Archives for Category : iPhone

The Library of Congress has announced exemptions to the (in)famous Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that allow iPhone, iPod touch and iPad owners to legally jailbreak their devices.

• The Library of Congress Statement
• USA Today: Library of Congress authorizes a jailbreak for iPhone and cell phone users
• Yahoo News: New gov’t rules allow unapproved iPhone apps
• ars technica: Apple loses big in DRM ruling: jailbreaks are “fair use”
• It’s legal to jailbreak iPhone, but it voids warranty

Other exemptions involving fair use of DVD content, video games and hardware “dongles” are also included. Understand that while this means it is legally permissible to jailbreak one of your devices that does not mean that Apple has to condone or support it. In other words, don’t expect your warranty to survive your jailbreak efforts.

Apple has released minor updates for the current iPhone, iPod touch and iPad OS releases. After installing these updates iOS 4.0 becomes version 4.0.1 and iPad OS 3.2 becomes version 3.2.1.

iOS version 4.0.1 contains “bug fixes and improvements including the following: Improves the formula to determine how many bars of signal strength to display.”

The iPad OS 3.2.1 includes: “Improved wi-fi connectivity; Fixed an issue that could prevent copy and paste of single page PDF attachments in Mail; Addresses an issue that could cause video playback to freeze; Improved reliability of video-out when using iPad Dock connector to VGA Adapter; Added Bing as an option for Safari’s search field.”

The updates are installed via iTunes. Connect the device to be updated, launch iTunes, select the device in the left column, then click the Update button on the Summary page. It’s probably also a good idea to perform a Sync before applying the update.

Apple showed off some of the new additions to iPhone OS version 4 due to ship this Summer. It sports over 100 new user features such as: create playlists, 5x digital zoom, tap to focus on video, gift apps, geotagging, places in the photo app, change the homescreen wallpaper and bluetooth keyboards.

Apple choose to highlight 7 key “tent-pole” features at today’s preview event:

• Multi-tasking (running multiple apps)!
• Folders on the app screens!
• Enhanced email (including a unified in-box)!
• iBooks for the iPhone and iPod touch
• Enterprise business features (data protection, et al.)
• Game Center (similar to Xbox Live)
• iAd mobile advertising

Details can be found in various liveblogs from today’s event:

• engadget: Live from Apple’s iPhone OS 4 event!
• ars technica: Ars Technica liveblog of Apple’s iPhone 4.0 event

First, Steve Jobs is back! He’s up-front directing the show and, as has been the case previously, letting others handle the detailed demos and some of the presentations.

NOTE: Some of the links for additional information may not yet reflect these updates.

SPOILER: Sorry, no Beatles in the iTunes Store just yet!

READ MORE …

Well it a bit past their “this Summer” timeframe but AT&T has officially announced that iPhone users in the U.S. will finally get access to MMS starting September 25th. From their announcement:

We know that iPhone users will embrace MMS. The unique capabilities and high usage of the iPhone’s multimedia capabilities required us to work on our network MMS architecture to carry the expected record volumes of MMS traffic and ensure an excellent experience from Day One. We appreciate your patience as we work toward that end.

No word yet on tethering, another feature promised when Apple released iPhone OS version 3.0.

[UPDATE]

Well according to theAppleBlog someone at AT&T (Brad Mays) is talking about tethering and what they’re saying isn’t good news:

As for tethering, by its nature, this function could exponentially increase traffic on the network, and we need to ensure that some of our current upgrades are in place before we can deliver the expanded functionality with the excellent performance that customers expect. We expect to offer tethering in the future.

So in “the future” cars will fly, robots will cook dinner and iPhone users will finally get tethering?