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Journalists present at Apple’s big event last month, were greeted by volunteers of the Free Software Foundation. The volunteers where protesting the DRM restriction of the iPad, and they said the iPad the iBad for two reasons:

• All media in the iTunes store (with the one exception of music) is wrapped in Apple’s DRM. That means films, TV shows, movies and audiobooks (NB: books are in an open format ePub) are locked to Apple’s platform, taking away your right to share.
• All applications must be signed by Apple if they are to run, an unprecedented level of control for a general purpose computer. On top of this, Apple can push updates to the device over its wireless connection, letting them add or remove capabilities at any time.

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Apple is surveying iPhone developers asking them about their experience with the program. They sent out a long survey to developers, covering a range of things, but the predominant questions are about the app review process and how happy are the developers with Apple’s program.

Apple asks you to answer with: “Very dissatisfied,” “Somewhat dissatisfied,” “Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied,” “Somewhat satisfied,” “Very satisfied,” or “Don’t know.” They also ask, “What one thing could Apple do to make the iPhone Developer Program better?” and give you a text box to write anything you want.

Last Tuesday, Apple pushed firmware 3.1.3 bringing us minor updates, but upgrading the baseband. Mobile ad group Medialets reports that in the last 6 days, only 14% of the iPhone users updated to 3.1.3. The company also noted that it saw a 13 percent drop in installs of 3.1.2, meaning 87 percent of the upgrades to iPhone OS 3.1.3 came from users who were already running the latest version of the mobile operating system.

We also saw a drop of 13% in installs v3.1.2, meaning 87% of the upgrades to v3.1.3 came from users that already had v3.1.2.

Yesterday, the iPhone DevTeam released PwnageTool 3.1.5 , allowing users to create custom 3.1.3 firmwares which will not update the baseband , therefore they can jailbreak and unlock their iPhones. Given the fact that back in Oct. there were around 38% jailbroken iPhone in circulations, we’ll see if the percentage of people that update to 3.1.3 will grow, or people will just wait for the next major release.

[via AppleInsider]

iResQ got in their shop some iPhone 4G parts and they posted some interesting pictures , (probably) revealing important details of the next gen iPhone.

The LCD appears to be factory glued to the digitizer which is more similar to the first generation iPhones than the iPhone 3G and 3GS. The digitizer can be separated from the LCD on the 3G and 3GS models, which should be interesting to all, but for the repair folks like us–this means that the 4G screen repair price will be higher since both parts will have to be replaced at once.

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Siri is a personal assistant for mobile phones that is designed to make interactions with machines easier. The application takes a request, and breaks it down into parts. The user can tell Siri they want to go on a date consisting of an Italian dinner for two and a movie, a comedy. The application will then return movie times for comedy selections; Italian restaurants near the theater and give the user the ability to buy tickets and make reservations.

The app runs on a collection API’s, which are a method that allows an application to communicate with other applications. An example of this would be TweetDeck, and its ability to communicate with Twitter. In addition to API’s, one of the main technologies behind Siri is the ability to understand context, according to Adam Cheyer, VP of engineering.

[via building43]

InformationArchitects released a first version of an OmniGraffle template for folks designing iPad apps. You can download it here, but it is not complete.Make sure you keep and eye on the site, because they plan to update it as they’re working on our own designs.

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A few days ago we took a first look at the iPad Simulator and discovered that even though the iPad lacks a cam, the interface for one is implemented in the SDK. The iPad is a device which was way too anticipated , and because of all the rumors - the endless obnoxious ubiquitous rumors – everybody was pretty much disappointed when Steve Jobs unveiled his latest creation.

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Tobias Kemper of Nimbuzz shows me their latest iPhone app, just released, which lets you make free calls, chat, or message with your friends around the world. Also . they released Nimbuzz for Mac, which you can find at the official website.

The iPhone DevTeam just released an update for PwnageTool. With this tool you can create a custom 3.1.3 firmware, which you can use to upgrade your iDevices , and still preserve the baseband. If you used Blacksn0w to unlock your iPhone in the past, this tool will not help you, because you already updated your baseband ( even though not to the latest version ) , and all the other unlocking tools will not work. Also, PwnageTool will not downgrade your baseband.

Just to be clear:

• Firmware 3.1.3 updates the baseband to 05.12.01 . No tool will unlock this baseband at the moment, and you can’t downgrade either
• Firmware 3.1.2 updated the baseband to 05.11.07 and you could unlock it using blacksn0w.
• All other previous baseband versions are compatible with ultrasn0w.

So…

• if in the past you used custom firmwares and your baseband is still at a version prior 05.11.07 , you can use PwnageTool 3.1.5 and unlock it with ultrasn0w.
• If you used Blackra1n, updated the baseband to 05.11.07 and unlocked it with blacksn0w DO NOT use pwnagetool 3.1.5. It won’t work. Just stay on firmware 3.1.2
• If you updated to firmware 3.1.3 and got the latest baseband ( 05.12.01 )… tough luck. You are stuck!!!

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Just the other day,Zeke told me how he tried to mod a bluetooth head piece into a “big ass ear plug”. In case you didn’t know, Zeke is the shop manager and tattoo artist for Psycho Tattoo studios in Atlanta GA by day, and an iPhone dev and FSM editor by night.

Today, while catching up with some of my favorite site, i found on core77 a badass illustration of iPhone body mods that might enhance your iPhone user experience? Coincidence or not, this is still fun and something for your to enjoy this Sunday ( or whenever you are going to see this ) .

PS: You might want to take a look at this iPad infographic as well ….

Elcomsoft iPhone Password Breaker enables forensic access to password-protected backups for iPhone 2G, 3G, 3GS, and iPod Touch 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Gen devices. Featuring the company’s patent-pending GPU acceleration technology, Elcomsoft iPhone Password Breaker is the first GPU-accelerated iPhone/iPod password recovery tool on the market. The new tool recovers the original plain-text password that protects encrypted backups containing address books, call logs, SMS archives, calendars, camera snapshots, voice mail and email account settings, applications, Web browsing history and cache.

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In our preview article, we took a first look at Sn0wbreeze v1.3. , and we told you that you should not expect any tool updates from the iPhone DevTeam or GeoHot. Well it seems that the iPhone DevTeam is working on an update for PwnageTool , and they ask iPhone 3G and 3Gs users to not rush into an update.

PwnageTool will allow you to create custom firmwares that you can use to jailbreak your iDevices, and not update the baseband. That way you can still use the existing tools to unlock.

As you know, firware 3.1.3 is updating the baseband so, if you are depending on unlock, you should not update. You can downgrade from 3.1.3 to 3.1.2 ( need firmware 3.1.2 because Apple is not signing it anymore ) if you really want to ( won’t downgrade the baseband though ) , but don’t expect the DevTeam or GeoHot to release any tool updates soon.

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New day, new app in Cydia: SprintBoard. This is a simple and useful tweak that will let you jump to any SpringBoard page. All you have to do is to tap and move your finger over the dots to change the page. This tweak is available in Cydia via BigBoss repo.

Thursday Night, Charlie Rose discussed the iPad with Walt Mossberg, David Carr and Mike Arrington. They discussed about the price, flash, camera, and Steve Jobs in this 23 minutes long video.