iPhone App Blog

Well, Apple’s warnings about bricking modded and unlocked iPhones is true, true, true. Modded iPhones are just being reduced to their “factory fresh” state while many unlocked iPhones are being completely bricked. For those of you who didn’t void your warranty and successfully updated your iPhone there are some good features that have been added.

1. First of all, the WiFi iTunes store is up and running with a pretty purple button on the home screen.
2. Double clicking the home button will take you to phone favorites or music controls like the iPod Touch.
3. Adjustable voice mail alert volume as well as increased receiver speakerphone volume.
4. International keyboard options.
5. Blackberry style inserting of periods by double tapping the space bar.
6. Increased security. Seriously, the new firmware is locked up tighter than Fort Knox.

There are some other features, of course, Apple loves to add little unannounced treats in their updates. For those of you with unlocked iPhones you best wait on adding this next update until the geeks have worked a way around it, or at least a way to not destroy your iPhone in the process. The guys and gals over at the iPhone Dev Wiki are busy decrypting 1.1.1 as we speak…er, as I write…as you read? God, that phrase doesn’t really work on blogs.

Anyway, there are tons of articles about the update floating around the internet today. Some of the better ones are on The Unofficial Apple Weblog, Engadget, CrunchGear, and Techmeme.

This week Apple has released its second update for the iPhone. The notes on update 1.0.2 cryptically states that it includes “bug fixes” but gives no specific details. The 3.7 MB download only takes a few minutes to download, and there are lots of reports flying around as to what the update actually does.

Some users are reporting extended Wi-Fi coverage in areas where it was previously difficult or impossible to connect. Others are reporting increased speaker volume as well as fixing an issue with iPhone’s camera that caused a blue/green tint to cover photos.

If you’ve hacked your iPhone, though, getting the update becomes a bit tricky. Like update 1.0.1, hacked iPhones require a full restore to get the update working. Hacked iPhone owners will see the update as a ridiculously large 92.1 MB download. This is just because it includes the restore.

Of course restoring your hacked iPhone results in losing all of your hacks. Some users have reported that they have been able to choose past backups and restore their user settings. Of course there are now a lot of new and simple ways to get your favorite hacks and third party apps back.

While reloading your favorite hacks may seem like a pain it’s interesting to note that Apple has made no attempt to prevent future hacks. If we get up to updates 1.2 or 1.3 with no software to prevent hacking those who love to fiddle around with their iPhones may be in the clear. We’ll just have to wait till the next updates.

Late last night while I was walking my dog Apple released several patches for Mac OS as well as the first update for the iPhone. The six patches released fixed several security bugs and other flaws in Mac OS (including the server versions) and the iPhone. Apple has also released Safari ver. 3.0.3 for Mac and Windows.

The update downloads via iTunes while you sync your iPhone. The most obvious reason for this update is the huge security gap that the guys over at Independent Security Evaluatorsdiscovered. The update addresses the issue by ”performing additional validation of JavaScript regular expressions.” This comes just days before ISE was to announce the vulnerability at the annual Black Hat security conference.

In a rather classy move, Apple gave credit to the hackers at ISE that discovered the security issue that could allow someone to completely take over an iPhone. Charlie Miller and Jake Honoroff of ISE are named right in the update notes. Which I think is rather nice.

Of course the update does more than just block this security hole. Users who have downloaded update 1.0.1 are reporting less crashing while browsing and playing music, a noticeable improvement in volume level, and the ability to drag content from iTunes to the iPhone. For more information on the features of the update visit this PC World article. 

A quick note for those who have hacked their iPhones: the update hates you. If you’ve hacked your iPhone and try to install the update your phone will probably crash, restore, and finish the download. This also means that you’ll lose most, if not all, of your settings. For more info about the update and what it does to hacked iPhones check out this article from Gizmodo.