hardware hacks - page 4

Apple plans to release a security patch on Saturday to address a security issue for iPhone users that had some worried third party criminals could gain control over their phones remotely, the BBC reported on Friday.

Noted security experts Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner revealed a major security exploit in SMS technology Thursday at the 2009 Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas. The exploit sent shockwaves through the wireless world and caused owners of mobile phones no end of terror over the prospect that bad guys might gain control over their devices by sending a series of simple SMS messages, including one containing a single square character, which would be the only indication of the hack.

Miller and Mulliner reportedly chose to reveal the exploit, which is applicable to all mobile platforms including iPhone OS, Android and Windows Mobile, at Black Hat after Apple had been unresponsive in the wake of their showing it to company officials earlier in July.

It was not immediately clear whether the patch reported by the BBC would be available to all iPhone users or just to those in the UK. Calls to Apple PR were unreturned at press time, but we’ll update the story as more information becomes available.

Having now lived with an iPhone 3GS for the better part of three weeks, I remain incredibly impressed with the device. It’s powerful, fast, and running extremely mature software that’s delightfully quirk-free.

That said, it’s also become apparent that if you’re actually interested in using the phone for its intended use (web browsing, e-mail and video), battery life is ridiculously inadequate. In spite of assurances at WWDC, the 3GS only lasts marginally longer than the 3G, and I often need to charge up mid-afternoon to make sure i have decent battery for my train ride home.

Yesterday, things really went out of wack, and I could literally watch my charge diminish by 2 percent per minute when I was doing nothing so much as leaving it on my desk. A restart fixed it, but it was an extreme case of a persistent problem.

I started thinking about all of this thanks to Joel Johnson’s review of the Mophie Juice Pack Air over at BB Gadgets today. I still think having any case would be a downer, but the extra battery power is becoming increasingly necessary to enjoy my long-awaited iPhone in the manner I choose. That said, I can’t really bring myself to by one of those big battery packs that hold four times the charge, or what have you — afraid of losing it.

What’s been your experience? Do you moderate your Flight Control play to preserve your talk time? Or do you sport a bonus battery pack?

The first jailbreak application for the iPhone 3GS has been released by premier iPhone hacker George Hotz.

Named “purplera1n,” the unlocking software is Windows-only. Hotz says a jailbreak for Mac is “coming shortly.”

Hotz’s application requires an iPhone 3GS running the 3.0 OS, and the latest version of iTunes — 8.2. Hotz warns that the unlock s beat and to back up the iPhone before running it.

The unlocking process seems straightforward. Writes Hotz on his blog: “Connect your iPhone normally. Click ‘make it ra1n.’ Wait. On bootup, run Freeze, the purplera1n installer app. Hopefully you’ll figure out what to do from there.”

There is another jailbreaking application for the iPhone 3.0 from the iPhone Dev Team (The 19-year old Hotz was associated with the group, but split with it). The Dev Team’s app will not work on the iPhone 3GS.

Jailbreaking allows an iPhone and iPod touch to to run unapproved apps through unofficial installers like Cydia and Icy.

Jailbreaking is not unlocking, a different, distinct process that frees the iPhone from the current carrier and makes it available for use with other wireless networks.

Needless to say, Apple sanctions neither process. Both have their risks and have been known to “brick” devices.

Hotz gained fame in 2007 when he became the first person to unlock the original iPhone. Using a combination of software and hardware hacks, the then 17-year-old tried to sell the hacked iPhone on eBay, but pulled the auction when jokers raised the bid price to more than $100 million.

He shortly traded the unlocked iPhone for three locked iPhones and a Nissan 350Z with Terry Daidone, founder of Certicell, a phone repair company in Louisville, KY.

Remember when Lonnie told you about an easy, fool-proof way to turn on iPhone tethering in the US? Well, there’s a way, way easier method, and it’s much, much more foolproof.

Simply point Mobile Safari to https://help.benm.at, select your country, download the profile for your carrier, and install. The settings menu will add an Internet Tethering toggle in the Network section. Then just pair with your computer over Bluetooth or plug in via USB  and go. No restart required. It’s really that easy.

Performance has been rock-solid in my experience, both for tethering Mac and Windows machines. Performance is terrible on EDGE and very nice on 3G, with battery life not noticeably worse than just browsing on Safari. And maybe a little bitter once the display goes to sleep. But I’m not running BitTorrent through the thing, either.

AT&T should have a killer offering on their hands once this actually ships. It would also be nice if AT&T tweaks the interface so you can turn on tethering without pulling your phone out of your pocket. Honestly, the only complaint I have. Anyone tried it outside the US? Really seems like something that should fly under the radar so long as you’re not downloading the whole Internet over it…

And, it goes without saying, this is use at your own risk and Apple will laugh at you if you brick your phone.

(And yes, I know we’re late, but I never recommend running something risky on your hardware if I haven’t done it myself. This is as close to safe as it gets.)

Richard Lai via Engadget

The iPhone Dev Team, the tireless hackers who provide software to jailbreak iPhones, know how to unlock the iPhone 3G S, but have decided to hold off releasing the software publicly pending Apple’s next move in the two year-old cat and mouse game between the company and the rogue user community.

“We can jailbreak the 3GS right now,” said a statement at the Dev-Team Blog, “but making our jailbreak public at this point … would in fact be detrimental to many more people than it would help. So we feel it’s best to keep our version of the jailbreak out of Apple’s sights for the time being.”

The crux of the problem seems to be a Dev Team concern that Apple will soon release an update to 3.0 software that will close the ultrasn0w exploit released last week that jailbreaks iPhone 3G running 3.0 software, and that many people who want to get an iPhone 3G S don’t have one yet.

“Once the [3G S] jailbreak is out, Apple will fix the iBoot-family bug we use to accomplish it,” the blog post explains. “[Apple] will simply stop signing the old iBoots and only sign the fixed ones. If you bought your phone after Apple has done this, there’s nothing you can do…the jailbreak isn’t going to work for you.”

For now the team has decided to work on 3.0 software issues such as push notification and will wait and see what Apple does next.

[The iPhone Blog]

Hacker George Hotz appears to have found a way to jailbreak and unlock the iPhone 3GS.

The 19-year-old Hotz, better known as GeoHot, may have found a hole in the iPhone 3GS boot sequence, which will allow hackers to unlock the device.

The crack comes just days after the release of the new iPhone. Previous jailbreaking hacks have sometimes taken weeks.

Details are hazy, however. Hotz has posted a screenshot that appears to show a custom command inserted into the iPhone’s iBoot, implying that signature checks had been bypassed, according to one explanation in the comments of the post. If so, it’s the first step in jailbreaking the device.

In addition, the just-released UltraSn0w unlock should also be compatible with the iPhone 3GS.

Via iClarified.

The Dev-Team, an iPhone hacking group, has released a free jailbreaking and unlocking tool for the iPhone 3.0 OS.

Called UltraSn0w, the easy to use unlocking tool jailbreaks the 3.0 iPhone to allow unauthorized apps and unlocks it for use with other carriers.

iFixit CEO Kyle Weins flew to London Thursday to be one of the first people in line at Apple’s Regent Street store and picked up a spankin’ new iPhone 3G S for the sole purpose of tearing the mother down.

Once again, using only a heat gun or hair dryer, a Phillips #00 screwdriver, a small suction cup and a spudger, you too, could get into Apple’s latest smartphone/mobile computing device — if such was your idea of entertainment.

iFixit is widely regarded as the best teardown artists in the biz and this item certainly burnishes that reputation, with detailed notes and photos showing the engineering minutiae of what may become Apple’s most popular product ever.

Apple promises faster speed and longer battery life with the 3G S iPhone, but early notes on the teardown indicate a battery with only 6% more ‘oomph’ than the one in the 3G, using a battery with 1219mAh as opposed to 1150mAh in the 3G. The main Samsung CPU is capable of 833MHz, which appears to confirm Apple’s marketing that says the ‘S’ in the 3G S stands for ‘speed’.

See another excellent teardown and parts analysis from the fearless tech wizards at Rapid Repair, but remember the old adage: ‘don’t try this at home’ — unless you don’t care about voiding your warranty.

Despite the great hue and cry that arose Monday in the wake of the news that AT&T will not be among the 22 worldwide carriers to support tethering when iPhone 3.0 debuts, a wonderfully snarky how-to from 9to5 Mac spells out step-by-step instructions for getting your tether on today, for free, regardless of whether AT&T wants you to, without jailbreaking your iPhone.

In fact, the process only works with un-jailbroken iPhones legitimately registered for service with AT&T in the US.

Two important things you need to be aware of before you consider sticking it to the AT&T man:

1. You have to be running iPhone OS 3.0, which, obviously, has not been released officially but which is widely available if you know where to look. A very good place to start would be right here.

2. You have to be running the very first pre-release version of iTunes 8.2, which is more difficult to get ahold of but, depending on just how deep your enmity for AT&T runs, is also out there hiding in plain view.

Beyond that, it’s just a matter of refusing to accept the proposition that you can’t do anything you want to do with something you’ve bought and paid for just because a couple major corporations don’t want you to feel so empowered.

As with anything satisfying in Life, there are risks, but to those who are willing to bear them go the richest rewards.

See 9to5 Mac for further details.

The “sealed” battery in Apple’s new 13-inch MacBook Pro is easily replaced with standard screwdrivers, a teardown by iFixit shows.

The MacBook battery is not supposed to be changed by the user. Sealed inside the case, Apple encourages customers to pay Apple $130 to change the battery and dispose of the old one.

However, the battery is easily accessed with a standard Phillips screwdriver, and the battery removed with a tri-wing screwdriver, iFixit found when dissassmbling the device on Tuesday.

In addition, iFixit notes that the single audio jack (see post below) is innapropriate for a “Pro” machine. The jack supports analog and digital audio-out, and analog audio-in, but not digital audio-in.

“If you need digital audio-in, this is not the machine for you.” said iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens in an email.

Wiens also said the MBP’s new SD card slot is “rather unimaginative.”

“Half the card hangs outside the computer,” said Wiens. “Apparently, Apple couldn’t free up enough space for a slot that would make the card completely captive.”

Wiens notes the battery is beefier (360 grams, about 60 grams heavier than the old one), but is rated 60 Watt-hours, compared to the older battery’s 45 W-h. Apple claims the battery will last for 7 hours. The previous MacBook’s battery was rated 5 hours (yeah, right!)

More details and pictures from iFixit after the jump.

You have to love the guys at iFixit. No sooner does Apple release new hardware into the wild than those guys are all over it with their Phillips #0, Spudger and Tri-wing screwdrivers like so many buzzards on a fresh carcass in the desert.

As we post, they are liveblogging their tear-down of a new 13″ MacBook Pro. If you’re enthralled by computer innards and don’t get queasy at the sight of silicon, you’ll want to head on over for a look-see.

Hacker Nathan Seidle has rigged his car so that his Nike+iPod pedometer unlocks the doors wirelessly as he walks up to it.

“I hate keys,” he writes. “I am on a mission to dispose of them all.”

Seidle already uses keypads and wireless RFID cards to get into his home and office — the last key in his pocket is for his car.

So Seidle took a Nike+iPod sensor — the pedometer/transmitter that normally goes into your running shoe — and rigged up a simple proximity sensor inside the car to detect when it approaches. The Nike+iPod sensor is constantly transmitting a unique ID, which the car uses to identify Seidle and unlock the doors. He keeps the Nike+iPod in his pocket.

Seidle made the proximity detector inside the car from the Nike+iPod receiver (the part that normally plugs into the iPod) and an Arduino Pro Mini microcontroller board, made by his company, SparkFun Electronics, plus a few other bits and pieces.

The system, which Seidle calls the iFob, is an intermediate hacking project. He’s posted a detailed tutorial on the SparkFun website.

Unfortunately, the iFob doesn’t start the car; it just unlocks the doors.

“The system now works great!” Seidle writes. “When you’ve got a handful of stuff, it’s great to know the doors will automatically unlock as you approach. However, I still have use a key to start the car. The next step is get a big red button wired up for button start so that I don’t have to carry my key. Someday.”

Via GadgetLab.

Can you think of another company whose outdated and obsolete products get repurposed as art pieces even a fraction as often as do those from Apple?

How about a late 20th century PowerMac G4, which, as a 10 year-old desktop might possibly still be good enough to run your elementary school children’s games and learning software, but for all practical purposes is probably better suited as the inspiration for a wall clock to remind you, time after time, how gear Apple cool is.

At a mere $60, these may not last long and you should look into turning your own dusty G4 into a DIY project.

[iPhoneSavior]

For now, it’s only the head in a custom-made R2-D2, but soon the whole astromech will obey the orders of an iPhone, including the possibility of firing sounds and sending text to its head displays.

The controls use either the iPhone’s accelerometer or the multitouch screen, and if rumors of a magnetrometer in the next gen iPhones are true, we could be looking at some very interesting robot applications both in the App Store and in the jailbroken universe soon.

[Thanks Lance]

What do you get when you combine the Cult of Mac with the Cult of LEGO?

You could do worse than Bjarne Tveskov, who took the happenstance of a 7″ photoframe that looks quite like the screen from his favorite iMac G4 and decided to create a mini-version of it using LEGO elements.

The model lacks actual computer hardware but the screen can display videos, images and TV (there’s a digital TV tuner built in to the photoframe).

More images at Tveskov’s blog.

[Boing Boing]

Click for larger image view.

Perhaps you know about Steampunk, the geek sub-culture movement that marries devotion to the aesthetics of Victorian romance with a commitment to the use of modern technology.

The vast majority of Steampunk practitioners work in the PC realm, though there are impressive examples of Apple gear transformed.

None moreso, perhaps, than the eye-Pod Victrola from Doctor Grymm. A custom mod of an Apple iPod Nano 1st Gen, the design is inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

The “eye-Pod” can be worn on the wrist via the leather cuff, or placed on it’s custom Victrola base.

Full functionality of the iPod remains intact and a hidden USB cord retracts from the base to either a wall charger or a computer. Hidden pressure plates send a strobing “static charge” into the quartz crystals on either side of the magnified veiwing portal, and music plays through the Victrola horn or though a portable personal hearing apparatus (in progress).

[SteamGearLab, via BoingBoing]

This doesn’t look like the simplest DIY project, but one creative Mac fan turned an old G3 into a house for an old Sega Dreamcast.

The project, dubbed the iCast, started out while doing a workshop cleanup: handy person logicdustbin realized that among the spare parts were a few G3s and an LCD monitor.

Once the Mac was gutted, the LCD fit inside nicely.

Then “it was an easy decision to slap a Dreamcast inside,” logicdustbin wrote on the  www.cgcc.ca forum. “The hard part was figuring out where to place it. I didn’t want to cut a big hole in the side of the case… but I ended up doing a ‘PS1 upside down mod’ – its not great, but it works pretty good.”

In final analysis, logicdustbin concedes: “A lot of work went into this, like getting the original power button to work for the new monitor and adding a power switch for the DC, then adding a sound amp to power the iMac speakers…it was all pretty fun to do and it plays just great!”

Step by step, with pics here, check out the video of the working iCast here.

iPhone developer Ralf Ackermann has achieved a working device-to-device Bluetooth solution, according to a report at ArsTechnica.

Building on work developed by Matthias Ringwald, who has put together a user space bluetooth stack, Ackerman has built external adapters that plug into the iPhone’s connector port, accessing the phone’s bluetooth stack in a way that could possibly even comply with the standard iPhone SDK, according to developer/blogger Erica Sadun.

With such capability developers could theoretically build games and utilities that allow phones to transfer data without having to be on the same WiFi network or connect to a server as an intermediary. Users could transfer photos, play chess against each other, shoot over a vcard, and more, using software that could be sold on App Store.

While the iPhone ships with Bluetooth capabilities, they are a limited subset of its normal features. You cannot, for example, connect your Mac to your iPhone and transfer data files.

Don’t hold your breath for Apple to take Ackerman’s lead in this arena, but this, as Sadun notes, is pretty big news and a great step forward for the effort to make iPhones communicate directly with each other.

Via ArsTechnica

Last week we wrote about a kind of silly competition going on out there in Mac land between people vying for the title for running the most apps simultaneously on a Mac.

Comes now, Cult reader Jay Pan, who figures all the buzz about people running OS X on hacked netbooks should entitle him to some consideration for managing to get 80 apps going with OS X running on an Advent 4211 ( MSI Wind Clone ), with both Blender and Daz3D launched.

“I’ve been trying to determine Atom’s performances with Mac OS X for some time now, and I think this shows Atom’s netbooks are not so crippled!” he told us.

So what do you think? Is Pan’s record in the same league with the 240 apps running on a Mac Pro 8 core machine? Should the judges create a special “netbook” category for the dubious “Busy Mac” honor?

Follow after the jump for Pan’s hardware specs and list of apps running, and be sure to click on the image above for a larger view.

Beatrice Murch is not a woman who lets a minor problem like a broken power lead get in her way.

The guys at Rapid Repair report success modifying an iPod Video 5G with a Toshiba MK2431GAH drive, creating the world’s first 240GB iPod.

“The mod is actually very simple to do on a 5th gen iPod. And with a 240GB iPod you can finally carry your entire $57,667.50 iTunes library” Rapid Repair CEO Ben Levy said in an email.

The Toshiba drive is only compatible with the iPod Video 5G and original iPod Video (30GB, 60GB and 80GB ONLY). Rapid Repair hopes to add the iPod Classic and Zune 2G to the compatible list very soon.

Ready to take the plunge? Looks like it will cost you just slightly more than a buck a gig.

Via methodshop

The latest competitor for MP3 player domination comes out of Japan (where else?), where an engineer friend of Engadget, living in the town of Ageo, has built a motion controlled device that plays tunes from an SD card.

Housed in a set of speakers (switching from stereo to mono when the satellite is unplugged), the very DIY device has an accelerometer-based interface: you can skip ahead, skip back, change albums, pause, loop, turn down or crank up the sound by tilting, tapping, or setting the thing down.

Check the video and if you want to build your own, there’s a parts list, schematics and firmware page.

Via Engadget

Japanese photographer Isamu Sanada is no stranger to the enticing realm of Apple mockups, and the whole netbook idea just refuses to die, so it should come as no suprise to see this one, a kind of interesting tri-fold take on the idea.

What do you think? Should Apple spend bandwidth going in such a direction, or is the iPhone/iPod Touch really the end of the story when it comes to an Apple netbook?

Given a recent assessment by pro photographer Rob Galbraith that puts Apple’s MacBook Pro display behind the Lenovo Think Pad and the Dell Mini 9 in color accuracy, Apple may want to take a closer look at what’s already in the line-up before going for new product dollars.

Formerly very appreciative of Apple’s display properties from the perspective of a demanding visual artist, Galbraith says of the new high-end Apple laptop, “in ambient light environments which induce screen reflections, the late-2008 MacBook Pro 15 inch’s glossy screen moves deep into the not acceptable category.”

Via DVICE

If you have ever wondered why you might want to jailbreak your iPhone, or considered the relative merits of Apple’s policy giving it complete control over applications that might run on its mobile operating system, Sarah Perez’s article at ReadWriteWeb should be grist for your mill.

“Jailbreaking” is a straightforward process that allows you to install unapproved third-party applications on your device. It can be confused with “unlocking” – the process that makes the phone capable of working on other carriers besides the one chosen by Apple for exclusive carrier status in a given market. But the bottom line is that, despite the 10,000+ apps available on the AppStore and despite the longterm service contracts Apple’s chosen cellular partners use to tie you down financially with the iPhone, “a non-jailbroken phone is only half the phone it could be,” according to Perez.

Perez recommends the user-friendly instructions at iPhone-Hacks.com for the easiest-to-understand instructions on how to make your iPhone be all it can be. There are a number of other useful tutorials on methods for jailbreaking and unlocking your device available at iClarified.

The Read Write Web artilce linked above has a list of the best “illegal” apps you can put on the phone as well as a reassuring method for hiding the fact you jailbroke your iPhone the next time you want to download Apple’s latest iPhone firmware.

If you’ve ever balked at the cost of repairing your Apple gear, especially your iPhone or iPod, for example, consider what the repair shop is getting into when it receives your damaged product. As the gallery below of pictures detailing some of the intricacies involved in repairing the cracked glass touchscreen of an iPhone shows,

a) While the guys at iFixit are awesome and intrepid, and may even be willing to hold your hand through some processes, DIY repairs may not be the best route if you don’t like the prices Apple charges; and

b) your should consider device insurance and a replacement device if you have butterfingers and are afraid you may end up cracking your iPhone’s touchscreen.

We’re pretty sure that doublesided tape, portable hairdryers and big binder clips are not standard repair tools at the Apple authorized repair center near you, but hey, whatever works, right?

More photos and detailed repair descriptions are at TechRepublic.
All images © 2008, Mark Kaelin/TechRepublic.