iPhone Dev-Team Releases RedSn0w 0.9 Beta for Windows, Mac

The iPhone Dev-Team has released a beta of RedSn0w 0.9 which performs jailbreaking, unlocking, and customizing for the latest iPhone firmware.

Customizations include boot logos, recovery logos, and “verbose” boot.

The beta supports:
- All iPhones and iPod touches except the iPod touch 3G
- Windows and Mac OSX (x86)
- Apple firmware 3.0 and 3.1.2

When it's out of beta, it will support the iPod touch 3G, PPC OSX, and Linux.

How is it different from PwnageTool?
redsn0w doesn't require a system restore like PwnageTool does (it doesn't even use iTunes at all). On the other hand, PwnageTool can prevent your baseband from being upgraded when you upgrade your firmware, preserving your unlock. (redsn0w doesn't touch your baseband but it doesn't help preserve it during an upgrade either). redsn0w works by modifying your current filesystem, so your existing baseband, data and applications should remain intact.

How is it different from blackra1n?
- It uses our original Pwnage bootrom exploit for iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G, and iPod 1G. (Because it's a bootrom exploit, it can't be fixed by Apple without a new hardware release.) Note that redsn0w 0.9 does use the USB exploit for iPhone 3GS and iPod 2G running 3.1.2, but that exploit will be fixed in Apple's next FW release.
- It offers custom logos and verbose boot
- It installs Cydia without needing a separate download
- It's not as fast :) (but redsn0w handles more variations :))

If you have a late-model iPhone 3GS, or if you have an iPod touch 2G whose serial number begins with “MC”, you can use redsn0w to jailbreak but you are currently restricted to “tethered” rebooting. That means you need to connect your device to a computer to complete the boot after a reset. Also, these devices cannot have custom logos.

We will be posting detailed tutorials on how to use RedSn0w 0.9 shortly. Please stay tuned for more information.

You can download RedSn0w 0.9 Beta from here: Windows, Mac

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Advantage Mac (again) …

This month has been a bad one for me and computers. First my MacBook Pro died (due to a video card that had been recalled), and then my desktop PC decided to fall over dead.

The Mac failure was another study in why I love Apple service: The video just died one day, no screen, external monitor wouldn't work. Since a Mac has a real operating system (Mac OS X - a Unix variant), I was able to determine that the machine was actually still working by connecting from my desktop PC using ssh.

I did a bit of system administration black magic, and turned on the remote desktop service (see http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2370 or http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2081446&tstart=1 for a writeup of how), and was able to connect to my MBP using VNC. That allowed me to validate things were working, and to make sure I had a current backup before doing anything else.

A quick call to Apple's support desk, and the helpful tech looked up the problem, found there was a recall on the video logic board for certain MBP systems, and walked me through a few things to validate it wasn't just user error. He gave me a case number, told me to go to the Apple store, and have them check for the recall.


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Adventures in iPhone beta land

...Or how to brick your phone with an upgrade, and recover...

Earlier this month, Apple released the fifth beta of their 3.0 firmware for the iPhone. As usual, I raced to the site to download it.

I became very excited by the email that I got saying that submissions to the Apple store have to be compatible with iPhone OS 3.0, which to me means it won't be long before this is a production OS. With that in mind, I strapped on my crazy cap and decided to upgrade my phone to beta 5.


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Why is Microsoft bashing Apple ?

Today I read a blog that was a continuation of the series of ads that Microsoft has about why you should buy a PC instead of a Mac.

The article (see http://tinyurl.com/cncx73) was one of those cutesy marketing ideas that looked at the alleged difference in cost between a Mac and a PC and came up with an imaginary tax rebate based on the savings. The author used this whitepaper as the basis for the comparison. Like all of these comparisons, comparing apples to oranges results in the preferred hardware (in this case the PC) being shown to be a better deal.

I do most of my work on a MacBook Pro, after being a laptop user for more years than I care to count. I switched when it became possible to do so without giving up Windows. With the current crop of Apple machines, you have the option of running Windows directly, setting things up to dual boot (BootCamp), or running Windows in a VM (using Parallels, Fusion, VirtualBox, etc.)

Which once again leads me to ask why would Microsoft bash Apple ?
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iPhone beta Recovery …

Recently I downloaded the iPhone beta 3.0 firmware upgrade and decided (without thinking it through) to update my phone to use the new version. In hindsight, Apple makes it pretty clear this is a bad idea, and warns you that you won't be able to revert to a prior version of the software:



But warnings were meant to be ignored, so I blithely went ahead and updated with the new firmware. Immediately after doing so, I had a d'oh moment when I realized I better not have my business phone running on beta software, so I wanted to revert.

No problem I thought, I'll just follow the steps to downgrade that I wrote about previously ...


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How to Downgrade Your iPhone (or iPod) Operating System

On the first day of 360iDev, I was in a session to learn about programming an iPhone, and somebody mentioned that a friend of theirs had updated their iPod firmware, and couldn't figure out how to reset it back to the prior version. Since I had recently done this, I thought I could write this walk-through.


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Reassociating Word files with Open Office on the Mac

One more thing I ran into after posting the blog on my Microsoft Office update problem originally. Turns out that the update reassociated all of the "Office" files with the Microsoft programs (even though they don't exist on my machine), so double-clicking a document for instance tries to open it with Microsoft Word (which of course fails).


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Keeping Entourage 2008 up to date without Office 2008

I recently was seeing a few weird problems with Entourage and synching, so I decided to check and see if it was up to date.

I have a copy of Entourage 2008 that I got from an Exchange hosting service that I use for email with one of my partner companies.

Looking at the Entourage/About Entourage, I saw that I was running version 12.1.3,which was a couple of revs back from the current version (12.1.5). So I picked Update from the Help menu in Entourage:




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