So now that it's out that Apple is spying on you, people have been clamoring for a way to hide your IMEI from the all-seeing eye of Apple's Stocks and Weather applications. These apps send your IMEI as well as your iPhone firmware version to Apple for their nefarious usage statistic processing. This is a big deal, because the IMEI is sent in plaintext, over any Wi-fi network you may currently be connected to. So anyone listening on that network will be able to grab your IMEI and do stuff with it, like, um, yeah, I'm not sure they can do anything with it.
Until now you just had to avoid the Stocks and Weather apps and/or wrap your phone in tin foil to prevent them from reading your thoughts.
Concomitantly, I have produced a simple command-line utility to patch out the nefarious code from Stocks and Weather allowing you to check your portfolio and the weather without worrying about sending your IMEI to Apple.
What the utility does is scan for the URL that the app uses to talk to Apple, and zeroes out the part where it includes your IMEI.
Download now (binary and source)
Source is included because open-source is the bomb. It also makes backups because you may want to start sending your IMEI again. You know, if they get to you.
Right now the patcher does not prevent Stocks or Weather from functioning but as the Stocks and Weather functionality is served from Apple, they could easily disable patched applications remotely. So if they stop working you'll have a fair idea why.
And while you're installing dangerous 3rd party software onto your iPhone, why not also try some hilarious 3rd party software too? You won't regret it. Return to Nate True's blog
As 2010 comes to a close, Verizon Wireless is rumored to be on a hiring spree prior to carrying the iPhone. CNET reports that the company is hiring "hundreds" of call center personnel, who will be trained to handle support calls for "personal computers and portable devices like MP3 players and smartphones." Of course, Apple, the iPhone and Verizon are never mentioned in this story, and any connection is based upon supposition. Customer service call center staffing companies Teleperformance and Ryla are said to be recruiting on behalf of a "major wireless cell phone service retailer." Both companies have prior experience supporting Verizon and Teleperformance has worked with Apple.
Rumors of a Verizon iPhone have persisted for years. Last April, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg, told Apple outright that Verizon wants to carry the iPhone on its network, and the Wall Street Journal suggested that it could happen just a few weeks ago.
[Via MacDailyNews]
Whether by intention or not, Apple is failing to crank out iPhone 4s fast enough to supply the millions of potential customers who demand one. How else do you explain the high prices that iPhone 4s are selling for on eBay?
An Advanced Search of the completed listings for “iPhone 4? on eBay turns up results for over a thousand iPhones that have recently sold for anywhere between $985 to $2,650.
I estimated about 1,200 iPhone 4s were sold between June 29 and July 12 in the price range of $999 to $2,650. The vast majority of those sold for somewhere between $950 and $1,200.
The ones selling in the $2,000 ballpark usually claim to be unlocked or “unlockable.” It remains tricky (if not impossible) to jailbreak and unlock an iPhone 4, so be wary if you expect an unlocked iPhone from an eBay seller.
I have yet to receive my iPhone 4 in the mail, and will be waiting until August 5, according to my purchase confirmation email from Apple. If the eBay iPhone market is any indication, my patience will save me a considerable amount of money.
What’s the highest you would be willing to bid for an iPhone 4 on eBay?
Recommend this post to your friends and followers:
Get more iPhone insights, reviews & how-to's on Facebook & Twitter.topic: News & Discussion | Tags: Apple, iPhone 4, iPhone on eBay
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Oct 25th 2010 7:32PM 
That didn't take long, did it? The promised beta of Windows Phone 7's Mac-friendly companion app is now available, bringing basic media sync capability -- notably with iTunes and iPhoto integration -- to that shiny new Microsoft-powered phone of yours. In fact, Microsoft delivered the client so fast that it beat every single American WP7 device to market -- so AT&T and T-Mobile folks, you can rest easy knowing that you'll be Mac-compatible from day one. Notably, the so-called Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac lacks any Zune functionality; Microsoft has never written a true Zune client for Mac, unfortunately, but at least this is a critical first step that makes these things usable for Mac owners that aren't tied to the iPhone. Let us know how the app treats you in comments, alright?
Iconfactory has given a sneak peek at its upcoming Twitterrific version 4 for the Mac. There's no information yet on pricing or release date, but it will require Snow Leopard "...because of some new features."
The announcement includes a screenshot but not much more. In fact, if you look carefully you can see that the screenshot shows a DM from @twitterrific saying "Make sure you don't show them everything in the screenshot, it's always nice to have some surprises!" What a tease.
The announcement also reminds us that the 'Factory has been hard at work on other apps, like Pickin' Time and the recently released Take Five, not to mention the iPhone and iPad versions of Twitterrific.
If you missed last night's Talkcast, Ged Maheux was our guest, and shared some of his initial thoughts about the Mac App Store. You can listen or download to the episode here.
Twitterrific was my first Twitter app and I still love it on the iPad, but the Mac version...well, the Mac version has gotten a bit long in the tooth. I can't wait to see what gets done in version 4. Code faster, guys!
iOS4 brought some much-needed improvements to the iPhone in terms of app management. Now, apps can be grouped into folders and a multitasking panel lets you switch among active apps (for 3GS users only). The problem is, these features are underwhelming additions to a platform that should have had these capabilities as soon as the App Store was introduced.
Apple should have added folders to iPhone two years ago. What they should be doing at this point is paying attention to the details and making the app management process more fluid.
As I began to drag app icons from page to page to organize my folders, I wondered why that process is so difficult. I had to move each app, one by one, across pages to its destination folder. Why can’t Apple simply apply the same select/copy/paste system to icons to make organizing apps a cinch?
Another thing that’s sorely missing from the iPhone is a notification handling system. The iPhone is far too advanced to be missing this feature. Right now, if I get a notification for an item in my Todo list and I close it, I will never see that notification again. iPhone is in desperate need of a notification handling system (like Facebook) so that I can keep track of my many notifications. If I choose to be notified about something, then it’s obviously important enough to me to be kept in a list of recent notifications.
It seems to me that Apple did not think ahead when it introduced the App Store. When the iPhone came out, everyone cried for third party apps and Apple told us to use web apps.
Then, the App Store hit the iPhone and you quickly had a mess of icons cluttering pages and pages of your iPhone. Furthermore, to this day you are still forced to keep Apple’s default apps on your iPhone, even if you don’t need them. I never use Stocks, Contacts or Weather yet I can’t delete them. How arrogant of Apple to force us to keep their rarely-updates junk apps.
Folders and multitasking are great, but Apple, please give us the following to make using the iPhone a better experience:
Let us grab and drag multiple apps at once to organize into folders.Let us choose to delete default apps that are useless to us, like Stocks, Weather and Contacts in my case.Give us a history of notifications so that we can keep track of our important items.These are the features I hope to see in the iOS 4.1 iPhone update.
Are folders enough or does iPhone still need some app handling improvements?
Recommend this post to your friends and followers:
Get more iPhone insights, reviews & how-to's on Facebook & Twitter.topic: News & Discussion | Tags: Folders, iOS4, iPhone Problems, Notifications
I assume you already know about the major features in the iOS4 iPhone update like multitasking and folders, but what small changes has Apple made to the iPhone in this update?
Here are the seven iOS4 features that have intrigued me the most — note: I own an iPhone 3GS:
Whenever music is playing in the background, you can bring up rewind, fast-forward and play/pause controls by swiping right in the multitasking panel. (To go to the multitasking panel, double-tap your home button.) To lock your iPhone into portrait (vertical) orientation at any point, go to the multitasking panel by double-tapping your home button, swipe right, then tap the lock to fix your iPhone’s orientation in portrait mode.To add Bing as your default search engine, go to Settings >> Safari >> Bing. I am not a fan of Bing myself, but Apple has added Microsoft’s search engine to the iPhone for those of you who are.A section has been added to the Settings to add or remove certain types of searches from Spotlight Search. For example, you can now exclude notes and messages from Spotlight for privacy or convenience purposes.You can now turn off all cellular data in Settings >> General >> Network. Whenever I’m low on battery, I temporarily turn off 3G, but EDGE always used to remain on. Now, I can turn off all cellular data to preserve my battery for important uses only.If someone who is in your Contacts emails you, you will see their photo next to the subject heading.Perhaps the coolest “mini-feature” is the ability to zoom in the camera viewfinder. Simply tap the screen when in Camera and a zoom bar will appear at the bottom. Slide the zoom bar to zoom in and out.
What do you like most about the latest iOS4 iPhone update?
Recommend this post to your friends and followers:
Get more iPhone insights, reviews & how-to's on Facebook & Twitter.topic: News & Discussion | Tags: iOS4, iPhone Features, iPhone update, List Posts
View the original article here
My inbox has been overflowing with various questions about the 1.1.3 jailbreak, including numerous failures (I said there was risk, didn't I?). So I put this FAQ together to try and answer the most common ones. If your phone is broken please scroll down to the PANIC section below.
Read on for the FAQ. 
Questions before you upgrade
I've heard that your update will break when the SDK comes out.
That's all speculation for now - when the SDK comes out I will be testing for it, and I will release a fix if something is amiss.
I am have an iPhone. Is it safe to upgrade?
First off, I can't guarantee that an upgrade will go as planned. However, the upgrade does not make irreversible changes - you will be able to restore your iPhone from any state the upgrader leaves it in (unless your iPhone is already broken). To see what you can do with your phone, consult this list:
The iPhone can-I-upgrade list
1.0.0 to 1.0.2 phone: You must upgrade to 1.1.1 or 1.1.2 before continuing. If your phone has been unlocked (modified to work with a non-AT&T carrier) with anything other than iPhone SIM Free, you will not be able to proceed without re-locking your phone by upgrading to 1.1.3. Otherwise you're clear.
1.1.1 phone, unmodified: You need to head to "jailbreakme.com" to install Installer.app on your phone. After that you can perform the 1.1.3 soft upgrade.
1.1.1 phone, with Installer.app: You're clear to do the upgrade.
1.1.2 phone, unmodified: You need to do a downgrade to 1.1.1. Then go to 1.1.1 unmodified instructions.
1.1.2 phone, modified through Oktoprep and jailbreak.jar: You're clear to upgrade.
1.1.3 phone, unmodified: You need to downgrade to 1.1.1 first. Then go to 1.1.1 unmodified instructions.
An iPod Touch, any version: My upgrade is not for you. However, the official jailbreak from the Dev Team will work for you - so do that instead!
Questions / problems while running the image builder
iBrickr says my phone is not jailbroken.
Re-download iBrickr - I re-published it to not require a jailbreak.
iBrickr uploads the image to my phone very quickly. You said it would take 10 minutes!
That generally means that the creation of the image failed. iBrickr needs 300 megabytes of free RAM on your computer (this is a requirement of sdelta3 which does the patching). Try quitting unnecessary applications or using a more powerful computer. Also try re-downloading the application (I made some minor changes recently).
I'm using the Mac version and Run_This says there's no default application. What should I do?
Open Terminal.app (Command-Space, type Terminal, press Enter) and drag Run_This onto the black window that comes up. Then follow the instructions.
I have a PowerPC Mac. Can I run the Mac image builder?
No. I have no idea how to compile PowerPC binaries. If someone wants to compile them and send them to me I will post them.
I run Linux. Can I run the image builder?
Yes! Download the Mac version and re-compile vfdecrypt, dmg2img, and sdelta3 using the sources included ("make" in each folder should suffice). Then the script will run for you except for the final iPhone upload - upload 113_upgrade_image.bin to your phone using SFTP or something, to the /var/root/Media/softupgrade folder (which you will have to create).
Questions / problems while running the 1.1.3 soft upgrade from Installer
I don't see the "1.1.3 soft upgrade" package in my Installer.
Make sure you have the "Community Sources" package installed, and hit "Refresh" in the Sources tab. It should show up under "All packages".
When I install the package, it says "Main script execution error". When I hit OK it looks like it crashed.
This happens to some people, but it doesn't appear to affect operation. Your phone should update in about 10 minutes and reboot by itself. If that doesn't happen, you'll need to restore and try again.
When I install the package, it completely crashes my phone with the progress bar at halfway.
This is normal. It's updating your phone - don't touch it! Just leave it plugged in and let it do its thing. It's okay if your screen turns off too.
Questions / problems after the last reboot
Help! My phone is stuck at the Apple logo!
First, give it some time. Sometimes it just takes a while (up to 4 minutes) to boot. If that didn't work, your upgrade has failed. You need to follow the restore instructions further down.
Help! My phone has the "Connect to iTunes" graphic!
Your upgrade has failed. You need to follow the restore instructions further down
Why does the Google Maps My Location feature suck?
The 1.1.3 soft-upgrade does not upgrade the iPhone's cell phone radio. The new radio has features that aid Google Maps when there is no Wi-fi signal available. So the Maps app only has your Wi-fi positioning information to go on. Users have reported success installing Navizon or LocateMe, and using it once; then Google Maps starts working.
Why don't iTunes Store previews work?
This one I'm not sure about. They work for me. *shrug*
Why is there 300 megabytes of 'Other' eating up my phone after I upgrade?
That's the firmware image. Install and uninstall "1.1.3 Soft Upg. Cleaner" from Installer to delete the image.
Does iBrickr work for ringtones any more?
Not right now. But iPhone Ringtone Maker works great with 1.1.3. It's put out by a friend of mine, and it works great. Totally worth the money.
PANIC: EVERYTHING IS BROKEN AND I NEED MY PHONE PLEASE HELP ME
If you're having a mental breakdown over having broken your phone (or me having broken your phone depending on how you look at it), this section is for you.
Yes, this solves the scrolling-looping issue too.
The one size fits all make-everything-better instructions
Download the iPhone 1.1.1 firmware directly from Apple. Save it somewhere memorable.
Plug in your iPhone to your computer.
Press and hold Power and Home buttons on your phone until it asks you to connect to iTunes.
In iTunes it will say you have to restore your phone. You do! But not to 1.1.3. Press and hold the Shift key (if on Windows) or the Option key (if on Mac) while pushing the Restore button in iTunes.
If you did it right, you should be able to select the iPhone 1.1.1 firmware from where you saved it.
Let iTunes do its thing.
If the update fails very quickly, then you need to make the phone more receptive - check out further instructions below.
If the update goes through all its steps but fails at the end with an error (1015 generally), you may just need to run iBrickr (the normal version) to tell it to boot.
Now that you have a working 1.1.1 phone, you can proceed to upgrade using the list at the top of this page.
Failed restore instructions (Windows only for now)
If your restore fails quickly, you have to make the iPhone a little more receptive. Grab the classic iBrickr, and open it up while your phone is in the "Connect to iTunes" mode. There will be an option
to "Begin the downgrade to firmware 1.0.2". Click that one. Your iPhone screen will turn white and iTunes will again complain about restoring. Do the Shift-Restore trick again, and this time it will work, minus the 1015 error, which iBrickr can get around (restart iBrickr when it happens).
Circumstantial questions
Aren't you the guy who did The Time Fountain, Tap Tap Revolution for iPhone, Jacket Cuff Lights, the Lucid Dreaming Mask, Turning your pee blue, and other fantastic things I've heard about?
Why yes. Yes I am.
What's this I hear about you getting kicked from the Dev Team?
It's true.
I want to send you money. What's the easiest / quickest way to give you money? TELL ME HOW TO GIVE YOU MONEY RIGHT NOW.
Enthusiastic aren't we? If you want to give me money you can do so via Paypal:
I hope that has been helpful! Return to Nate True's blog
A 19-year-old Long Island yoga instructor and model is suing Apple and developer Samba Studios over racy photos of her that are featured in an iPhone app called eXtreme Cam Girls. The app, which has apparently been removed from the App Store, features self-portraits of Rebecca Battino in a scanty swimsuit that she took when she was 16 years old. She's not quite sure how the photos ended up in the app when they were being stored in the iPhoto library on her Mac. According to the scoop in the New York Post, Battino isn't embarrassed by the photos; she's just upset that she has never been paid for the use of her image in the app. In the copyright infringement lawsuit, Battino is asking for $1 million in damages from Apple and Samba Studios.
Samba Studios has a number of other sexually-oriented apps in the App Store, including eXtreme Sex Positions and Lesbian Kama Sutra Sex Positions.
[via MacObserver]
I've made a new iPad app called Wormhole Remote. It's designed to let you easily and quickly access and control the apps running on your Mac using your iPad (and iPhone). It's not available yet but will be hopefully within the week. Until then, check out the promo video: The website is http://wormholeremote.com . Return to Nate True's blogComments: 
Log in or register to post comments.
I think there’s a chance that the reasoning behind the now infamous change to Section 3.3.1 of the iPhone Developer Agreement is much deeper than the community has thus far considered. There’s a pattern that Apple has been following since the beginning of the iPhone project that may be hiding “the truth” in plain sight.
They’ve been slowly training us developers to stick with the documented stuff and use their higher level APIs. They want us to accept their abstractions and work within them. This is usually rationalized under the guise of safety, compatibility, and quality control. Those are fine and acceptable reasons by themselves, but what if there’s another purpose lurking behind the curtain?
I think there’s a chance that Apple is slowly building Objective-C into a managed environment similar to Java/.NET. At some point in the future they could define an Objective-C HD (or whatever :P) that no longer maintains total compatibility with C. Since they use LLVM a lot now, they can even use that to analyze your code to make sure that pointer accesses are safe and controlled. Anything that isn’t safely confined to your own app would be an error. Access to the Objective-C runtime functions could possibly even be revoked. After which point, Objective-C HD no longer compiles to machine code but instead to an intermediate representation.
By doing something like this, they can abstract the actual underlying CPU hardware and architecture out of the applications themselves as well as maintain a truly safe sandbox where private and undocumented APIs simply will not be allowed to work. Apps on the App Store would be submitted in this intermediate format which they can translate into the machine code that’s native to whatever CPU happens to be in the device you’re downloading the app for or they could simply put a JIT in iPhoneOS (although there’s no reason to waste the CPU cycles on the device if they can translate them once on the backend - at least for mobile stuff).
Ultimately OSX itself would probably go this way as well. Each new app would become sandboxed to public and documented APIs and the OS transforms from the traditional thin hardware abstraction layer to a much thicker platform abstraction layer which provides high level and clearly defined services. Of course due to legacy constraints, I would expect an OSX transition of this nature to take many years and be a more gradual process. The iPhone platform is a great way for them to experiment with the idea since it’s been closed and heavily regulated from the start. (I do not think any of the closed-ness of the platform has been an accident and nor do I think it was done for malicious intents of evil-like control that pundits attribute to Steve Jobs and Apple.)
(Ultimately, I think the entire web may transition from HTML/Javascript/CSS to a kind of standardized instruction format like a bytecode, but we’re probably a decade or more away from that if it should ever even happen.)
So how does Section 3.3.1 lead me to this? Well, if Apple was getting ready to close off and eliminate total access to the hardware itself, they certainly don’t want people writing tools that target the CPU directly, generating machine code, or making other unsafe assumptions about what your code can do just because it happens to be technically possible to do right now. It’d make it harder for them to make this transition and it’d also lead developers to potentially wasting a lot of time building something that won’t be useful at all in the (near?) future. The contractual restrictions on private and undocumented APIs were only the start. Section 3.3.1 may be a clue that the next step will make those unapproved APIs entirely inaccessible and impossible to actually use at all.
Apple wants to reinvent computing. You didn’t think they’d just constrain themselves to the end-user experience, did you?
@BigZaphod
This entry was posted on Friday, May 21st, 2010 at 10:26 am and is filed under Programming, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
So I've had the chance to examine the 1.1.3 firmware on a deeper level (using a technique not developed by me and which I can't release so don't ask) and have noticed some interesting changes behind the scenes that are quite blogworthy: - SpringBoard no longer needs to be modified (via SummerBoard) in order to show extra applications in the /Applications folder.
- All applications now run as the user 'mobile' instead of as root.
- Preferences are now stored in /var/mobile rather than in /var/root.
What does this all mean? I'll tell you what it means.
The iPhone 1.1.3 firmware is ready for official installable applications.
Even though there are no applications available for purchase (besides the iPod Touch's $20 "upgrade package"), the installation architecture appears to be there already.
It also appears that the frameworks have undergone many changes, ostensibly to make it easier for official SDK developers to make programs. It does, however, break many of the existing applications including most of mine (Lights Off still works though :D).
Additionally, the SpringBoard app appears to have widget support - it contains a class called SBWidgetApplication which manages the package location and icon.
I will update this post with more details as I find them, so keep checking back.
Also check out this other hack for adding Speed Dial icons to your 1.1.3 home screen. Return to Nate True's blog
We had reported yesterday that some members of Macrumors forum had discovered a security flaw in iOS 4.1.
The security flaw allows someone to get access to the iPhone contact list, make calls and also send an email or MMS even with passcode protection using a combination of a sleep button and fake emergency call even if it is locked with a passcode.
Some of our readers have reported that they were able to reproduce the bug in older iOS versions as well.
Wired.com is reporting that Apple has acknowledged the security flaw and issued the following statement:
“We’re aware of this issue and we will deliver a fix to customers as part of the iOS 4.2 software update in November.”
Until then here's some advice from our fantastic readers: Don’t leave your iPhone unattended and you’ll be fine.
[via Wired]
