George Hotz is at it again…this time he’s brought the purplera1n down on the iPhone hacking community with his super simple jailbreak tool that is now out for Mac and PC users running the 3.0 firmware.
Running this app with a connected iPhone (3G, 3GS, 2G) will jailbreak it and after a reboot, drop an app called ‘Freeze’ on your iPhone. Run this app, wait for it to finish and then reboot again and you’ll have Cydia installed. Run Cydia and then follow the instructions at iClarified.com to install Ultrasn0w on your iPhone and then reboot again. You should now have an unlocked, and jailbroken iPhone 3GS.
Modmyi.com has a Mac tutorial already up for the new Purplera1n.
As with all these types of things, use caution and expect things to go sideways. Worse case is you do a restore via iTunes in most cases….but proceed with caution and at your own risk.
Looks like Rogers is about to repeat their PR nightmare from last year’s iPhone 3G launch by holding back the pricing of the iPhone 3GS for current 3G owners until the last possible minute.
There hasn’t been nearly the same level of outrage as last time around but the rumours and speculation are running rampant…being dodgy about tethering policies and pricing certainly isn’t helping.
I’m still expecting some surprises from Rogers/Fido for current customers….last year they relaxed the upgrade rules a few weeks after the initial launch…most likely to boost sales after the initial rush.
The thing most people aren’t realizing is that they got the iPhone 3G was a subsidized device….the initial iPhone cost $499US when it launched in 2007 from AT&T then dropped to $299 in 2008 under a subsidy. I would expect those with a high monthly iPhone bill to get a break on the ‘rumoured’ full, no-contract prices for the 3GS of $699/$799 for the 16gb and 32gb respectively since they’ve most likely paid a fair bit of their subsidy down. But since Rogers/Fido uses a fairly complex tier scheme to catagorize their customers, the prices will most likely vary by individual account…possibly another reason why they are keeping the prices quiet since they may not have a blanket price for all 3G owners that want to upgrade.
On the bright side, it looks like there will be a full unlock/jailbreak by the weekend for the 3GS….hello Ultrasn0w!
I guess we’ll have to see what transpires over the next couple of days leading up to the release on Friday of the 3GS.
UPDATE: As I predicted, Rogers came out with decent upgrade pricing for iPhone 3GS. You can read the specifics on the Rogers and Fido websites. Pricing varies by your account specifics but assuming you got an iPhone 3G last year before September and have a certain level of voice/data plan combination, you should be able to upgrade for the ‘new customer’ price of $199/$299.
As I said on Twitter to the Rogers PR person, “RogersKeith“, I hope that he relays to his superiors the frustration felt by many customers (not just me) by leaving the pricing details to the last minute. It’s not a good way to engage and endear customers to your brand, especially in the fast moving social media world we now live in.
While not quite the angry mob like last year, anger was certainly growing online because of the lack of information when other carriers around the world had made their plans known in advance. Hopefully they learn from this experience for next year when Apple will inevitably release another version of the iPhone and all the 3GS owners will want to upgrade. RogersKeith said on Twitter, “iPhone launches aren’t typical” to which I replied that iPhone users aren’t typical either….this isn’t your daddy’s Blackberry hardware refresh.
UPDATE 2 (June 20th): The good news is that I finally have an iPhone 3GS. The bad news is that it took over 6 hours of wasted time to get it. I went down to Wireless Wave bright and early on launch day (19th). I was first in line of about 5-6 people. I expected the computer systems to be totally overwelmed and of course they were so the dealer wasn’t even able to log in and see my availability for a long time. I’m pretty sure Rogers computer systems are running on Vic-20’s. I waited about 4 hours at the store for them to be able to process my phone upgrade which they were unable to do. I don’t blame Wireless Wave, I blame Rogers unpreparedness for this portion. Unfortunately, I couldn’t wait at the store any longer as I had to leave for Whistler. Since I was leaving town, I basically had to give up the phone I had on hold – I was hoping to get one from a dealer en route to Whistler but alas all were sold out. I came back from Whistler on Saturday morning and called the same Wireless Wave to see if they still had stock. I was told they didn’t over the phone. A friend had called the Apple Store and was told they were doing upgrades as well as new activations so I stopped by there on the way back from Whistler and was told they weren’t doing upgrades in the store right now. I then had a friend check in with Wireless Wave if they had any stock left and they did so I was back in the line for one. I was told they would process the order and it should be ready by the time I got to the store. It wasn’t. They basically set it aside for me and were going to process the paperwork when I actually showed up. Then began the 45 minute wait on hold for the Rogers dealer person to confirm that I was in fact eligible for a hardware upgrade (at $299). Once the dealer finally got through, they confirmed I was eligible. There was a problem though – the Rogers computer system (Sales Central) didn’t show that I was eligible for any kind of upgrade. The manager at Wireless Wave wouldn’t process a manual transaction for the phone because it’s their policy to not do them as there is a chance the paperwork will fall through the cracks and they won’t get their commission. The manager did call his bosses who confirmed that he wouldn’t be able to sell me the phone despite being eligible. A visit to another store in the mall confirmed the same thing. It wasn’t until I got a tip from Gary that there was a store in another mall that had staff that should be able to help me as he had a similar issue with his upgrade. I drove over to that mall, and within ten minutes of dealing with Thomas and Kelsey, left the store with my 32gb iPhone 3GS. They appeared to have no issue doing a manual transaction with the approval of the dealer call centre.
So what are the issues here? Well, inconsistent policies for handling customer upgrades – even between stores of the same dealer. I really suspect that the reason Wireless Wave didn’t want to sell me the iPhone was that because I wasn’t a new activation, they weren’t going to make as much commission. The fact that they led me on for over 6 hours also pissed me off. I know the systems were busy but I didn’t get a sense they were really trying too hard to get the answers they needed to get. There seemed to be a lot of policies that threatened termination if not followed correctly that the staff kept bringing up. The fact that other customers were able to get iPhones also pissed me off as I know that some of those people had the same account setup as me. A couple of friends that came with me to the store on launch day all had different experiences with getting the upgrade but had similar account/upgrade configurations as me.
I even decided to reach out to the Rogers PR person on Twitter who ultimately wasn’t needed to help me get the phone but did result in my getting a call from an advisor from the (Rogers) President’s office who wanted to know the full story. We had a good discussion about the problems I encountered and had I not been successful the day before, I’m pretty sure he would have helped me get a phone today. I wanted to make sure they understood this iPhone thing isn’t a fad and there will be another update next year so hopefully they will fix some/all of these issues – which are really more communication issues between Rogers and their dealer network. Customers shouldn’t have to run all over town to get a phone upgrade if they’re eligible.
Overall, I feel that Rogers did everything they could *for me* given the situation. Twitter was instrumental in helping me get in contact with the right people to escalate my concerns. So we’ll see what happens in 2010…I sure hope I’m not writing another deja vu post.
I recently traded in my Nintendo DS Lite and some old games for a (basically free) Nintendo DSi so I’ve been playing around with it a fair bit lately (especially the cameras it has). I stumbled upon a Twitter client for it called DSTwitter that is actually pretty cool:
Of course, something like the iPhone is a much better experience for Twitter apps but not everyone has one plus the DS is sometimes more convenient to quickly check up on Twitter or play a quick game while your iPhone is charging.
The lack of a real keyboard is also kind of a pain on the DS but it’s no worse than fat-finger typing on the iPhone screen:
It’s still very much beta and it crashes a fair bit (or won’t even load any tweets) but that may have been due to other factors like a flaky wifi hotspot. It seems to be regularly updated by the developer so it can only get better with more features added.
It does require a flash cart or hacked firmware for your DS (or DSi) to use homebrew software like this but it’s worth checking out if you’re able to.
Want to use your iPhone 3G with a different carrier? The iPhone Dev Team have released their unlock tool for the iPhone 3G, called yellowsn0w.
It’s a package available via Cydia which gets installed when you jailbreak your phone with QuickPwn or Pwnage. You will need to add a new source to Cydia as well (http://apt9.yellowsn0w.com). The unlock tool will only work with the latest firmware and baseband versions. So if you waited for a QuickPwn update when the 2.2 firmware was released and then jailbroke your phone, you’ll have to restore and reupgrade via iTunes in order to have the latest baseband which the tool requires.
Sadly I had my iPhone 3G stolen earlier this month so I can’t use this….my 1st gen iPhone is already unlocked but is stuck in Edgeville. I’m hoping to get a 3G replacement soon. Perhaps now that the unlock is out, prices will start to drop for iPhones since there will be more options globally now.
Head over to the iPhone Dev Team Blog for the full scoop and the necessary download information as well as the usual caveats and known issues.
Apple recently updated the AppleTV software to version 2.3 and I finally updated after seeing Christina’s post about Boxee. I had signed up for a Boxee account awhile ago and finally got my invite last week. Watch this quick video to see why Boxee is pretty cool:
You can easily install Boxee (and the excellent XBMC) onto your AppleTV without much trouble or voiding your warranty. All you need is a USB thumb drive. Just follow the steps here. Once you’ve installed it, you will need to run the updater in the Boxee/XBMC menu before running either Boxee or XBMC – at least I had to otherwise I’d get an error.
There is a fair bit of content available in Boxee.
Unfortunately, hulu doesn’t work from Canada so that’s a huge chunk of it’s content you can exclude.
Fortunately, there are lots of other things available:
An awesome bonus is the installation of XBMC which I’ve been using in some form since the original Xbox came out. Between these two apps, you should be able to play just about kind of media content on your AppleTV…not to mention, stream it from your local network (from say a network storage device) or the internet.
