After releasing an entirely new lineup of iPods, Apple has also launched an iTunes Wi-Fi music store for the new iPod touch along with a new version of iTunes for customers to purchase ringtones for their iPhone. Customers must first pay $0.99 for a song from iTunes, then another $0.99 for the privilege of using that song as a ringtone. The new version of iTunes will include a utility to create ringtones based on any 30-second segment from a song complete with fade-in and fade-out. iPod touch owners will be able to use their Wi-Fi connection to logon to iTunes from any wireless hotspot to download individual songs or complete albums.

For more information, please visit Apple's Wi-Fi Music Store page.

The iPhone battery replacement policy is causing quite a lot of controversy. Some allege that it costs over $100USD to replace your iPhone's battery, including the cost of an iPhone rental while Apple replaces the battery on the iPhone you actually own. And so, it's only natural that consumers who feel they have been swindled start a class action lawsuit. Plaintiffs Zoltan Stiener and Ynez Stiener accuse Apple of breach of contract, fraud, and violations of California law for not telling users how expensive an iPhone replacement really is. This is the third time someone has tried to hit Apple with a class action lawsuit for the cited reasons, and Apple has settled in all the previous cases.

American teenager George Hotz enjoyed quite the busy summer this year. While simultaneously preparing for college, tinkering with his car, and working to complete several other projects, Hotz managed to find a risky (yet completely effective) method of unlocking the iPhone. While everyone else seems to think that the best way to unlock the iPhone is with a software program, Hotz unlocked it with an intricate 10-step technique involving soldering irons and voltage meters. And while it's not good for the day-to-day hardware modder, a factory could automate the process, and make a substantial amount of profit. Certicell founder Terry Diadone thinks so, and felt that the unlocked iPhone was worth a Nissan 350Z sports car, and three brand-new iPhones. George Hotz gladly accepted the offer, and the official trade was made on Saturday. Hotz drives off to college in style tomorrow, and will be giving away all three iPhones to his best benefactors and friends. While in college, Hotz plans to work with Certicell to do some consulting work, and to add GPS functionality to the iPhone.

If you think you can unlock the iPhone yourself, check out Hotz' blog here.

Iphoneunlocking.com, a subsidiary of UniquePhones (www.uniquephones.com), was poised and ready to release remote software unlocking services for the iphone today at 12 noon EST. The sale of unlocking codes is on hold after the company received a telephone call from a Menlo Park, California, law firm at approximately 2:54 a.m. this morning (GMT).

After saying they were phoning on behalf of AT&T, the law firm presented issues such as copyright infringement and illegal software dissemination. Uniquephones is taking legal advice to ascertain whether AT&T was sending a warning shot or directly threatening legal action. The logistics of different continents as well as it being a weekend factors into how the situation develops.

Last night Apple released iPhone firmware version 1.0.2 on iTunes. It is a 3.7MB update that includes some bug fixes.

Spartans aren't the only things that come in groups of 300, nowadays. AT&T detailed a certain woman's phone bill so well that it took 300 pages to completely write out, and was shipped to it's recipient in a box. Most of those pages were used to describe every single text message the lady had sent. The recipient feels that "This (phone bill) is a lot of waste. It's a cardboard box, a ton of pages, and plus, it was almost $10 to send this, so it does not make any sense." The recipient of the monumental bill signed up for E-billing promptly after this, but not before recording a video for her blog of her opening the 300 page bill. The blog is currently down, probably due to such a large volume of traffic. She took the video with the hope that other people would learn from her mistakes, and sign up for E-billing. Instead, people have already vowed to beat her record next billing period.

As everyone knows, the $600 Apple iPhone is designed to run exclusively on AT&T's cellular network, as well as the occasional Wi-Fi hotspot. Hackers decided that they didn't want to be forced into buying a 2 year contract from AT&T, and worked day and night to get the iPhone to run on alternative networks. Finally, we are seeing some progress. Croatians, using a particular SIM card (SuperSIM - V1, U types), a SIM read/writer, a Silvercard, and a particular software suite, succeeded in making the iPhone run on T-Mobile's European network. The hacking software works on both Mac OS X and Windows computers. The only thing lost with the hack is YouTube functionality However, considering the limited library available on the iPhone's version of YouTube, The Inquirer does not consider it that great a loss.

A hacker by the name of 'stepwhite' has successfully integrated the infoNES core with Apple's iPhone. You can watch the video here! According to the folks at 'The Unofficial Apple Weblog' the emulator is still in development. Apparently it runs to slowly and the control implementation needs work.

Well didnt take long enough for another company after Skinit to release its own line of accessories for the ipod. However this time we are not getting skins for the famous phone but a silicon case "i145", two leather cases "i70" and "i146", a sports armband "i207" and a Bluetooth hands-free kit "i322".

Well people i dont know what to say about Apple....First they release iPhone exclusively from AT&T....Later on we learn that T-Mobille is the exclusive carrier for iPhone in Germany.....And now we can find an unlocked iPhone for preorder in Expansys...
Bad for people who signed on with AT&T in order to get their hands on the iPhone but good for the rest of us who could standby and wait....All that remails now is a price...

Seems that AT&T isnt the only cell phone company to use iPhone after all...T-Mobile has snagged a deal for the handset in Germany as you can all see in the screenshot bellow.
Whether or not this has an effect on Apple's UK network of choice however isn't clear at all.
With the general consensus of opinion that the iPhone will be Europe bound in September or October there should be a press release or even announcement soon.

WASHINGTON - U.S. lawmakers are criticizing high early-termination fees and the inability of consumers to use mobile devices such as the new iPhone on more than one network. Before switching to another wireless provider, mobile customers usually have to pay $175 or more to terminate their current plan, and they usually have to get a new phone. How can the iPhone be a threat when millions of us can't even use it because we're not AT&T Wireless customers? Personally, I'm not in a position to pay to break my Verizon Wireless contract - which has five family phones on the plan - so I can pay $500 for an iPhone, sign a two-year contract with AT&T Wireless and still not be able to manage my e-mail in the tunnel between the Woodley Park and Dupont Circle Metro stations.

Since iPhone was released almost a month ago it was just a matter of time until some company took advantage of it and start making custom skins.
SkinIt is the first and only company so far that offers vinyl skins for the hottest phone ever. Their selection is vast covering anything from a Dance Dance Revolution skin to flags of the world. The skins retail for $14.95 each.
SkinIt also produces skins for certain digital cameras.

A recent report in the Commercial Times China newspaper indicated that Taiwan-based Wintek has gained touch screen panel orders from Apple for its second-generation iPhone.
The article not only states that the new iPhone is to begin shipping in September with prices ranging from US$249-299 but also that people from Apple visited Wintek a few days ago to deliver instructions on manufacturing and the company has begun test production in small volumes.
JP Morgan officially believes that the next iPhone iteration will be a 3G phone.

It's hardly been a month since the official release of iPhone and as stated before bugs start to rise in numbers. The most importand bug however isnt software based but hardware ( Or so it would seem at first glance ).
It seems that iPhone doesnt fully recharge when plugged in and according to Apple this glitch is soon to be resolved..
Apple stated it is preparing the first software upgrade for the iPhone although they did not specify when it would be released.

The new iPhone was welcomed by most people with a feeling of joy but like all things soon after we are starting to see bugs listed around the web. So far there are 68 reproducible bugs on the list with all bugs having been confirmed on multiple iPhones.
As it is expected many iPhone users may never uncover the same bugs since its all about the use of iPhone from each individual.
So check the list and see if its worth buying an iPhone or not...To me 68 bugs are nothing...Lets hope the list stays at 68 :)

APPLE Worm Uncovered

The launch of iPhone is being exploited by cyber-crooks for financial gain. PandaLabs has uncovered a tool that controls a botnet made up of over 7,500 zombie computers infected by the Aifone.A bot Trojan. If the user of an infected PC tries to buy an iPhone online, their confidential data might end up in the hands of cyber-criminals.

Alan Joyce has managed to run World of Warcraft on his iPhone using Telekinesis - a program which streams video from your computer onto your iPhone. The iPhone isn't doing all the work, however - you can think of it as the iPhone being the screen and controls for World of Warcraft, run from Alan's Mac Book Pro.

See the Youtube video here.

Since the iPhone was released, various reverse engineers, hackers, and entrepreneurs have been working night and day to make the iPhone work on networks other than AT&T. Considering that the iPhone was only released last week, progress has been substantial. While individual reverse engineers can get all functions other than cell-phone to work, UK-based Uniquephones has gotten much farther. With their crack team of scientists, they have developed a pre-release crack that activates 75% of all Apple iPhones...without signing a contract with AT&T. An open beta is "almost ready", and the full version should be $50 USD. A fully operational retail version of this software would effectively allow an iPhone to be used with any network (Verizon, Sprint, and others).

When the iPhone was launched last week, it became evident that one of the biggest minuses of the product was its battery, which was not user replaceable.

Apple has now come with a solution - it has started a battery replacement program. Should your iPhone's battery need replacing, you can send the phone to Apple. For a fee of $85.95, your iPhone's battery will be replaced with a new one. An "added bonus" is that all the data on the iPhone will be wiped, so you should back up everything before you send your phone to Apple.

The whole process should take about 3 business days.

If the iPhone became a must-have gadget, like the iPod did, AT&T's network would have quite a time dealing with all the internet bandwidth being used by iPhones. Fortunately for AT&T, Steve Jobs said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that the iPhone will use an available WiFi network for internet capability before using AT&T's "Edge". The iPhone is even programmed to use WiFi as a VoIP medium if AT&T service is not available, another innovation in the iPhone.

Steve Jobs and AT&T talked a lot about the iPhone in a Wall Street Journal interview, if you're interested in this kind of stuff, please click here.

Since the first iPhone reviews are in, Engadget.com made an interesting list of features which the iPhone has ... or has not:

• The mobile version of OS X or whatever it is the iPhone runs takes up 700MB of the device's capacity. Damn son!
• There's no way to cut, copy, or paste text! WHOA! Big, big mistake.
• No A2DP support. That, friends, is such a huge bummer right there.
• Sorry, music can't be used as a ringtone -- even if it's just a raw MP3. No additional ringtones will be sold at launch.
• On a PC the iPhone syncs with Outlook for calendars AND addresses! Noice.
• It supports Exchange in some capacity, according to Walt, but he doesn't exactly say how.
  
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Steve Jobs has announced, that Apple will be giving all its roughly 17,787 employees a free 8GB iPhone. This even includes part-time employees which have been with the company for more than a year. This "giveaway" will cost Apple around 12 Million US Dollars when compared to the iPhone retail price. Should be interesting to see if employees will have to pay up for a AT&T contract to fully use the iPhone and its features.

After the obvious success of the iPod, Apple will be hoping for similar results from its next major gadget: the iPhone. Although just about all of the details regarding the iPhone's specification have been available for some time now, Apple has only just revealed that the release date for the iPhone will be on 29th June (presumably this year) - so if you want to have the next big thing from Apple, you better start saving $600 now. However, that date is only for North America and there's no indication of a release date for Europe. If you want to take a look at the iPhone adverts on Apple's website, click here.

Apple recently announced that it has officially received FCC approval to sell the iPhone, its much anticipated entry into the mobile phone market. Along with getting FCC approval, the iPhone is ready to ship next month, Apple spokespeople said.

All mobile phones offered in the United States must receive a "grant of equipment authorization," which means it has received the green light from the FCC.

"We're on track to release it in late June," Cingular spokesman Mark Siegel said. "Nothing has changed."

FCC documents confirmed the iPhone will have WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities. Apple requested the FCC keep several details secret from the public, including the official launch date of the device. Apple also requested the FCC not release external or internal photographs and user manual of the iPhone for 45 days -- which means the material will likely not be made available until the iPhone is on the market.