news

Geohot has updated his purplera1n jailbreak for the iPhone 3GS, which adds the following: support for Vista, Windows 7, International, and 64-bit; Less flakiness in the payload; Cydia tar cleaned up; Improved logging with slightly more useful errors; New kernel patches, codesign errors gone. Props posixninja; and Added vm_map +x, passed vm_check. He added that it will be up to Saurik to add support for winterboard. You can download the new purplera1n here, and get instructions here.

Yesterday we reported on a security vulnerability found in the iPhone OS that could potentially allow an attacker to gain access to your phone via a flaw in the SMS application/protocols. Today, the UK's Telegraph tells us that Apple is in the process of preparing a fix for this security risk.

MacRumors has found several new pattent applciations from Apple showing three new technologies for use in future touchscreen devices like the iPhone and iPod touch. They include a possible solution for providing haptic tactile feedback, fingerprint identification, and the integration of an RFID reader.

In response to the Dev Team's decision to wait until OS 3.1 to release a jailbreak for the iPhone 3GS, George Hotz, aka Geohot, has released his own jailbreaking tool for the iPhone 3GS called purplera1n, as he announced on his site. Right now it's only for Windows, but he says a Mac version is next on his list. It's still in beta, and many of the comments on his website are from people experiencing issues like frozen iPhones and compatibility problems with Vista, but an equal number of comments say it works just fine.

Security researcher Charlie Miller claimed at the SyScan conference in Singapore that he has discovered a new significant exploit in the iPhone's SMS system. The flaw may "allow an attacker to remotely install and run unsigned software code with root access to the phone."

The iPhone Dev Team has posted a notice for iPhone 3GS owners hoping to jailbreak. A jailbreak will be released relatively soon, they say, but certain files will be needed. They have a new, more reliable method for obtaining these files, but it will only work if you do it before Apple releases another update and if you don't have the OS 3.1 beta. It should also be noted that this method may update you to the 3.1 beta if it's on your computer, which would remove your chances of using Ultrasn0w in the future.

Apple has added a couple of improvements to their cloud service, MobileMe, adding improvements to Mail, Gallery, iDisk, account settings, push contacts, and calenders, and Back to My Mac. Among the changes are the ability to forward or reply to an HTML or rich text message while retaining the format instead of converting to plain text.

An internal memo from AT&T has been intercepted by MacDailyNews saying that the week that the iPhone 3GS launched, several company records were broken. Interestingly, one of the more unexpected records broken in the memo had nothing to do with the iPhone, and everything to do with the late Prince of Pop, Michael Jackson. You can check out the full text of the document after the break.

More reports of users with iPhone 3GSs that have had problems with overheating, resulting in some cases with discoloration of the plastic back case of the device. Wired later reported that the issue may be tied to faulty battery cells in the device, and may lead to a large-scale recall by Apple.

Yesterday Apple seeded a beta of iPhone 3.1 to developers to test with their applications. Although not listed with release notes, iPhone 3.1 comes with quite a few noticeable improvements as well as bug fixes. Forum member 370GT pointed out that 3.1 now comes with the option to save edited video as a copy instead of overwriting the original. He also pointed out that the phone vibrates when you start moving icons, and Voice Control now works through bluetooth headsets. We've also noticed that boot time has been greatly improved.

Also noted yesterday, MMS is enabled by default in 3.1, although the required service option hasn't been enabled by AT&T.