It sounds like a work of fiction – Microsoft allowing and supporting a way for people to browse and search iPhone apps?! Can’t be true, right? Wrong. If you’re somewhat surprised, you’re not alone. The people at CNET seem a little astonished too.

Almost seems like a sign of the apocalypse doesn’t it?

The new Bing Visual Search engine has the look and feel of a digital jukebox at your local watering hole – complete with jumbo app icons that can be flipped through like a box of old records in the attic. And a description pops up when you mouse over the app of your choice, along with price, category, and other vital info.

I have to admit, both the look and functionality of this feature are really impressive. The obvious drawback, of course, is that only a fraction (500, in all) of the Apple app catalog is available for browsing through Bing. Everything is categorized by Bing’s search filters and broken down into titled chunks like “top ten free” or “top ten paid,” etc.

Although some are saying today that Microsoft has developed a better interface for browsing iPhone applications than Apple itself, I won’t go that far. But even if Bing isn’t the best place to explore iPhone apps, it may still be the coolest-looking search portal so far.

And, no matter how you slice it, that’s a win-win for consumers.

via modmyi.com

At Apple’s “It’s Only Rock and Roll” media event last week, the company introduced new iPod touch models with 32 GB and 64 GB capacities, advertising the devices as offering “up to 50 percent faster performance”. Macworld has performed speed tests comparing the new iPod touch to the previous-generation model, and found that on a number of tasks the new model does meet or exceed Apple’s performance claims.

The speed tests conducted were similar to ones run in June on the iPhone 3GS, and while the new iPhone running Apple’s just-released iPhone OS 3.1 was not included in the latest comparison, the new iPod touch appears to even be slightly faster at some tasks than the iPhone 3GS.

But it’s not just in benchmarks such as these where the new iPod wins out. Just as the iPhone 3GS was faster than the iPhone 3G at everything, the new iPod touch feels much faster at any task you throw at it: applications launch (and quit) faster, Web pages load more quickly, processor-intensive games and programs perform better — you name it.

We’ll be testing the latest iPod touch’s performance — compared to both the previous touch and the iPhone 3GS — for our official review, but it’s clear that Apple has beefed up its newest touchscreen device.

Via macrumors.com

Custom Firmware Downloads:

iPod Touch 1st Gen 3.1.1 Jailbroken 1gb Partition:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=OT0DGR2Z

2G iphone 768mb partition, Activated, Unlocked:
http://rapidshare.com/files/28065181…cked.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/28066104…cked.part2.rar

2G iphone 768mb Partition, Unactivated, Unlocked:
http://rapidshare.com/files/28067532…lock.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/28066104…lock.part2.rar
Read more…

Action Menu for iPhone is quite a handy tweak. It brings the missing feature of clipboard/ pasteboard along with cut copy paste feature available on firmware 3.0/ iPhone 3GS. The tweak works very smoothly and also has a nice loading speed unlike clippy. It also has an advanced version which is paid which brings features like dial, search history etc to iPhone.
Personally its my favourite tweak by cydia as it brings clipboard tab keeping intact all the other features/ tabs like copy, copy all, cut, correction ( inspell) and paste. It also has page scrolling feature/tab included in the free package available for $2.99

To use the tweak you have to go to settings/action menu where you can edit the settings. You have an option to use icons or names for the tabs under its settings.(I prefer using tabs). To add things to the clipboard you need to add them as favorite and then type anything you want.
The only missing feature is that you can’t directly add things to clipboard but I expect the developer to put this feature in the coming updates to the app. To download Read more…

I was chatting with my TUAW colleagues this morning about Mac versus iPhone programming. And as per usual with these conversations, we veered in the direction of unfettered speculation. It’s an occupational hazard.

As someone who regularly develops on both platforms, I declared that the iPhone represents the future of Mac programming. The iPhone, I posited, offers a great new platform without the need to be fully backwards compatible like the Mac. Our own Victor Agreda challenged me to back up that position. After a bit of time and thought, I decided to do so in this post.

My key point is this: Apple’s engineers have learned a lot of important design lessons during the history of OS X. When the iPhone debuted, it gave those engineers the chance to rebuild an OS and an API from the ground up. Those engineers could craft a platform and its libraries that built on the Mac’s successes without Read more…

Thanks to Saurik for all of his hard work. Below is his explanation from saurik.com on how to downgrade your iPhone 3G S and also how to continue using his server for future Apple firmware updates.

Bypassing the Overlord

To this end, I have constructed a server that duplicates the functionality exposed by Apple’s signature server, except using “on file” results rather than live requests.

All we need, then, is to make iTunes use it. Luckily, most operating systems also have the ability to locally define bypasses on specific hostnames through a file called hosts. Using this, we can redirect requests to Apple’s signature server to Cydia.

So, open the file C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts (Windows) or /etc/hosts (Mac OS X) and add the following entry to the bottom of the file.

74.208.105.171 gs.apple.com

Now, when iTunes thinks it is talking to Apple, it is talking to Cydia Read more…

Apple may be redesigning its retail stores to include dedicated iPhone areas for activation and support, according to MacRumors.

The activation zones will reportedly be staffed by a new category of retail store employee called “iPhone Experts”, who will be denoted by unique name badges and t-shirts. With the move, Apple is clearly looking to streamline the iPhone purchasing experience for customers and provide a dedicated iPhone point of contact within the crowded retail store setting, particularly for new customers whose first experience with Apple products may be the iPhone.

These changes could occur as early as tomorrow…

Read More

Via iclarified.com