Mobile Apple Me

One developer was successfully tethering his iPhone 3G to his laptop over USB, MacRumors wrote. Steve Troughton-Smith, the hacker, is now working on the same thing but through Bluetooth connection.

Tethering is a feature that allows you to share your iPhone's internet connection with your laptop, but has not been an allowed feature up until iPhone 3.0. Even with iPhone 3.0, mobile carriers generally charge an extra fee in the U.S. to allow tethering access.

Good luck with your Bluetooth tethering experiment, Steve!

Step 1: Check if you own a 3G iPhone. If you’re on EDGE (as I am): sorry. Tethering does not seem to work with EDGE phones.

Step 2: Check to see if AT&T is your carrier. If it is: sorry. AT&T will not let you tether.

Step 3: Navigate to ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Carrier Support. Notice the spaces in that last folder name! If you’re at the command line, use backslashes to escape the spaces, i.e. cd ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Carrier Support. You will find a file with an ipcc extension. Copy that file: e.g. cp foo.ipcc foo.ipcc.original. This creates a backup for when you mess up.

Step 4: rename the ipcc extension to zip. For me that was ATT_US.ipcc renamed to ATT_US.zip. (Did I mention how I’m on a 1st Gen iPhone with AT&T?). Unzip it. This creates a new folder called Payload.

Step 5: Navigate into Payload and then into the folder under that. Mine was called ATT_US.bundle. Yours will differ. Inside that folder you will find three files that you will edit: Info.plist, version.plist, and carrier.plist. Open all three in the Property List Editor that comes with the dev tools on a Mac.

Step 6: In Info.plist, change the CFBundleVersion to 5.0. Save.

Step 7: In the version.plist, change the CFBundleVersion to 5.0. Save.

Step 8: In carrier.plist do the following and then save:
(a) Add a new dictionary to the apns array:
apn = internet
password = password
username = iphone
(b) In the wap dictionary (mine is wap.cingular, sts’s was wap.dol.ie), add a new pair. Do not edit the password or username:
type-mask = (NUMBER) -2
(c) Add a new pair at the top level dictionary of the carrier.plist file. (We’re not sure this is strictly speaking necessary but go ahead and do it.):
AllowEDGEEditing = (BOOLEAN) YES

Step 9: Zip up the Payload folder in which you just made your edits. Rename it to the same name as the original ipcc file. (For me that was ATT_US.ipcc).

Step 10: Connect your iPhone to iTunes.

Step 11: In the Summary tab, option-click “Check for Update”. Navigate to your ipcc file, select it. It takes no more than a second or two to update.

Step 12: Reboot your iPhone.

Step 13: In prefs (on the phone) navigate to Settings > General > Network.

Step 14: Let me know how this worked for you.

HOW TO FIND A CARRIER IPCC FILE:

curl -s -L http://phobos.apple.com/version | grep -i carrier

via modmyi

Following the announcement iPhone OS 3.0 by Apple, one of the hottest discussions is what it means to the iPhone in term of facing its potential rival Palm's Pre.  It's interesting to compare them in three big areas: search, synchronization and background applications.

Here is some bottom-lines from an article which covers Apple and Palm’s strongly opposed stances.

SEARCH

• In iPhone OS 3.0, Apple have added Spotlight which searches contacts, email headers, calendar and notes items, iPod media, applications and finally the web.
• Palm have introduced a “Universal Search” which intelligently takes one search query and checks it across first contacts, local apps, then the Internet.

SYNCHRONIZATION

• iPhone OS 3.0 adds CalDAV and .ics to its Exchange support, meaning that you can view information from multiple calendars, together with create appointments in each (including meeting invitations).
• With its Synergy system, Palm not only combines Outlook, Exchange, Google and Facebook calendars, but does so intelligently, stripping out duplications.

BACKGROUND APPLICATIONS

• iPhone OS 3.0 will simply not allow apps to run unchecked in the background, due to battery consideration.
• The Pre resolutely supports background applications: in fact the company has made a point of highlighting how the individual ‘cards’ representing each app are not mere snapshots but live previews.

Check out the full comparison here.

via SlashGear

Two major improvements in the upcoming iPhone 3.0 OS will include Apple Push System and with embedded Google Map for 3rd Party developers. The upcoming push services are introduced to cut off connections running in the background to preserve battery life while maintaining system performance at high level.

Google Maps is unsurprisingly on today’s agenda. Scott Forstall explains the huge demand from developers asking for a direct Google’s Maps embedding into iPhone app, and Apple is planning to do so. Developers now can build apps which call out to Google Maps directly, and most importantly, it will permit the use of core location for turn by turn directions.

It's a good news for developers (as well as advertisers). Developers could optimize a new app to enjoy traffic exchange in the Admob network, which so far claims covering more than 1,000 iPhone apps. The mobile ad network company will be launching an iPhone App Exchange later this month.

AdMob currently shows ads across 7.2 million iPhones. Developers will be able to volunteer a portion of the ad inventory on their apps to go towards promoting other apps. In return, their apps will be promoted on other apps in the network. Depending on whether monetization or distribution is more important to them, they will be able to adjust the settings on their AdMob account accordingly.

Since AdMob knows which other apps in the network have been downloaded by each individual, consumers will never be shown ads for apps they already own. AdMob also keeps track of usage after each download.

via TechCrunch