Last week was a good week in terms of interesting new iPhone apps: we got Tweetie 2, one of the best Twitter apps out there right now, and Adobe’s own Photoshop.com Mobile. Don’t be fooled by its Photoshop name. It’s by no means a fully equipped image manipulation app. It’s more like a quick way to polish your photos.
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On October 1st Google released Wave to some 100.000 selected beta testers. While I wasn’t lucky enough to get a first row seat, I had the luck to be nominated by Andrew Terry and Kol Tregaskes for an invite. 2-3 days later my nomination by these fine guys came through.
Currently the best way to use Wave is using a regular browser on your computer. In some instances though you might want to use it on the go, say, on an iPhone or iPod touch. There are various claims out there that state it isn’t possible because Google said so on their site when you tried to go there with MobileSafari. It does work though, and it’s not a real secret. Have a look.
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Just now the iPhone Dev-Team has released the unlock/jailbreak for the iPhone and iPod touch. At the time of this writing it doesn’t yet support unlocking the iPhone 3G and 3GS. The utility, PwnageTool, is currently available for Mac only. “QuickPwn for Mac OS X and Windows will follow sometime soon“. The required tools for Windows are available now from the Dev-Team Blog.

For the iPhone 3G unlock you’ll have to wait for UltraSn0w, which isn’t yet released – this should happen in the next few days. (This should give the iPhone 3GS upgraders that come from the 3G a way to sell their old phones on eBay.) It will be available via apt, so you can get it with cydia and icy on jailbroken iPhones. iPhone 2G users can create their custom jailbreak and unlock firmware now. iPod touch 1G can jailbreak, 2G users can only jailbreak an pre-3.0 version using Redsn0w.

Update 20.6. #1:
Currently I’m not able to get push notifications on the jailbroken iPhone 2G with OS 3.0. This already was the case during the betas. My app I used for testing runs without any problems on a regular iPod touch 2G, but it can’t register for notifications on the iPhone.

My current theory is that Apple’s servers, all notifications go through them, are declining unactivated devices. My iPhone 2G cannot be activated because I’m not running on an official carrier. (Actually, I am using it on T-Mobile Germany, but I’m not on the iPhone plan yet.)

If anyone is using a jailbroken iPhone that is not officially activated, let me know if push notifications are working for you or not!

Update 20.6. #2:
More people are finding out about the problem with push notifications.

Update 23.6.
Dev-Team today released Ultrasn0w that unlocks the iPhone 3G (not 3GS!). The instructions are pretty simple:

1. Ensure you have upgraded to iPhone OS 3.0
2. Jailbreak your iPhone 3G using redsn0w or PwnageTool (this will also install Cydia/Icy)
3. Run Cydia or Icy
4. Please add the repo repo666.ultrasn0w.com to Cydia or icy
5. Search for ‘ultrasn0w’ in cydia or icy and install ultrasn0w
6. Reboot your iPhone 3G
7. T-Mobile USA users should disable 3G before using ultrasn0w
8. Enjoy

PwnageTool screenshots after the break…
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Well, I guess the CEO of AT&T didn’t see this first question coming: “Why is the number one reason why people decide not to get the iPhone… AT&T’s service?” Smooth opening, Mr. Mossberg…

D7 Video: AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson and Walt Mossberg
Randall Stephenson talks with All Things D’s Walt Mossberg about the speed of AT&T’s network, providing customer data to the government and the company’s iPhone deal with Apple.

Last weeks Apple keynote in Cupertino, CA compressed into just under 10 minutes.

A quick hint for those using the Safari 4 Beta in Mac OS X and wondering why Google Mail (with Gears from Safari 3) doesn’t work anymore.

Opening Gmail with an old version Gears enabled resulted in a blank white window. Disabling it brought Gmail back but, obviously, without the offline features. An updated version of Gears has been available for a while now, but the process of updating isn’t really obvious and just re-installing/updating Gears didn’t work for me for some reason.
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Looks like Apple is starting to hunt down those pesky guys and girls who are accessing the US iTunes Store from abroad. These (parts) are the updated Terms of Sale you just accepted – probably without reading them – while trying to buy something from their store:

U.S. SALES ONLY

Purchases or rentals (as applicable) from the iTunes Store are available to you only in the United States and are not available in any other location. You agree not to use or attempt to use the iTunes Store from outside of the available territory. Apple may use technologies to verify such compliance.

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You read correctly: One of the most famous games is now available for the iPhone and iPod touch. SimCity’s history goes way back to 1989 when it was originally published. Development started in 1986 for the Commodore 64. So it came a long way and is now available (link opens iTunes) for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch.

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See, the basic principles of games like (Desktop) Tower Defense are what make them so addicting. As such, tower defense’s rules are simple to understand: build a maze of different weapons which the enemy – in case of Fieldrunners a varying number of ground and air units – has to walk through or fly over. (more…)

I recently looked for a way to get to my iDisk (part of MobileMe) from my iPhone and found a free app on Apple’s App Store, called MobileFiles which does exactly that.

MobileFiles can access your local files on the iPhone and multiple MobileMe iDisks, including your friends public folders. When you drill down to an actual file in the folder structure you can view many of the documents. (more…)