iPhone 4S and iPad 2 Receive First Untethered Jailbreak

Good news for wannabe iPhone jailbreakers: The Chronic Dev Team and pod2g have finally released the first untethered jailbreak for the iPhone 4S and iPad 2.

"But wait," you ask. "Haven't we been able to jailbreak these devices for months now?"

No. Don't confuse iPhone 4S and iPad 2 jailbreaking with iOS 5 jailbreaking – apples and oranges, thanks to the inclusion of Apple's new dual-core A5 processor in these two devices. Prior to yesterday's release of the "Absinthe A5" jailbreak, there has been no working, public hack for the iPhone 4S and iPad 2. Other Apple devices running iOS 5 were first treated to a tethered jailbreak in late October, all of one week or so after the launch of iOS 5, with a full untethered jailbreak not arriving until late December.

"Ten months ago, I myself was live tweeting from a tediously long line at the nearest Apple retail store, where I anxiously waited to become one of the world's first owners (& hackers) of the newly-released iPad 2," writes the Chronic Dev Team.

"At that point, I don't know if any iOS hacker anticipated how much the A5 chip would completely change the game & up the stakes. The endless war we fight to jailbreak has become more & more difficult with each new device released, and our recent battle against A5 only proved this further."

To assist in exploiting the iPhone 4S and iPad 2, Chronic Dev Team members used a utility called "CDevReporter" to collect a war chest of crash reports for both devices – more than ten million flooding over to the Chronic Dev Team in less than a week's worth of time, they said. This allowed the team to crowdsource the process of discovering new vulnerabilities for A5 devices, or the act of transforming standard bugs uncovered during a normal device's operation into potential attack vectors for full jailbreak exploits.

So what's the benefit of jailbreaking your Apple product anyway? Unauthorized applications – specifically, you can now fire up third-party app libraries like Cydia to install apps you wouldn't otherwise be able to find on the official Apple Store. And these, in turn, can help you customize your device beyond what Apple itself would ever allow you to do, which includes turning your device into a Wi-Fi hotspot (and angering your wireless carrier in the process).

The downside to jailbreaking? You void your Apple warranty and could waste precious hours begging Apple Genius Bar employees to make your iPhone 4S or iPad 2 better should some part of the device's software or hardware go buggy. You're also likely going to be stuck waiting when future iOS updates are released, as you won't want to install Apple's update without first verifying that your jailbreak will still be able to function.

Provided the site isn't still getting slammed, you can download the Mac-only jailbreak utility (for now) over at greenpois0n.com.

Source : http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2399180,00.asp

Analyst: All These Concerns Over EA And Star Wars Are “Overdone”

So, there’s been some hubbub around Electronic Arts over the last few days, as the company ramps up for the release of the third quarter earnings on February 1st. Yesterday, EA’s stock closed at $17.54 per share, which, in context, meant that the gaming goliath’s stock was down 30 percent since hitting its 52-week high in early November. This drop was mostly due to the collective shock relating to the news concerning their recently released title, Star Wars: The Old Republic, which now has a ridiculous price tag attached to it — as Wall Street is estimating the cost to be between $150 and $200 million.

EA’s studio responsible for creating the much-touted online game, BioWare, spent some six-odd years developing Star Wars, and obviously there are concerns over whether or not the game will be able to satisfy the geeky desires and high expectations of both Star Wars fans and the avid World of Warcraft-playing, MMO gaming fans — especially as they’ll need to sell millions. Not always an easy audience to satisfy, but an eager and quick-to-spend audience if the game meets expectations — as the LA Times points out. (Though Trion has been having some serious success in this arena — see our post from yesterday.)

Some are saying that it could be the most expensive online game in history, and at $60 a pop, obviously there are those concerned that the deficit will be too great. However, analysts at Macquerie Equities Research today said that they believe initial sales of Star Wars will still be relatively good, and are still on track to hit their target of 1.5 million. It also helps that the costs were already absorbed into EAs financials.

Macquerie said that how the stock will perform will be largely affected by Star Wars’ sales, but if sales get close to their projection of 1.5 million, the firm expects the stock to make a bounce-back. While some are saying that, because EA hasn’t announced sales numbers yet, the likelihood is that sales have been not-so-good. (The same might be said of Kindle.) Instead, EA has only said that it’s in a “quiet period” and will not be commenting as a result. Fair enough.

Others have said that the analysis of the game’s server loads show that there isn’t as much activity, but Macquerie would like to remind those people that it’s not easy to make accurate estimates of the numbers of users based on server loads — especially without knowledge of how they’re allocating server loads.

Glitches and mechanical problems have also been mentioned as influencing poor sales and low excitement, but, again, Macquerie defends EA, saying that, while this could affect the long-term outlook for the game, these kinds of problems are expected at initial release, and may not have as big of an affect as some might believe.

Thus, Macquerie isn’t having any of this nay-saying, and is expecting EA’s stock to outperform — and be on the rise. The game will need about 500,000 subscribers to get close to even, and, of course, the other side is that, they could be way ahead of the ball, and if they were to get several million, well than what one analyst called “the single largest bet” of the EA CEO’s career might just turn out to be an enormous, money-raining win.

What do you think?

Souce : TechCrunch

Nokia Lumia 800 US Release

When we saw the launch of Nokia’s first Windows Phone devices in London last month, we were disappointed that a concrete US release date wasn’t announced as well. All Stephen Elop would say is that a portfolio of Windows Phone devices would be released in the US in 2012. If the latest reports bear out, it could be that Nokia is waiting to release their Windows Phones in the US with LTE support, possibly with AT&T.

Currently Windows Phone Mango does not have LTE support. So either Nokia will customize Mango to support LTE, or they may wait to release after the next Windows Phone version which will natively support LTE, Tango, is available. Also, if they’re working with AT&T, there’s some waiting involved there, since AT&T’s 4G network is only HSPA+, not LTE. Verizon has an LTE network right now, so Nokia might be negotiating contracts with them as well, but that’s just speculation at the moment.

There has been talk that Apple is waiting to implement LTE in the iPhone 5, so if that’s the case, Nokia’s Lumia 800 (or whatever it will be called in the US) may be up against the iPhone 5 by the time they launch. However, with Microsoft’s current marketing push for Windows Phone, hopefully by the time the Lumia 800 comes to the US, mind and market share built up by then will make Nokia’s job a little easier.