iPhone Software

As most everyone knows by now, Apple's official stance of not allowing third party software to be developed for the iPhone hasn't done much to stop it. At the time of writing this article, there are already third party IM clients, an iPhone OS X terminal, spanking new GPS software, and much much more. Though third party software packages have been streaming in by the dozens, initially there was little structure to development.

Things are changing. As developers collaborate and as more and more applications are introduced and delivered to users through methods which keep getting simpler and simpler, an informal set of standards is blossoming.

In an attempt to provide structure where Apple has not, Lucas Newman - developer of the first native iPhone game, Lights Off - has just released an Unofficial iPhone SDK. The SDK and guide provide

There has been a great deal of skepticism at numerous reports iPhoneFAQ has published which have revealed a couple of different ways to add GPS to the iPhone without hardware changes, either via the addition of a GPS chip embedded on a SIM card or by utilization of the E-911 mandated positioning abilities native to the iPhone. Regardless, news out of Engadget this morning has revealed that the latter method is now being used effectively to provide GPS abilities on the iPhone via third party software provided by a company named Navizon. The best news? It's free.

Well, sort of. It's a rough implementation of A-GPS. A-GPS is assisted global positioning that can be accomplished using a handful of different methods. One of these methods does not require a GPS chip

Apple released iTunes 7.4.2 earlier today, officially geared towards addressing an "issue with creating ringtones using iTunes Plus song purchases and includes bug fixes to improve stability and performance," according to Apple's release notes. For many users, however, the update seems to have made matters worse.

Though still an early beta, a GUI version of the iUnlock software is now available. Released yesterday, the iUnlock software provides a completely free Apple iPhone software unlock solution comparable to pay solution such as iPhoneSIMFree which can cost upwards of $100. This latest GUI version, Unlock.app, greatly simplifies the original iUnlock process.

With Unlock.app, the steps to unlock the iPhone have been reduced from around 20 steps to 3. Using

"You wanted it, we have it. Enjoy your free iPhone."

Such was the announcement on the iPhone Dev Wiki team's website when their ultimate goal - a full software unlock of the Apple iPhone - was acheived. Simple as that.

Hot on the heels of the troubled release of the iPhoneSIMFree Unlock solution, the iPhone Dev Wiki team - who has been responsible for virtually every publically available innovation involving the iPhone and

After weeks of anticipation, yesterday the iPhoneSIMFree software unlock solution became the first software of it's kind to become publically available. Gizmodo had exclusive access to some of the experiences of the first customers to purchase a retail copy of iPhoneSIMFree and attempt to use it to unlock their iPhones. Unfortunately, the news wasn't very good.

Based on the experiences of three customers who attempted the iPhoneSIMFree unlock, numerous road blocks may exist to keep the average user from a stress-free unlocking experience. Several of the initial

Don't let the name of iPhone hacker NateTrue's latest offering scare you away. Though you might think so from the name of it, "iBrickr" isn't designed to "brick" your iPhone. Instead, iBrickr is designed to provide easy-to-use, GUI-driven management of ringtones and third party applications for the iPhone.

One of the best features of the Apple iPhone is the amazing clarity and large size of it's LCD screen, particularly when compared to other mobile phones. As many have suggested, this makes the iPhone perfectly suited to reading mobile eBooks. While a few rough eBook offerings have popped up since the iPhone launched, today the first major publisher - Harper Collins - began offering eBooks on the iPhone.

The new eBooks service from Harper Collins will allow iPhone users to browse titles and read up to 10

Lots of interesting things came out of this year's recently concluded C-4 developers conference in Chicago. The winning project in C-4's "Iron Coder Live" contest was a video conferencing hack for the Apple iPhone which did something we all knew deep down could be done - brought video capture to the iPhone.

The winning contestants, Glen and Ken Aspeslagh, combined a third party application they

Not too long ago, we mentioned in an article how new iPhone social networking communities (like iRovr) were popping up in response to the big three failing to offer iPhone targeted interfaces. At least one of the trio, Facebook, was clearly hard at work on an iPhone interface at the time.

Facebook recently released an iPhone portal to the Facebook community which, to say the very least