8 hours behind schedule, the iPhone Dev-Team has finally announced the sources for the iPhone 3G unlock. 10 days after the unlock was demoed on Qik, millions of iPhone 3G users around the globe thronged to the team’s blog, waiting for an announcement. To their dismay, it was announced (albeit in a cryptic message), that the unlock would only work on the 02.28.x baseband version, something which the team had originally advised not to update to.

If you’ve been waiting for the gods of unlock to shower some love on your iPhone, here’s what you’ll need.

» An iPhone 3G with 02.28 baseband version (Goto the Settings app » General » About ; then scroll to the very bottom). If it’s not, update your phone to the latest software using iTunes. 
» Your phone should be jailbroken. You can either use Pwnage Tool or QuickPwn for this.
» Launch Cydia or Installer.app and add the following sources:

Cydia source: http://apt9.yellowsn0w.com/
Installer repo: http://i.yellowsn0w.com/

» Download and install yellowsn0w, return to Cydia and reboot.

As always, the team maintains that this is a beta release, so proceed at your own risk. They are updating the original blog post with new information as they receive it from users who’re trying the unlock. If you’re the over cautious nerd, we’d advice to wait a couple more days before they iron out the tweaks. Of course, we want to hear your story, so irrespective of success or failure, let us know how it goes!

[More details on the Dev-Team’s Blog]

As the year 2008 nears its end, the Smoking Apples team decided to go back and take a quick look at the apps that made a difference. While Milind has already listed out his choice of five apps that he discovered in 2008, here’s a list of the five apps that are definitely worth a mention. In this profession, you come across a ton of applications that you probably didn’t even know they existed. It’s only when you try them out, you realize what you’ve been missing all this while.

Mac

Mailplane »
As a freelance writer who also has his own business, I need to manage multiple email accounts. Mailplane gives the power to manage those with ease. Gmail + Mailplane combo is the best thing that happenned to me in 2008.

Coda »
Coda is the gem that every developer should possess. Editing files for multiple sites that you manage is pleasantly simple with Coda.

NetNewsWire »
As a freelance writer, you need to keep up with the news. This job had me subscribe to over a 100 feeds and I’m thamkful to NNW for making it so easy. Its syncing capability with newsgator online is a boon and the iPhone app is amazing.

CoverSutra / Boxee »
Coversutra, is without a doubt, the best iTunes extender out there. In fact, it was Milind who enlightened me about it and I’ve been using it ever since. Boxee, even though it is still in alpha, is a remarkable piece of software and I hope the year 2009 proves great to the ream behind Boxee. There are no better music / multimedia managers like these.

Littlesnapper »
Littlesnapper is to screenshots as Aperture is to a photographer. If you take enough of those, you need this brilliant app to manage them. And my job requires me to take multiple shots of every app I review.

iPhone

Mail »
The Mail app, that comes default on the iPhone, is one of my most important and frequently used apps on the phone. I’m really hoping we get email search soon.

Tweetie »
There is a reason I crowned it the Supreme Champion among the twitter clients for the iPhone. It gets better in version 1.2 which is still in beta.

Things »
Task Management couldn’t be any better. Even though it has a desktop counterpart, the iPhone version can well be used to get your things done.

iPhoneModem »
Not available on the App store, but certainly something you’d need if you’re a frequent traveller. (Jailbreak)

Qik »
Who says you cannot record video through your iPhone? (Jailbreak)

Continuing onward from our last week’s look at Puzzle Games on the App Store, we’re going to take a look at Word Puzzles on the App Store.  Word Puzzles have long been popular, making appearances in newspapers, children’s fun books, magazines and now they’ve paved their way onto the App Store.

WordsWorth

WordsWorth comes from a team of Indian creative minds called 99Games Online. Based out of Mangalore, India, [Milind: hey! That’s my native land!] 99Games has a bunch of puzzle games available in the App Store, WordsWorth being their latest offering. But, what exactly is WordsWorth?

WordsWorth is a fun, interactive word puzzle game wherein the objective of the game is to find words from a collection of letters scrambled in the form of a honeycomb looking grid. Although this sounds simple, it is quite difficult to find out and trace the words from the grid. You may either tap each alphabet to form a chain forming the word, or you can trace out the word chain by dragging the path. You are awarded points based on the length of the word and the alphabets chosen. The top of the game tells you how much a word formation will reward you before the submitting. Continue Reading »

Inspite of the availability of a dozen different twitter apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch, the race to be the best twitter client for the iPhone never ceases. And the newest entrant in the war of the apps is Tweetie, the amazingly fast and full-featured twitter client for the iPhone and iPod Touch. From atebits, the developers of Scribbles, Tweetie has replaced Twitterrific to become the most frequently used app on my iPhone. 

Let’s take a look at what sets Tweetie apart from the other Twitter clients and why it is the Supreme Champion among them. Continue Reading »

It can be said, without a doubt, that the iPhone is an addictive device. With a gazillion different apps available in the App Store, you can customize the phone to your liking. Launching the App Store, searching for the app and installing it with a single tap is so addictive that one often finds himself scrolling through multiple screens filled with apps. And with such a wide variety of fantastic apps and games available for the iPhone, who wants to stop playing?

However, as it is with most other portable devices, there’s only so much that the inbuilt battery can provide. Of course, if we consider the superb browsing experience on the iPhone, plus that fact that it’s a “phone too, we only wish we had an unlimited battery backup for the iPhone. Continue Reading »

This past week, we received the new MacBook Pro at our test labs (Thanks, Aditya). Yes, we’re aware how early we got our hands on it, but that’s how things work here in India. In fact, Apple’s new releases have been reaching the shores far more early compared to the previous years. I’ve had the pleasure of using the unit to my heart’s content and besides a few cons, the new design is one of the best things Apple has produced in its entire history. 

Since it has been quite a while now that the new products have been available for sale in the international markets, a wide array of blogs have already written in-depth reviews of the MacBook Pro. Our unboxing and product pictures are available in the gallery here. We urge you to take a look at the gallery, as we have some really awesome shots waiting for you. Continue Reading »

This week, we take the ‘App Store Day’ wagon to the folks over at Readdle and explore their A.I.Disk app for the iPhone.

We here at Smoking Apples are great fans of the iPhone and 3 of us already have a MobileMe subscription. As much as we like the sync features of iDisk, it was always a problem to access your files on the move given that MobileMe lacks a mobile interface or even a dedicated app on the iPhone. Readdle’s A.I.Disk is a app available for the iPhone that allows you to connect to any WebDAV storage on the web and access those files on the movie, right from your iPhone. Yes, that includes MobileMe’s iDisk and even Box.net.

Let’s take a closer look at what the app has to offer.

A.I.Disk’s prime feature is its ability to connect to and browse through a number of WebDAV services on the web, including MobileMe, MyDisk.se and Box.net. Not only can you login to your iDisk and access your own files, you can also browse the public folders of other MobileMe users. These files are downloaded onto the app when you first access them, thus giving you access to them anytime in the future. A progress bar tells you how much of the file has been ‘received’ by your iPhone, so you might want to be careful with larger files, specially if you’re not on an unlimited connection.

You can create as many ‘Online Identities’ as you wish. Here in this screenshot, I’ve saved my personal iDisk and a friend’s Public Folder. Take note that the public folder has the blue colored icon, unlike the pink iDisk icon. Tapping on either of the two gives you access to the folders hosted on the disk. A.I.Disk has a nifty little button on the top, which is aptly titled ‘Get All’ and lets you download all of them at one go.

To open a file, simply tap on the name an it opens up right in the app. A.I.Disk supports a wide array of file formats,, including PDF, doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx txt, fb2, rtf and even html. The bar at the bottom of the inbuilt viewer allows you to do the following functions:

• Bookmark
• Send the file(s) via Email to your contacts
• Scroll down multiple pages using the percentage bar
• View the file FullScreen

In a move that is no different from what has happened to the Podcaster and Mailwrangler apps in the past, Apple has rejected the Opera Browser from the iPhone App Store.

Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, co-founder of Opera Software, the company behind the Opera Browsers, speaking with NY Times, said that Opera’s engineers have developed a version of Opera Mini that can run on an Apple iPhone, but Apple won’t let the company release it because it competes with Apple’s own Safari browser.

While Apple has been severely criticized by developers and the media for rejecting legitimate apps in the past, I’m not surprised with Apple’s decision this time. By now, it has been pretty clear that Apple clearly dislikes any competition on the iPhone with apps that compete, directly or indirectly, with Apple’s own creations. Though, as obvious as it may sound, John Gruber speculates that it may not necessarily be the case here. He goes on to say that the rejection might be due to Opera’s own Javascript Interpreter, though it certainly isn’t clear what might be the case.

All these rejections, however, make one thing certain. Apple does not wish to have any kind of app on the iPhone that competes with or tries to duplicate the functionality of Apple’s own apps on the iPhone.

Are you content with the features offered by your favourite browser? Are you looking to change your browsing habits just so that you can blend with the browser?  The browser market today for Mac OS X is already saturated with the likes of Safari, Firefox, Camino, and OmniWeb. But there’s a new entrant in the race and this one brings along some really nifty features and promises a lot more to come.

Introducing Cruz, the latest entry into the browser wars arena. From the same developer who brought you FluidApp, Cruz (previously known as Mecca) is a WebKit-based browser that pretty much looks and works like Safari. However, it has a bunch of additional features, some so awesome that you may wonder why no other browser had introduced them them so far.

1. Multi-pane Window 

One of the most exciting feature of Cruz is its ability to split the window into multiple panes wherein you can open several pages at the same time. Similar to frames in HTML, you can resize these panes according to your needs. The browser ships with what Todd, the developer behind Cruz, calls the Browsa Browsa plugin. This lets you have two separate panes apart from the main one in the center. Of course, you can add more pages through tabs, but the left and right panes remain unaffected. You can also split the page horizontally and open two pages one below the other. Cruz also lets you select different Browser Agents for these panes. In the attached screenshot, I’ve set up the left pane to display our site’s iPhone interface, while the right one shows my twitter feed using Hahlo.

2. Thumbnail Plugin

This is one feature of Cruz that has the “cool” tag attached to it. With this, you get a Cover Flow like preview of the images on that page. Take a look at the screenshot here to get a sense of what it looks like. While I have my Flickr page open in the main center pane, the Thumbnail plugin creates a Cover Flow effect from the images listed on that page. This is pretty much what Cooliris does, just in a different way. The preview can easily be switched off or on using the small button at the top right on the window in the toolbar.

3. FullScreen Mode

Cruz comes with a fullscreen view that converts it into an HUD-like black display. This is a great way to work on web apps or use one of those online editors, if you are an author. The window panes work the same way as they would in the normal mode.

4. Other Features

Cruz comes with a lot more exciting features, such as:

• Open Plug-in Architecture
• Built-in Userscripting
• Userstyles
• Global and Customizable Keyboard Shortcuts
• Session Restore
• Hidden “Closed” Windows
• TinyURL creation/expansion
• Full WebInspector
• Custom Window Opacity/Level/Style

Back in September, at the ‘Let’s Rock’ special event, where Apple introduced the new range of iPods, we also got the announcement of introduction of HD TV Shows through iTunes. iTunes 8 came along the ability to buy HD shows at $2.99 along with regular TV shows at $1.99, and boy has it been welcomed by the masses.

According to a press-release issued by Apple today, the total number of episodes purchased through the iTunes store has topped 200 million. While a substantial figure in itself, it’s even more surprising to know that the number of HD episodes since the launch has touch the 1 million mark. If I take little help from whatever mathematics I know, that’s about 27,000 downloads each day.

The press release also announces the addition of additional networks to the catalogue. While only NBC, ABC, and Showtime were available since September 9, today’s announcement marks the arrival of CBS and Fox onto the HD bandwagon.