In a stroke of irony, the iPhone Dev Team, the folks who brought the world consistent jailbreak and SIM unlock tools, could totally save Apple’s ass right now, as their activation servers are toppled due to the massive user-base (6 million) trying to update to firmware 2.0 on the 3G launch day.
It’s assumed that the Dev Team jailbreak tool currently cracks firmware 2.0. The tragically named “Pwnage Tool” is not yet publicly released. However, if the Dev Team decided to release “Pwnage” at this very moment, it would presumably bypass AT&T/Apple activation procedure.
In this scenario, perhaps millions of users would grab “Pwnage” and then back off Apple’s activation server. That would be a huge favor to Apple on behalf of the rogue development community.
Could it happen?
UPDATE: In retrospect, this was a dumb entry. Rather than retract it, we’ll just leave it as evidence of this day’s mass hysteria and leave it at that.
Perhaps Thousands of iPhones Bricked at the Moment
Any iPhone user (2.5G and 3G), who needs to activate their phone with iTunes is out of luck right now. Apparently slammed by activations or launch glitches, now is not the time to perform an update or restore function on ANY iPhone, as you won’t able to reactivate it on AT&T until the glitch is solved. (via Gizmodo) Standby for updates on the situation. We realized an unlikely hero could save the day.
Hold off on Restore or Updates
Hopefully, you’re not in our position: our iPhone 2.0 firmware leak early adoption led to an App Store download binge and the eventual major crash by overloading with third-party explorations that left it sort of bricked, stuck on the Apple logo boot screen. We put iPhone into recovery mode and restored, but now iTunes Music Store returns splendid errors (-9838) and now (-4).
Update @ 3pm: Persistence and patience pays off, as we get into the great Activation queue cloud in the sky and get activated and ignore resulting errors, as advised by rampant iRumoring. Currently restoring and allowing hysteria to subside.
New firmware sports crucial “sleeper features” - Screenshots and Safari YouTube plugin
The web is alive with chatter about the iPocalypse, as many other owners are experiencing the outage. Apple appears to have temporarily closed (UPDATE: they’re back) its support discussion forums to block outage outrage on its own threads.
We had iPhone 2.0 installed, and enjoyed one it’s two best “sleeper features” - screengrab (hold home button with top lock button) and the new Safari YouTube plugin that we predicted. The latter feature has huge implications for the question of Adobe Flash Player for iPhone, as it effectively mitigates the problem of the “blue question-mark” missing-plugin indicating on millions-and-millions of embedded YouTube players scattered around the web.
David Carroll, Sven Travis, Benjamin Bacon, and Haiyan Huang debuted their mobile media installation, “1000 Cellphones” at the opening of Synthetic Times 2008, a media arts exhibition at The National Art Museum of China, Beijing, as a Cultural Olympics venue.
1000 Cellphones is comprised of custom bluejacking and bluetracking software visualizing active devices on four aligned flat-panel displays mounted in the foyer of the museum’s café.
The software extracts the last six digits from discovered device MAC address ID signifiers gathered by the tracking tools. It then converts these digits to an RGB Color HEX value, and renders a 2D perspective particle in virtual space. Device names animate across the screen, revealing radio identification evidence of the most recent 10 devices found.
In addition, devices are bluetooth push “spammed” mysterious photographs to willing device users.
The custom PULL software tools were written in Python, mySQL, PHP, XML and ActionScript 3.0. PUSH tools are “off the shelf” Bluetooth spammers.
“1000 Cellphones” and the Synthetic Times exhibition remain on view through July 3, 2008 at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China.
In a stunning sweep and a victory for Apple any way you slice it, an unnamed party has purchased the “iPhone DevTeam” Pwnage tool demonstrated on YouTube, widely announced for release today. The team has been disbanded and the jailbreak and unlock scene will probably never be the same again.
Surely the lawyers have locked this one down tight, and we’ll probably never know, but bets are on Apple using both the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the almighty, irresistible dollar to squelch these hackers once and for all. Their tool seems to violate the reverse engineering and copyright circumventions intrinsic to the DMCA, by allowing the customization of the firmware and operating system files.
We hope the term “pwned” is retired now. We didn’t think someone could come up with a word worse than “blog” and then see it leak into the vernacular. Perhaps the Apple legal team is defending not only their intellectual property, but also the English language?
Her Majesty the Queen of Impressions Returns to the Boob Tube
Back in the glory days when the Simpsons first aired, I remember watching The Tracey Ullman Show afterwards, characterized by her zany characterizations that I was probably too young to fully appreciate. She’s back, but this time on premium cable, and last night premiered her new series State of the Union. She is at times hilarious, at other times utterly depressing for her spot-on renditions of the great contradiction that is the US of A. The premise behind the show is the cliché “day-in-the-life” snapshot, stitched together with a Google Earth inspired CGI intersitial and voice-over à la Idiocracy. The premiere’s highlights included the Bollywood Pharmacist, Tony Siricio as indy-flicker and of course, Princess Bloggini herself, Arianna Huffington. If you can tolerate the hit-or-miss bag of tricks intrinsic to impressions, and Anglophile humor, or just like comedic uses of makeup, give it a shot.
In a stroke of irony, the iPhone Dev Team, the folks who brought the world consistent jailbreak and SIM unlock tools, could totally save Apple’s ass right now, as their activation servers are toppled due to the massive user-base (6 million) trying to update to firmware 2.0 on the 3G launch day.
In a stunning sweep and a victory for Apple any way you slice it, an unnamed party has purchased the “