I still stand by my original post that the updates promised for the iPhone released today as firmware "update 1.1.3 "should be given a better number, maybe a 1.2?, to mark the great features and updates. Hoaxes and teasers aside, I can't contain my giddiness - mass SMS text messages are back! That and many other neat features tracks the industry-wide trend of users being able to customize their iPhones to greater and greater lengths. Installation, via iTunes (which itself got an update) was quick - within 10 minutes I was up and running.
The changes I've noted and used so far that have made all the difference:
Google Maps qausi-GPS. Pretty cool to know where you generally are while stuck in traffic. After hitting a button a circle appears to indicate where you are generally. Kind of looks more like a targeting device for Kang and Kodos but eh, I can see how this will be pretty useful.
Customized iPhone application homepages - without a hack! Finally, I can change my icons and shove Stocks and YouTube to the second page! I never used those applications anyway and, finally, here's a way to get rid of them, well, not seeing them. That and I've added Safari icon links to this newly freed real estate to The New York Times, Facebook mobile for the iPhone, SFGate and to CNET (of course). The best part of this new feature is the seizure-inducing icon-shake when you want to change the ordering and inclusion of icons (via a drop and drag feature) on the various pages (up to 9 pages, I've read) that contain your iPhone menus - perfect for all those developer applications that are coming.
And, finally, SMS-texting en masse One of my New Year's resolutions was actually to text less and call more. Well, with 1.1.3... let's just say I probably won't be keeping that resolution. I had been finding that, because mass text messages weren't available, that I communicated with fewer people than I did with my Razr. After all, there are only so many individual text messages you can send while at a traffic light, or waiting in line at the store, it wasn't only time-consuming, but tedious. Now, you can add multiple recipients - what the maximum number of recipients are is currently unclear, but sending the message does take longer. These text messages are denoted with a little group of people icon (how cute and convenient). What's more, early polling data seems to indicate that recipients of the mass text message can't tell it's a mass text message. Responses from individuals are also segregated and not contained within the original mass text thread. Excellent.
Early adopters are an impatient lot, especially Apple boys and girls. With Macworld looming Tuesday (a 3G/GPS iPhone? I will so be in line to get one if or when it comes out) and with reports of impatient iPhoners being hit with a Trojan masked as "leaked" 1.1.3 firmware, you can see that the line between enthusiasm and caution can be thrown to the wind.
While there don't seem to be any lasting or major effects from 1.1.3 Trojan, it made me wonder, when the iPhone is finally opened up for "legit" third-party developer applications, how common hacks like this will be in the future and how many more people will be affected by them. The 1.1.3 Trojan involved tinkering and hacking, so average Johnny Appleseeds like me, weren't hit. But, I'm sure future Trojans will be more malicious and more insidious, just like PC-based viruses. So, whereas viruses were uncommon in the Mac world (or so I'm told), I would predict this to change.
After asking how current iPhones were affected when an official firmware update hadn't even been released, and after many confused IMs later with my iPhone guru friend Patrick, I was exposed to the nuts and bolts of hacking your iPhone. Apparently, the "shift" key and a disc image becomes important during a sync in iTunes that allows you to install neat things like Labryrinth (the rolling ball game over a pegged-hole game board that takes advantage of the iPhone's accelerometer--so cool) and other applications.
From all that, I gathered that you had to take affirmative steps involving disc images, jailbreaks, and other incantations to have gotten the 1.1.3 Trojan. In other words, it took time and more know-how than I'm willing to devote to get this first round of evil-doing code. But, as the iPhone platform is opened up (next month) and as Apple cedes control over iPhone applications, and as average users like me start to take advantage of them in greater and greater numbers, I do worry about the hassle a future Trojan/virus/worm would cause. Just take a look at the "Free Public Wi-Fi" phenomenon (no, it's not really free, it's more like an innocuous social disease that is really widespread), and just imagine the possibilities if it weren't as benign.
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