9to5 Staff

The iPhone Dev Team has released PwnageTool 2.0.3, which supports the jailbreaking of iPhone and iPod touch firmware 2.0.2 5C1.

The new release also sports an updated version of the ever so essential Installer.app beta 6 and new .de localization for German users. There are no significant updates with regard to the 3G baseband unlock, according to the iPhone Dev Team.

"PwnageTool 2.0.3 is available," the developers reveal on their blog. "This version provides support for iPhone/iPod firmware 2.0.2 5C1, it has an updated Installer.app beta (b6) and contains a new .de localization for our large amount of German friends."

The developers also reveal that the ‘150’ beta update to the Windows QuickPwn application is also available, offering fixes for YouTube and BootNeuter support for the unlocking of 2G iPhones. (Though they do warn that this is beta software).

"QuickPwn Windows doesn’t work well with virtualization as there are some problems with the way USB resets are handled, so we wouldn’t advise trying it, we have had reports of some success with VMWare Fusion 2.0 Beta 2, but this shouldn’t be relied on, use PwnageTool instead, or wait for QuickPwn Mac," the developers also warn.

"QuickPwn for Mac is being tested right now by a group of testers and we’ll release this when it is ready for public beta (this won’t be within the next 24 hours, but should be within the next week)," they also revealed.

News around the web is that September 9th is the iPod Nano Rainbow/iPod Touch GPS launch day.  September 9th is my birthday, so I can buy that..  But what about MacBooks?  Apple doesn’t really mix iPod and Mac launches at least not in the last few years.  Additionally, we’ve heard LATE September is when we’ll we’ll see the new MacBook/Pros.  Is it possible that Apple will have two events in September? 

As always these things can get bumped around due to many things including parts availabilities and…ahem…software quality assurance. 

Here’s a fun little website that helps relieve the Adobe stress that many of us creative types and innocent bystanders endure every working day.  Everyone out there should have a gripe or two to add to the mix.  Who knows?  Maybe Adobe will even listen.  Our latest: "Have a coherent licensing structure for small creative shops".  What’s yours?

Update: Oh yeah, they do listen.  Everyone’s favorite Adobe Blogger John Nack has Adobe’s response….which is exactly what you’d want to hear from Adobe.  Way to turn a possibly embarrassing situation into a way to show your customers you care. 

One has to wonder how much they would care, however, if they had comptition in the marketplace.

Via DF

From Giz comes Verizon’s anti iPhone cheat sheet – to help employees deal with the deluge of iPhone questions.

These are actually some good talking points, even though it does scratch the surface of why the iPhone is so popular.

Enterprise users aren’t immune to the attractions of the Mac, with analyst Benjamin Gray of Forrester Research reporting that Mac adoption among business users has QUADRUPLED since 2006.

This essentially means Mac usage jumped from 1.1% in October 2006 to 3.6% a year later and to 4.5% in June 2007.

Those stats are extremely significant, causing the analyst to say (as detailed by eWeek), "Mac continues its slow gain among Forrester’s clients, even without an enterprise strategy. Apple’s singular focus on user experience has resulted in some success in the enterprise—without even trying to break into the market."

These findings are included within a newly-published Forrester Research report, "Corporate Desktop Operating System Trends, Q4 2007 Through Q2 2008: Windows Vista Deployments Are Finally Ramping Up, While Mac Continues Its Slow March on the Enterprise."

Lending weight to these claims is that these numbers aren’t simply plucked from empty air, the analysts surveyed more than 50,000 enterprise end users from 2,500 organizations to put together its data.

While Apple’s share remains small in comparison with Windows in the enterprise (94.9%in June), every percentage of the market equates to significant sales for Apple.

The iPhone and iPod halos help boost visibility and sales, "Strong iPod branding and sales have led to greater consumer sales of Apple PCs; in turn, this has lured enthusiasts and small workgroups with supple IT departments beyond the standard domain of design and media."

Apple could attract wider sales by reducing prices and liberalising its controls over Mac repair, upgrade and servicing, the report indicates.

Clearly, there’s more growth ahead. One in three Fortune 500 companies are already exploring iPhone software development, meaning Apple has at least put a calling card in place within relevant departments at some of the world’s largest enterprise users.

And with Apple widely predicted to reveal three million Mac sales within the current quarter, we see a wider upside to the future of Mac in the enterprise…

iTunes access in China has been restored, various reports emanating from the Olympic nation state, following a widely-reported blip in access last week.

Reuters had claimed that Apple’s decision to sell the newly-released compilation, ‘Songs for Tibet’ caused Chinese internet police to pull the plug on iTunes access in the country – though Chinese music fans can’t actually buy music from foreign-based music stores.

The Songs for Tibet album features 20 tracks from a range of artists, including Moby and Alanis Morissette. What’s apparently caused access to be blocked was that at least 40 athletes in the Olympic village had downloaded the music to play on their iPods in support of the campaign to Free Tibet.

An Apple tech support email said: "iTunes is not being blocked in China from our end, but access to the iTunes Store IS restricted in some areas in China."

There was some controversy over the accuracy of these reports, with a certain someone’s Computerworld blog explaining some of this.

"Although the timing is bad and the profile of this particular album is high, it is hard to believe the Chinese would single out iTunes as a means of spreading propaganda at this time. You’ve been able to download tons of musicians’ pro-Tibet work for years, including everyone from the Beastie Boys to Pavarotti," the Computerworld report noted.

Now, according to forum posts there, here, and the Music 2.0 blog, access to iTunes from China has been restored, though an international message in support of human rights in Tibet has also been made.

 We’re saddened to report an Apple move has stymied attempts to create a copy-&-paste solution for the iPhone. 

We recently introduced the developers at OpenClip who are attempting to create a way to copy-&-paste text between applications on an iPhone. They had a simple plan – Open Clip would essentially save copy you select within an area of the iPhone’s memory which can then be accessed by other apps. And the roll call of developers then planning to use and support the solution includes: Dial Zero, Twittelator, WordPress, Cocktail, Ultralingua and more. And we looked forward to being able to blog a little better using the device.

But things have changed. Apple’s iPhone Software 2.1 prevents OpenClip’s solution copying and pasting between applications, though it will still be possible to store data inside the application, meaning that copy and paste within the app will still work fine. 

The move’s explained on the developer’s blog, where it says, "However, even though apple is killing the concept behind the current OpenClip, that doesn’t mean we can’t change the concept. A shared clipboard could be stored in an Address Book card or even on a remote server. Those solutions aren’t as good as the OpenClip implementation, but they aren’t bad. "

The developer intends creating such a solution, in hope it’s enough to convince Apple that introducing support for copy-&-paste on an iPhone is something people want.

OpenClip doesn’t believe Apple’s 2.1 move is an attempt to specifically prevent the application, saying, "I don’t really believe this to be the case. Even though I debuted to concept before the newest beta was release, I’m sure Apple had been planning to kill this kind of thing for a while."

 Apple’s MobileMe service has thrown up yet another mess – this time creating an easily accessible database of names for spammers to abuse….because there’s an easy way for such miscreants to get hold of service member’s email addresses.

Well, that’s the latest claim to emerge from TechCrunch, which reports that MobileMe user’s public iDisk file sharing pages can easily be used to determine a member’s email address…"There is no way as a user to hide or delete your public folder. If you are a MobileMe customer, you have one."

"Gathering the entire MobileMe username list, and therefore email list, via a simple dictionary attack is trivial," the report explains.

Pity the MobileMe team though, as they try to get the service right they have ignored this problem, claiming to have had no complaints. Though we suspect quite a few customers of the service have received a little spam with their online iLife. And when Apple’s done fixing that, perhaps the company could airlift in its crack engineering strike forces to fix the widespread iPhone bug that’s causing AppStore applications to fail to launch and causing iPhone user’s iTunes libraries to report themselves to be empty, even when they’re full.

We aren’t entirely sure the relatively small 36 per cent of satisfied iPhone users constitute the kind of market message Apple needs as competitors prepare to compete and the device goes on sale in additional countries.

Oh, and rabid fanboys…before you fire up that vitriol, remember that every news item about Apple can’t be glowingly positive. MobileMe so far has been a bust for many users. iPhone 3G has had some glitches. You are still going to be OK and people still love you. Breath deep.

He could do wonders as a branding and corporate identity consultant…Maybe if this Apple thing doesn’t work out..[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvwf-VOW8dg&hl=en&fs=1]

Also, notice the knees at 30 secs!

In a word, no. Somebody with time+ Photoshop skills got this to the frontpage of Digg…but where is the glass trackpad?

Update: Mike Ciarlo has taken rightfull credit for the advert which is his artistic creation.  Expect a call either from Apple HR or Apple legal.  Mike, how about one with a glass trackpad and made with one piece of aluminum?

Although it is minor and probably caused more problems than it solved, we noticed that the "Update All" option has been killed by Apple in version 2.02 of the iPhone App Store.  It is a pain to update five applications in serial but it is all in the name of stability we are assuming.  Too bad it isn’t as stable as we’d hoped…

Thanks to the poll commentors for letting us know we weren’t insane!

Yes, the ads still run quicker than anyone gets on their (sometimes not) freezing iPhone 3G… but you get the point…which is that the iTunes apps store changes everything..

 This week’s free app of the week is a game I recently found my mother playing, Cube Runner. Okay, even though my mother was playing it, it does not mean it’s lame! Cube Runner is a 3D flying game, with the objective of not flying into the numerous cubes scattered around the track. At first, you need a little practice, but once you get used to it, you really get into it. To play, you first choose landscape or portrait mode. (I personally like the landscape mode). Then you choose your difficulty, and 3rd Party Level Pack, (if you have one) that you can download from the internet. Next, you just steer the two-arrow plane in the direction you want, by tilting the phone to the left or right. If you’re lucky, you can make it to the end of the track…If there is one. I’ve personally never seen the end, or even made it close. 

There’s definitely something about this game that just amazes my friends and I. Maybe it’s just the fact that we’re flying a "plane". Or maybe it’s the fact that we are in such control because of the superb technology of the iPhone. Trust me. This is a must have game for all ages. If it’s not just teaching you hand-eye coordination, it’s probably just plain fun.

The only con: The game does not look developed enough. It looks really plain, and not polished to perfection. No wonder it’s free… 

 Digg’s Kevin Rose has kicked in with his latest pre-Apple announcement rumours.

– Curved iPod nano with horizontal screen

– Price cuts and revamps across iPod range

– iPod touch gets small changes, but gains software 2.1 as standard (no need to pay for that upgrade).

– iPod range to use price to differentiate from iPhone

– iTunes 8 (big update, new features – subscription services anyone?)

– Blu-Ray soon in OS X 10.5.6

Watch what he has to say after the break.

Apple’s on track for well over 4.1 million iPhone 3G sales by the end of September, and the introduction of the device into 21 countries today has widened the market for the device by, like, 78 per cent.

That’s the news coming out of Piper Jaffray analyst, Gene Mumster, who reckons most of Wall Street have missed out on the potential sales uptick Apple’s going to see in the coming weeks as partners push the in vogue device.

"Our iPhone estimate of 4.1 million units in the Sept. [fiscal 3Q] quarter is like conservative," Munster said, pointing out that Apple’s market reach now extends to a potential 660 million people.

"We believe Apple will trade on iPhone unit volumes for the next several quarters, so we expect the iPhone unit upside to be a positive catalyst for the stock," he said, as reported by Barrons.

With Apple’s device clearly driving interest in the smartphone market, causing one .Net developer with knowledge and experience in using Windows Mobile to call it the "most powerful mobile platform ever", spare a thought for lower echelon handset makers, who are seeing handset sales fall as consumers eye up more sophisticated devices. And while badly-timed teething problems will mean some consumers adopt solutions from the likes of RIM and Palm, the ascendant opportunity remains clearly focused on smartphones. The question is just how quickly the industry can catch-up to the evolving Apple mobile platform. And how quickly Apple can change the game whenver competitors get too close.

Shootout is a strong word in this case…[blip.tv http://blip.tv/play/_RDIwWuM0kE]

One of the world’s leading Microsoft .Net developers today called Apple’s iPhone the most powerful mobile platform ever seen.

Writing on his .Net Addict’s Blog, a leading global .Net expert, Kevin Hoffman, wrote: "There is one thing that I can confirm without breaking any NDA: the iPhone is hands down, without a doubt, the single most powerful mobile development platform EVER."

His statement follows publication of the details of a .Net and iPhone comparative seminar Hoffman delivered at WWDC. Hoffman has written a series of books on Microsoft’s .NET development frameworks.

Hoffman reflects that the future seems bright for the iPhone and third party developers working away to use it. "Whether the platform will see enterprise adoption or whether it will remain plagued by people making $2 flashlights… time will only tell," he said.

"That won’t change the fact that the capabilities provided by the iPhone and the ease with which developers can tap into those capabilities is simply unprecedented. This is easily reflected by the fact that, from what I hear, the iPhone App Store is selling like $1,000,000 per day of applications."

Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently told the Wall Street Journal, "This thing’s going to crest a half a billion, soon. Who knows, maybe it will be a $1 billion marketplace at some point in time."

The whole business seems set for further growth. Developers across the board from all corners of the planet are reporting excellent results from the first few weeks of applications sales, with more (and, presumably, better) applications set to ship in the coming weeks. Some developers have already been able to quit their day jobs to focus on the iPhone mission.

More positive feedback, too, from Japan, where the man who developed Japan’s first mobile phone internet service, iMode in 1999, Takeshi Natsuno, accused Japan’s telecommunications industry of stifling the kind of creativity that is so apparent in the iPhone, saying, "This is a great device. This kind of device cannot be produced by Japanese manufacturers. Never."

"Natsuno, 43, who quit top Japanese mobile carrier NTT DoCoMo three months ago, expressed disenchantment with this nation’s phone industry, which he said was dominated by stodgy conservatives, who lacked the charisma and creative sensibilities of a Steve Jobs."

However, despite huge attention surrounding the iPhone, developers are restricted in what they can discuss. "What’s really going on here is that there is a huge, burgeoning community of iPhone developers and they are positively begging for community," Hoffman explains.

"They want to be able to talk to each other, help each other, learn from each other, and have some place where they can go for support and to hone their skills. They see the restrictive terms of the NDA as an inhibition to developer adoption of the SDK and possibly even an inhibition to commercial-quality applications being produced by first-time developers because there is such a lack of community support.

"At some point this community is going to either self-form, and the NDA be damned, or Apple will facilitate it somehow. My hope is that Apple facilitates it."

 Oh Microsoft’s Anti-Apple ad campaign so is the gift that just keeps on giving – here’s a lovely classic Apple ad from the late ’90’s – just who is that nice young man taking a bow at the end? [HINT: He’s getting paid $10 million by Microsoft for an ad appearance – so I guess he’ll spend the money on a few Macs.]

 As an aside, this was a special version o the commercial that ran during the final episode of Seinfeld…and one of 10 reasons why this is a bad idea.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is in the frame, once again urging the engineers of tomorrow to "follow their passion".

Woz took part in an on-stage interview at this week’s Intel Developer Forum (IDF), speaking with Dr. Moira Gunn.

He took the chance to reveal a few more bits and pieces surrounding his life and work, but stressed that holding passion for what you do will always be so much more important than money.

"The rewards are in your head. The reward is invisible. It’s what you like to do," said Wozniak. Interestingly, his notions there reflect those of life-long friend and fellow Apple co-founder, Steve Jobs, who famously urged Stanford students they should "love what you do".

Woz also took a chance to return to his move from HP to Apple. The engineer had always wanted to work for HP, but Jobs was determined his friend should play a part in Apple. "I was never going to leave HP for life. That’s where I wanted to be forever – Steve Jobs got all my friends and relatives to call me," Woz revealed. "Steve wants to be this guy…who wants to change the world. Every time we’d create something great, he’d have the idea to sell it," Wozniak said.

On the legendary Homebrew Computer Club, Woz explained: "We had dreams that computers would improve education and improve communication and help us achieve a lot of tasks. A lot of us in our group understood it…We used the word ‘revolution’ all over the place."

Read the rest of the interview right here.

 Yes, it’s your classic slow news day – it is August, after all… (though we have a few things bubbling away, as usual). Meanwhile, here’s a quite cool little Apple TV ad made by a Mac nut as part of a student project…