[..] I believe (and have heard) that the engineer who lost his iPhone 4G has not been fired. Perhaps the case was examined on an individual basis and determined not to have been one of violating Apple policy too much or not one where Apple was injured sufficiently. I’m glad for now. I hate to see people lose their jobs ever.

But I can tell you that the test engineer who showed me an iPad after midnight, for 2 minutes, during the iPad launch was indeed fired. I opted to spend 2 minutes with Numbers on this iPad, trying some stunts I’d seen on Apple’s website demo video. I was not told that it was a 3G model and I had no way to know that. I was told that this engineer had to wait until midnight to show it outside of Apple’s secure area. And I’m an Apple employee who he was showing it to. My guess is that he was allowed to take the iPad outside of the secure area but still not supposed to show it. [..]

[..] publishing the name, photographs, and personal information of the Apple engineer who lost the phone is irrelevant to the story. It was the dick move to end all dick moves. Gizmodo is, ostensibly, a gadget site. The interest of their readers in this saga regards the phone. Publishing his name did not clarify in the least bit how they obtained the phone. The people whose identities I’d like to know are those who obtained and then sold the phone, not the guy from Apple who lost it. There is no interest served by outing him other than taking sociopathic glee in making a public spectacle of someone who made a very serious but honest mistake.

This, I’m deeply offended by.

John Gruber on the case of the lost iPhone. Great summary of the things that happened.

Yes, they also include various instances of Comic Sans.

It was Tuesday morning and I started the day as usual, scanning through the nightly mails and twitter. Then there are these posts making me think it’s April Fools all over again: Opera Mini hit the App Store. I honestly didn’t expect Apple to approve that one. I have my suspicions as to why Apple did approve it, but let’s talk about that later. Opera already made a big deal about this whole thing on multiple occasions and even included a timer to show how long it took Apple to make the browser available in the App Store.
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You might not like services like Foursquare, Gowalla or the even older Brightkite and think they don’t make any sense at all. Well, let’s just say there are still people out there who don’t think Twitter makes any sense at all. Fine by me. I’m not going to debate this over here. People probably thought the same when the telephone was invented. Just think about that strange new device in your home that could ring anytime if someone just dialed your number. Whoa!?

Anyway, there’s currently a fight going on between these contenders. The obvious problem: which service do I use to update my location and let my friends know where I am? Some of my friends only use Gowalla, some exclusively use Foursquare – and then there’s this one person who uses Brightkite. Do you really want to spend minutes launching one app after the other to update your location? I don’t.

Well, there’s a way out. It’s called check.in, developed by the guys at Brightkite. Currently it’s in beta and you have to apply for an invite. It’s been a while since I signed up for it and got one just today. Thanks to the person at Brightkite, you know who you are. :-) So this is by no means a review, just a quick preview of what it looks like.
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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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Thank. Goodness. Push mail is now available for Gmail users on phones that support Exchange in some shape or form! It pushes to iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian S60 and Windows Mobile users. Everyone should have seen this coming after they enabled push for calendar and contacts earlier this year.
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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.