Cydia

Attention jailbreakers: We've just received word from BigBoss that Apple stopped signing iPhone OS 3.1.2 restore packages today, making it impossible to restore to 3.1.2 without a workaround. This only affects the iPhone 3GS, the third-gen iPod touch, and late-model, second-gen iPod touches; other iPhone OS devices do not use signed restore packages.

So what does this mean? Well, because Apple released iPhone OS 3.1.3 earlier this week, the Apple servers will only let you restore to 3.1.3, even if you have an older 3.1.2 restore package lying around. And since the current jailbreak tools only work on 3.1.2, updating to 3.1.3 will leave you jailbreak-less — at least for the time being. But wait, there's a workaround!

Despite Apple's best efforts to maintain the App Store's position as the only way to get 3rd party apps on the iPhone, they may soon have some competition. While Cydia started off as just a way to distribute apps rejected by Apple, the creator, Jay Freeman, says he plans to start an App Store of his own, and he's not the only one. Two other App Store competitors have popped up out of the woodwork. One called Rock Your Phone for users who haven't hacked their iPhones, and another to offer what even Cydia won't sell– apps with adult themes.

iBluetooth, MeDevil's app for transferring files to and from your iPhone over a bluetooth connection, has entered beta testing stages and will hopefully be ready in the next few days, providing he can get the last few bugs out soon. The application will let users both send and recieve files over bluetooth, something Apple currently does not allow in their SDK. Users can chose which file to send and where to send it, or where to save an incoming file, and transfers can be stopped at any time. Screenshots after the break.

If Apple didn't think they had a reason to thwart the jailbreaking movement among iPhone owners before, they sure do now. Crackulous, a new unofficial app that was released to Cydia not long ago, claims to be able to remove the copy protection from App Store apps installed on your iPhone. If true, it would allow a single user to simply buy an app to put it into illegal circulation.

Yet another third party attempt at a copy and paste solution for the iPhone has been launched that takes copy and paste one step further toward a usable state. Clippy, made by developer Ryan Petrich, is an add-on for the iPhone's virtual keyboard that lets you do true copy and paste with Apple's apps like Notes, Mail and SMS, as well as a few third party ones. Clippy is available for jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches through Cydia.

It was confirmed earlier today that the next version of Cydia will have an app rating system similar to that of the App Store. The news came in the form of a screenshot that was posted showing the Cydia page for the package Winterboard 0.9.2600-1. Next to the package number was a star, which was taken to be a form of ratings system.

The launch of the App Store eliminated a large part of the need for jailbreaking your iPhone or iPod touch, but a few good reasons still remain. Here's a new one that was released recently. It's called Search 1.0 for iPhone, and it's available to jailbroken phones through Cydia.

Earlier this weekend, the Big Boss repository, one of the larger and more well-known repositories in Cydia and Installer, parted ways with their hosting site, iphone.sleepers.net. The repository owner said in this weekend's announcement that they weren't happy with the partnership, and had officially moved over to http://thebigboss.org/.

The idea of iPhone hacking is nearly as old as the iPhone itself, soon followed by the writing of iPhone apps. Soon after it was realized that there needed to be a way of distributing the various hacks and goodies to other users, and so began the birth of Installer.app and the collaborative open-source distribution system Cydia. Since then Cydia has become the more popular of the two, and it's now how most people get their unsanctioned hacks and apps. But what's up with that name?

ZodTTD has just released mame4iphone v0.5.0, a MAME arcade emulator for the iPhone available to jailbroken iPhones through Cydia. The emulator is a port of the mame4all emulator from ZodTTD user Franxis. The emulator allows users to play ROMs of some of the most popular classic arcade games from the early days.