgates VoIP client required to jailbreak the iPhone. And jailbreaking of T-Mobile’s customer’s iPhones is illegal in germany. By the way: jailbreaking of iPhones bought abroad is not.
This project grew from a little idea. The idea was to share knowledge about things you can hardly find anywhere else on the net. As we moved forward this project grew and still grows. Each day thousands of people from all over the world visit our pages. In the beginning we were happy with 4,000 visitors a month. In peak times we currently got more than 2,000 visitors per day. Thanks to all of you guys.
Anyway, we realized without searching you cannot find too much on our pages. That’s why we decided to change the categories and the structure of our pages a little bit. Also the weighting of the “similar news” has been adjusted. We expect you to find things much easier and faster.
I you like: drop us a line and tell us what you think…
Firmware 2.1 is already available for iPod Touch customers. If you are already using firmware 2.0 this update will be free of charge. If you are running a firmware revision below 2.0 an upgrade fee will apply. iPhone users need to wait a little longer. Apple will begin seeding firmware 2.1 on friday, 12th of september. As always: for iPhone customers this upgrade is free of charge. Why buying an iPod Touch anyway?
Apple announced this upgrade will:
fix connection terminations
fix system hang ups
prolong battery time
accelerate iTunes backup synchronisation
improve 3G connections
iPhone Dev Team: get on your marks. 6million iPhone users are expecting your help tomorrow :-)
Jim Goldmann of CNBC interviewed Steve Jobs on tuesday. Steve talks about their new iPod holiday collection, about bugs in the iPhone 3G and Microsoft’s new advertisments. Steve – as always – is kinda simpatico, but he definitly looks a little bit thinner than last year.
Running news clients with the built-in Windows Firewall, you will usually get fullspeed when accessing the usenet. Problems occur when you use All-in-One Internet-Firewall-and-Virus-Scan solutions. Since Virus-Scanners and Firewalls tend to scan all the network traffic with heuristic algorithms, scanning may slow down internet (and usenet) access. The following article demonstrates how to configure the widely spread Kaspersky Internet Security to allow fullspeed access to the usenet.
Preparations
We assume you know how to setup your news client and you already installed Kaspersky Internet Security (KIS).
Setting up KIS
Open up your KIS and do the following:
click the Settings Button (see picture)
on the next window click the Threats and Exclusions Button (see picture)
on the next window click the Add Button (see picture)
on the next window click the Do not scan network traffic Checkbox (see picture) and then click the Browse Button to choose your News Client (see picture).
Then save your settings and restart your News Client application and you’re done.
More questions? Don’t hesitate to ask below. Thanks for your attention :-)
[Update] Sept 26th, 2008: Added the SRWare Iron browser under Downloads
The Next Browser War
The next Browser War has begun yesterday night, when Google released their new view on the Web. A new Browser called “Chrome“. Chrome is the most powerful weapon, when it comes to the question: how to connect services locally stored on your PC with services available on the net.
Microsoft – the market leader in the field of operating systems – cannot be amused about that. Chrome has the potential to make a large amount of local stored services (like Office solutions) dispensable, means: what will we need Windows for?
The Thing with the Privacy
But it is that simple only from the view of the economists. Highlighting the potentials is their sphere of action. With a sociological view people will ask, why they should give eben more private data in the hands of Google. Google’s only ambition is making money through advertisements, thus giving away for free all the services people will need in order to provide the users with customer specific advertisements.
Even now Google has already collected more private data than Microsoft ever had the possibility to. And every Chrome installation got a unique serial number integrated. That serial will be used for tracking and aggregation of customer behaviour data. We will see how people will agree with Google’s strategy.
The Future
What likely is: the end of Mozilla could be coming silently. In the past Mozilla actually was bankrolled by Google: 85% of their revenue comes from Google (read here and here). Although Google and Mozilla prolonged their sponsoring contracts until 2011, there is basically no need for Google to sponsor Mozilla anymore, when supplying an own browser like Chrome.
Google’s battle against Microsoft has reached a new level of escalation. We’re quite certain to see Microsoft’s answer very soon.
