Ever since my first Jailbreak and Unlock of my iPhone, I’ve remained locked at firmware 1.0.2. Today, I took the plunge, because it just got obscenely easy.
iJailBreak is literally a one-click Jailbreak/Unlock. I fired up iTunes, upgraded my phone to 1.1.3 (no revirginizing required, hooray), then ran iJailBreak. 3 minutes later, I had a phone with the latest firmware, unlocked and up on T-Mobile. I’d no idea it got that easy.
It’s friggin’ genius, I tells ya. Thanks, Arix and Ben. I’ve donated to the cause — this is amazing.
In moving to the iPhone, I gave up ‘Push’ e-mail, and I’m eager to get it back. The once every 15 minutes model offered by the iPhone isn’t quite fast enough for urgent issues, and despite claims that Yahoo’s Mail is “Push” on the iPhone, I just don’t see it. Maybe it only works for AT&T users — not sure. In any case, this guide shows us how to set the iPhone to check every 5 mins instead of every 15 minutes (if you’re unshackled, like moi).
Enjoy.
TUAW announces progress in the quest to unshackle the 1.1.1 iPhones. Hooray!
Still, stay away from 1.1.1 if you’re unlocking or using apps.
Services.app showed up a couple of days back. It’s very nice.
I’m going to be in Europe for a few days in November, and wondered how I’d go about leaving my phone on, making use of WiFi where I could, but not have my Edge data connection active. The 1.1.1 firmware lets you prevent Edge roaming, but I’m not going there. So, along comes Services.app — this is something that should be in from the beginning.
It lets you individually control each of the following services:
This is *exactly* what I need. Now I can keep my Edge turned off while overseas, but still be able to make and take calls, and avail myself of any WiFi hotspots I encounter. Marvelous!
Details on the link, but the basics are that you need Intstaller.app and the BSD Subsystem to make it work. But if you need this application, you’ve already got that!
As I expected, a class action has been filed.
The iPhone isn’t the first carrier-locked device — I was a longtime Sidekick user which us why I’m with T-Mobile now — but the iPhone is significantly higher profile and Danger wasn’t bricking hacked sidekicks. As a side note, I had more than one unhacked Sidekick bricked via software update, a big reason why I don’t use those anymore.
In fact, there are more parallels here now that I think of it. The Sidekick (aka Hiptop) was another one-of-a-kind device that was developed and supported by a third party. Whenever I talked to tech support at T-Mobile about the phone, they were generally clueless — I had to talk to Danger through their forums at hiptop.com to get any useful help, too.
The difference here is that Danger doesn’t sell hiptops. They contracted with T-Mobile, who do the sole distribution. Apple sells a product here that they’ve arbitrarily decided must be used on AT&T.
I’m happy to see this class action emerge. I expect I’ll be joining it.
This is something I’ve been meaning to write for a while. My usual Thursday evening writing time is instead being spent in my office at work while I wrestle with an annoying problem that just won’t go away, so I’ll take a brain break and get this out of my head.
For those who don’t care to embrace the verbosity, here’s the quick and dirty summary: Apple is messing up big-time, and they have a real opportunity to fix it by doing one simple thing — loosen their grip on their products! There. Read on if you care about my thoughts on this.
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Don’t upgrade to 1.1.1, in case you didn’t realize that. Really, don’t upgrade to any new firmware until the community has determined it doesn’t break anything. Then wait a week after that so you are confident there are no time bombs. If it’s not obvious, I’ll happily post my results here as updates occur.
I have a long rant about this, but I’ll save that for the weekend when I have more time. Just let me say this. Apple, just because you say it, doesn’t make it legal.
Update: Read this. It sums things up nicely.
Also, I’m making an iPhone category here to keep these things in.
iPhone update will likely brick unlocked phones.
Needless to say, let braver souls try the updates before you install them.
Me? If the only thing 1.1.1 gets me is wireless iTunes downloads, I’m quite happy without it.
