Planetbeing, a member of the Evad3rs and key hacker behind the iOS 6.1 jailbreak, is currently doing a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything).

I’m happy to answer any questions anyone has for me, though the rest of the evad3rs seem to be asleep right now.

HIGHLIGHTS:

Q: Do you think Apple will ever just release an open iOS?

A: It’s hard to say. Apple has successfully mitigated many vectors of attack in iOS 6. In this current jailbreak, we “evaded” Apple’s mitigations in the userland with several vulnerabilities I would perhaps characterize as “lame”, since these mistakes are a throwback to earlier days of iOS jailbreaking where we primarily used filesystem tricks. We only attacked Apple’s hardened security head-on in the kernel. “Lame” vulnerabilities tend to be hard to find, however, so it’s likely the next jailbreak will be tougher. That said, we also retain a few tricks that may or may not help in the future. Who knows what the weight of each factor should be when trying to determine how long the next jailbreak will take.

I think the ship has sailed for Apple to consider shipping an open iOS. The furthest they might have gone was perhaps allowing you to unlock the bootloader like the Google Nexus phones. However, I don’t think they currently have a compelling reason to.

Q: What is your opinion on what future iOS versions will bring? Mainly thinking of widgets supported natively (similar to Android).

A: When I first saw the SBWeeApp interface and Notification Center, I thought for sure they’d have some way to let AppStore apps add to it. However, the primary issue is that all the widgets currently reside in a single process, which means they’re very likely to be able to interfere with each other. In something like the AppStore ecosystem, the probability approaches 1 and there could be a lot of problems. Compounded with this is the fact that that process is SpringBoard, which is the entire shell for iOS, so any problems are rather catastrophic (tweaks crashing SpringBoard is never fun!). However, they are apparently working on compartmentalizing SpringBoard (it used to be the window manager for the OS as well) and perhaps there’s a way to host different views that are actually controlled by separate processes, so it might be possible in the future. Another possibility is some widgets that are primarily determined by property lists or something, similar to how the Settings app works.

If you have a question you want answered, hit the link below!

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Servers suck nowadays; here you guys go… Below you can find links to download Evasi0n, a tool released by the Evad3rs Dev-Team to jailbreak the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple TV.

The evasi0n jailbreak for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch devices running iOS 6.0 to iOS 6.1 has just been released by the evad3rs. T

The new evasi0n jailbreak utility is compatible with Mac, Windows, and Linux computers. You can down the utility from here (Below).

Evasi0n 1.0 (Windows): evasi0n-win-1.0-3c53ba10e2448d311b0f4157f2d7eb568f106c4f-release.zip
Evasi0n 1.0 (Mac): evad3rs/evasi0n-mac-1.0-3c53ba10e2448d311b0f4157f2d7eb568f106c4f-release.dmg
Evasi0n 1.0 (Linux): evasi0n-linux-1.0-3c53ba10e2448d311b0f4157f2d7eb568f106c4f-release.tar.lzma

iPhone Techie

Planetbeing has confirmed that their untethered jailbreak works with new iOS 6.1 final firmware released by Apple today.

iOS 6.1 appears to be vulnerable to the exploits we are planning on using.

In terms of code, we have two proof of concepts that we need to merge and polish, so we will not be ready to release until that and testing.

Notably, MuscleNerd has hinted that the team might release the jailbreak on Superbowl Sunday.

Hey, did everyone know the Super Bowl is this Sunday? What will you be doing? /cc @evad3rs http://evad3rs.com

iPhone Techie

The official evasi0n 6.1 jailbreak: http://evasi0n.com — Check regularly for updates! #evasi0n

The new team of hackers consists of Pod2g, Planetbeing, MuscleNerd, and Pimskeks. Following the release of iOS 6.1, Planetbeing confirmed that their untethered jailbreak works with the firmware and MuscleNerd hinted that the jailbreak could be released on Sunday.

According to the new website, the team is in the process of finishing the GUI.

We are in the process of finishing the GUI. Come back soon!

A progress bar indicates the team is more than half way done the jailbreak. The next step is private beta testing. When released, the jailbreak will be compatible with all iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and iPad mini models running iOS 6.0 through 6.1

iPhone Techie

Pimskeks of the Evad3rs Dev-Team reveals that those looking to apply the new iOS 6.1 jailbreak should update to the firmware using iTunes.

If you people plan to upgrade to iOS 6.1 please don’t do an OTA upgrade. Please make a full restore using iTunes.

Just moments ago Planetbeing confirmed that their untethered jailbreak works with new iOS 6.1 final firmware released by Apple today and MuscleNerd hinted that the jailbreak will be released this Sunday.

Update:
MuscleNerd offers some insight as to why this is necessary, “a few reasons: OTA is more time consuming for us to test, and it gives you different SHSH blobs than normal restore.”

iPhone Techie

President Obama called Apple CEO Tim Cook and three other Fortune 500 company CEOs on the weekend to discuss the fiscal cliff and economic growth, a White House official told CNN.

Obama’s conversations were part of his “outreach on the need to find a balanced deficit-reduction solution that protects the middle class and continues to move our economy forward,” the official said.

The CEOs he contacted were Tim Cook of Apple, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, Jim McNerney of Boeing, and Craig Jelinek of Costco, according to the official.

Obama’s conversations follow the gathering of a dozen CEOs of other major American companies at the White House on Wednesday.

Barack Obama spoke with prominent business leaders over the weekend to discuss his plan to avert the financial crisis that is looming early next year. According to Reuters, besides the Apple CEO Tim Cook, the list of senior corporate leaders with which Obama spoke include JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, investor Warren Buffet.

The president and Congress are in last-minute negotiations to avoid a so-called fiscal cliff that could send the US back into a recession in 2013. The fiscal cliff is the result of a 9 billion in spending cuts that go in effect on January 1, 2013 and an increase in individual income taxes as the Bush-era tax cuts expire.

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Apple on Tuesday posted a teaser for its upcoming Black Friday sale.

The Cupertino-based company has not announced any special deals yet, although as was the case in years prior we can likely expect minimal discounts.

Based on the teaser image, we will most likely see discounts on iPad models among other products, though there is no indication of what other product lines might be covered.

The company’s online promotional pricing starts November 23, 2012 at 12:01 am and extends to 11:59 pm PST, and Apple’s retail stores will also operate on a special holiday schedule with a number of locations opening as early as 7:00 a.m. At least one Apple Store, the famous Fifth Avenue location in New York City, will open its doors to eager shoppers at midnight.

Black Friday is right around the corner and Apple is starting to promote its Black Friday shopping event.

Similar pricing will be available in retail stores during extended holiday shopping hours. The ad doesn’t give any hints on the products that will be on sale, but, in the past, the savings are applied to select Apple items and are only moderate discounts.

iPhone Techie

As we all know; the Facebook is the largest social network in the world with over one billion active users, but it has only been over the last few months that we have seen a noticeable change in the company’s strategy as the Palo Alto based network has moved to pay more attention to its vast number of mobile users.

Updates to both the iOS and Android official apps have brought greater stability and increased browsing experiences, and it now seems that Facebook is going to be focusing on enhancing their iOS mobile photo upload experience by trialing a Photo Sync feature that borrows a fair amount of its power from the previously created Android functionality.

Facebook may have the ability to chat, update statuses, post comments and share location information, as well as installing and interacting with dedicated Facebook apps but photos have always been, and remain the lifeblood of the network.

In a report carried out last year; users of the social network were shown to be uploading over 250 million photographs each day, which just goes to show how important visual media is to the company and its user base. This new Photo Sync feature is designed to dramatically increase the upload experience of iOS based mobile users.

For those fortunate enough to be included in the early trial, the Photo Sync feature is enabled by selecting the Photos app from within the iOS Facebook app and then scrolling all the way to the bottom of the interface.

If you do have one of the chosen Facebook accounts that has been shown to be used with an iOS device, then there will be an option to enable Photo Sync. The new mobile feature works in much the same fashion as the Android variant or the Google+ Instant Upload feature, in that it pushes all photos taken with the device to an unpublished album on the Facebook account.

The theory is that; publishing the images and making them live will be much easier due to the fact that they are already housed on Facebook’s servers and have been stealth-ly uploaded in the background.

Considering Facebook classes photos as a vitally important part of their network, and one of the main reasons why users not only spend so much time on the site, but also keep logging in for more browsing time, this could be a vitally important service.

However, whether or not users want all of their images automatically be sent to Facebook is an entirely different story. The trial continues with Facebook Photo Sync, with it being currently unknown whether this service will eventually go live to all iOS users.

(source Facebook)

The feature could keep Google+ Instant Uploads from becoming a threat. Google started showing off the feature in June 2011. Then at the I/O Conference a year later it  announced a cool integration with Google+ Events called Party Mode which immediately stuck out to me as a selling point over iOS and Facebook. In fact, I’ve heard hints that Facebook may be working a Party Mode competitor.

Photo Sync shouldn’t pose a serious threat to Dropbox, which focuses on backing up all your photos instead of prepping them for sharing. However, some startups like Bump’s Flock could lose some differentiation, though it gets the auto-upload job done and is currently open to everyone.

Right now, between the 300 million images uploaded every day and its acquisition of Instagram, Facebook is winning the photo race by a mile. If it rolls out Photo Sync to all iOS and Android users and it catches on, it’ll take an Olympic miracle for anyone to catch up.

iPhone Techie

We’ve seen a few apps try to manage the ambitious feat of becoming the journal for your entire mobile life, but a new Apple patent suggests the company may be trying to build that kind of functionality right into iOS at the system level, in a way that keeps track of all your phone events, including when and where they happened.

The system could help you recall when and where you took a photo, sent an email, received a phone call or even visited a webpage, and show that to you on a map or in a timeline-style list of events.

It’s an interesting patent with a number of possible practical uses. For instance, it could be used to help a device learn more about the specific habits and patterns of its particular user. If it can establish patterns in their behavior, it should theoretically be able to better predict and adapt to their needs.

In the more near-time, and less sci-fi immediate future, the system could also make it incredibly easy for a mobile device owner to quickly search their interaction history and find all the contextual details around a specific event, which could be very useful if, for instance, your wedding florist is suggesting you never made a call changing your order six months ago.

Filters can be applied to the stored data to group events by time, location, application and according to a variety of other variables, so that users can drill down and find exactly what they’re looking for, even if they’re not quite sure what that is.

The patent system also describes event databases that can be stored in the cloud, freeing up valuable local storage space on the device. The events logged can even be app specific, since Apple’s patent describes a method to invoke it via API, meaning you could theoretically note every time you posted a photo to Instagram, or read an article in Instapaper, too.

This is an a patent application that, while potentially incredibly useful, we likely won’t see make a public experience for at least a while yet.

Users seemed uncomfortable with the fact that iPhones used to maintain a location database to help with location triangulation, for instance, so there would likely be apprehension about such an extensive logging tool, even if designed as a user-accessible feature like the patent described in this system.

But it would be tremendously beneficial in cases of device theft, and when working with personal health monitoring tools, budget trackers and other types of journalling applications, especially in a time when the notion of the quantified self continues to have a big influence on consumer hardware and software development.
Of the numerous “event data” the journaling subsystem can handle are network connections, radio broadcasts, application data such as opening or closing an app, device charging times, attachment of an external device, and more. Because the can be accessed by client applications through an Application Programming Interface (API), almost any high function event can be logged.

Similar products exist in the app store, such as Evernote, which give users the option of tagging notes and other items, however iOS has yet to offer such system-wide functionality. It remains to be seen whether the feature will make its way to a future iteration of Apple’s mobile OS, however the invention could prove to be useful as users become increasingly reliant on information stored in their portable devices.

iPhone Techie

Nokia have announced today that they will be expanding their mapping platform on iOS, under their HERE brand.

The mapping app will be built based on HTML5 to ensure a smooth user interface, and will include an offline mode, voice-guided walking navigation, and public transport directions. We should see the app hit the app store in the next few weeks as a free download.

“People want great maps, and with HERE we can bring together Nokia’s location offering to deliver people a better way to explore, discover and share their world,” said Nokia President and CEO Stephen Elop. “Additionally, with HERE we can extend our 20 years of location expertise to new devices and operating systems that reach beyond Nokia. As a result, we believe that more people benefit from and contribute to our leading mapping and location service.”

Apple has been working to improve its own Maps app over the last months since the launch of iOS 6, after Tim Cook apologised to users in an open letter. In that letter, Apple’s CEO pointed towards the web version of Nokia’s maps as an alternative while issues were fixed.

HERE Maps helps you feel like a local anywhere you go. See where you are, search and discover nearby places, and get a feel for the place. Collect places to remember or for later discovery. Explore new destinations and know instantly how to get there on foot, by car or on public transport. HERE Maps is based on the world-class NAVTEQ mapping data used in 90% of in-car navigation systems in the world.

Features:
• Map views – Pick the map you need from map view, live traffic view, public transport line view or satellite view
• Save map areas & wander without data coverage

• In selected countries, access community maps created and updated by users
• Maps, search and place coverage for nearly 200 countries

• Search with history and suggestions
• Share places with just a tap, including the location and how to get there, over SMS, email, or social networks

• Organize places you love into Collections
• Sign in to HERE Maps with your Nokia Account or Facebook login
• Sync with Here.net – Access your Collections anywhere

• Step-by-Step voice-guided walk navigation
• Walk navigation through pedestrian routes, parks, alleyways, and more
• Public transportation and driving directions

You can download HERE Maps from the App Store for free.

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