Only a couple of days after George Hotz became the first hacker to release a jailbreak app for the iPhone 3GS on Windows, there’s a Mac-compatible version out too. This time, Hotz got some help from two fellow coders to be able to please the Mac folks, but he also made some improvements to the Windows version.

Happy jailbreaking, and in case you didn’t know yet: happy unlocking too.

Start Mobile has managed to get 18 separate iPhone applications approved by Apple. So you’ll imagine their surprise when one of them was recently rejected. But you may be even more surprised to find out why.

Apparently, Apple doesn’t like the way one piece of art in the app depicts President Obama. Is it out of line or tasteless? Well, you can determine for yourself, because you’ve undoubtedly seen the art in question before: It’s Shepard Fairey’s famous “HOPE” image of Obama that was everywhere during his Presidential campaign.

So why on Earth would this be rejected? Well, here’s the wording in the rejection:

It contains content that ridicules public figures and is in violation of Section 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agreement which states: “Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.”

“Ridicules public figures”? This image is hanging in the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian — yet, Apple apparently finds it inappropriate.

Before I go defile myself with burgers and beer I wanted to jailbreak my iPhone 3GS for you all. The process was amazingly simple. Using a Windows netbook - it doesn’t work under Windows 7 - I simply installed iTunes and ran purplera1n. It took a second to reboot then it rolled through recovery mode, rebooted, and an app called Freeze appeared. Freeze then installed Cydia and all was right with the world.

George Hotz, the 20-year old hacker who originally unlocked the iPhone, has released a jailbreaking application for the iPhone 3GS codenamed “purplera1n.” It’s currently Windows-only (Windows 7 not supported), and requires the latest iTunes installed, and an iPhone 3GS with the 3.0 firmware.

Hotz mentions in a blog post that the jailbreak for Mac is “coming soon.” The iPhone Dev Team did release a unlock for 3.0 which did not work on the iPhone 3GS, but Hotz’s version does (although it doesn’t free you from your current carrier).

Since the debut of the App Store last summer, my iPhone has become an indispensable part of my workout routine. The phone makes it easy to track your workout progress both in the gym and outdoors, where applications like RunKeeper allow you to use the phone’s integrated GPS to plot your bike or running course on a map. But there’s been one annoyance that’s aggravated me (and many others) to no end: the limited control you have over your music once you’ve launched one of these fitness apps. Fortunately the iPhone 3.0 software update finally fixes this, and a RunKeeper-like application called Fitnio(iTunes Link) has managed to beat some of its more well-known competitors to the punch.

Until the release of the iPhone 3.0 software update, developers were unable to access the phone’s music library. In order to play music as you ran, you’d have to first open up the phone’s iPod application, pick a playlist, then switch over to the excercise app. Once there, you could use your headphone’s multifunction button to execute some basic commands (next song, pause, and previous song), but if you wanted to switch playlists you were out of luck.

Yesterday, we wrote about what Facebook was planning for the next major release of its iPhone app, version 3.0. The big update will contain 15 new features, probably none bigger than the addition of event management to the app, finally. But there was one thing Facebook developer Joe Hewitt didn’t mention yesterday, and it’s a big one: Video uploads from the iPhone 3GS.

Hewitt just started working on the feature yesterday, thinking it would be something that would come in the next release, after this one. But he was surprised at how quickly he was able to get it up and running and so he tweeted out today, “3GS video uploading for the Facebook iPhone app is a go — didn’t plan to include it in the 3.0 update, but it was really easy to code.”

An internal AT&T memo that was leaked today is full of very impressive number regarding the iPhone 3GS — numbers that once again show why AT&T’s exclusive contract with Apple to sell the iPhone in the U.S. is so important.

The iPhone 3GS’s launch gave AT&T its best sales day at its retail stores — ever, its second largest traffic day at retails stores, the most transactions it has ever processed in a day, the most orders through att.com in a single day ever and the biggest features sales day at att.com ever. Oh, and it led to the most upgrade eligibility checks ever, which is not surprising at all, though most were probably disappointed.

What’s crazy about all this though is that while many people were expecting the iPhone 3GS launch to pale in comparison to the iPhone 3G launch, it actually exceeded it in just about every way when it came to actual sales (at least through AT&T’s stores and online). The lines may have not been as long at stores because of pre-sales, but sales overall exceeded the 2008 launch day numbers, and all of the heavy holiday shopping times. And apparently iPhone 3GS sales exceeded the iPhone 3G launch day sales by noon Central time.

It looks like Apple has already started sending out the beta version and SDK for the next iteration of the iPhone OS, 3.1, to developers.

The iPhone 3.0 software was released just about two weeks ago, ahead of the iPhone 3GS launch. By most accounts it’s pretty stable, though some users have been having battery issues. That’s why it’s a bit odd that Apple would iterate up to version 3.1 already, instead of something like 3.0.1, which it tends to do for minor updates and bug fixes. Could we be seeing a larger update to the OS already?

I’m told that there’s nothing much of interest in the release notes to indicate anything major that is new or changed.

A couple weeks ago, we wrote a post detailing why there needs to be some sort of iPhone app recommendation system. Just like iTunes has its “Genius” feature for music and movies, with over 50,000 apps now in the App Store, there needs to be a way to filter out what you don’t want and find what you do. If you have a lot of friends with iPhones or iPod touches, AppsFire may offer just that.

The service, launching in private beta today, allows you to share your favorite apps with anyone. Now, to be clear, I don’t mean actually share the apps themselves, but rather share the names of the ones you like and give others one-click access to download them also, from the App Store. So, say I have 100 apps on my machine, but I only really would recommend 15 or so, I would select those 15, and could send them out to friends on the various social networks.

Disclosure: I have not bought an iPhone 3GS — I’m still unsure if I will. Apple gave me a review unit to play with for 60 days.

I’ve had the new iPhone 3GS for a little over a week now. Using it day-to-day over the course of that time, I have a pretty good feel for it. A good enough feel to answer the question that every single person seems to be asking: “Should I get it?”

The answer to that is not so simple. And so I’m going to break it down a bunch of different ways based mainly on the device’s functionality and who I think is considering buying it. I’ll lay out what someone may be interested in the device for, and then give a “yes” or “no” (or a couple “maybes”) answer on if I think it’s worth it. I’ll follow that up with an explanation.

Here we go:

If you own an iPhone, chances are you have at least one Twitter client on it. And while everyday seems to bring new ones into the App Store, at the end of the day, Tweetie always seems to be the one that I go back to. TwitterFon, Twitterriffic and most recently, TweetDeck, all are worthy challengers, but I find each of them lacking in some regard. Usually, it’s either speed or simplicity. Tweetie seems to be a perfect combination of the two. But a new app, Birdfeed, may be a little more perfect.

When you first boot it up, you may think Birdfeed looks a little sparse. But there’s a lot behind this simple design, it’s just tucked away, so as not to clutter the main experience, as so many apps do. The main Birdfeed screen consists of your Twitter timeline, a button to load newer tweets, a button to compose a tweet, and a button to your account — that’s it. Clicking on any tweet in your timeline will load it on its own screen and from there you can easily see that person’s profile, reply to that tweet, favorite it or forward it (retweet it, post a link to it, or mail a link to it).

We’ve been a bit baffled by the system Apple has in place when it comes to ratings for applications in the App Store. Is it allowing apps with nudity? Not allowing them? Allowing them with a 17+ rating? We’ve talked to some developers willing to break their NDAs because they think the App Store approval process in general is messed up, and would like to see Apple do a better job handling it. So here’s how the ratings system currently works for the App Store.

The Ratings

When you go to submit your app through iTunes Connect, one of the steps takes you to a ratings matrix that you must fill out. This contains 10 questions listed under “Apple Content Descriptions.” For each of the 10 questions you must say “None”, “Infrequent/Mild”, or “Frequent/Intense.” Depending on what answer you give for each of these, the rating of your app in the upper right corner will change. These ratings go from “4+” to “9+” to “12+” to “17+” to “No Rating.”

That last one is key. If your app gets the “No Rating” label, a warning written in red appears underneath it stating that: “This content will not be sold via iTunes.” So what triggers such a rating? Well, not a lot. Basically, it comes down to the final two questions in the 10 question matrix. Let’s run through them in descending order:

While it’s not being talked about too much, the $99 iPhone 3G is a very interesting play by Apple. It takes what was previously a just out-of-reach device for many, and puts it at a magical price-point. Sure, it still won’t sell everyone, like the people who only care about getting the phone that their carrier is offering for free, or those looking for the cheapest possible monthly plans. But just look at the iPhone compared to the other $99 phones out there.

That’s what we did. And originally we set out to compare the various specs. But looking them over, it’s really a joke. And you can basically see all you need to see simply by looking at the devices being offering by the major carriers in the U.S. at this price point.

An exercise for the reader:

First, we present Fracture. You tap the iPhone to “crack” the screen and then you tap again to cause the apps to explode, triggering the rest of the apps to explode in rapid succession. Next, we find SkyFart. You press a little man and he farts. Then you press him again and he farts and again and flies into space. Then you press him again and he farts and flies. Then you press him again…

So which app was accepted by the App store with open arms and which one was rejected?

The logical thing to say, based on the common understanding that the expression of gas and fecal matter as a mode of transport is considered by some to be offensive, is that SkyFart would be rejected out of hand. This is not true.

Today, we got the latest version of the live-streaming app Qik, a version that will work on the iPhone 3GS. No, we didn’t get it through the App Store, because Apple or AT&T or both still won’t allow for applications that stream live video from the device to be accepted into the store. So instead, just like before, we have to settle for the ad-hoc version, which is fine, but severely dampens the application’s potential reach.

So how does the iPhone 3GS version of Qik compare to the one that worked on the iPhone 3G? Overall, video quality-wise, I would say the iPhone 3GS version of Qik and the iPhone 3G version look about the same. This is despite the 3GS having a nicer camera (3.2 megapixels versus 2). And even though the iPhone 3G didn’t have video camera capabilities, Qik was able to build its own encoders to use the regular camera for video capture. The iPhone 3GS of course, can do video, and it has APIs that give developers access to it. But it would seem that Qik is still limiting the quality of the video that gets streamed, to ensure better live performance.

Foursquare, the location-based social networking service, is about to activate Push Notifications in the new version of its iPhone app, due shortly. I’ve been beta testing it out for the past week, and I’m happy to report that it works brilliantly. But be warned: Some of you will not like this idea.

Applications using Push have been rolling out over the past week. None so far have been bigger than the IM clients like AIM and Beejive, as instant messaging is an obvious use of Push messages. But location can work quite well too, as Foursquare is proving, but only for a certain kind of location app.

Foursquare is all about explicitly “checking-in” places. That is to say, when you go somewhere, you have to boot up the app, load the site or send a text to let it know you want to check-in there. It doesn’t do it automatically, even if you have the app open. Because of this, Push Notifications make sense, since they ping your followers when you check-in somewhere. And you really shouldn’t have to worry about privacy because you are the one checking in to a place, on purpose, to let the people you know — that you personally allowed to let follow you — see where you are.

The drama in iPhone porn world continues. Yesterday, Hottest Girls, the first app with nudity was accepted into the App Store. But early this morning it was made unavailable, and everyone presumed Apple was behind it. But apparently, the app has not been pulled from the App Store by Apple, but rather by the developers because of high demand.

The guy team behind the app, Allen the Geek, writes on its site:

The Hottest Girls app is temporarily sold out. The server usage is extremely high because of the popularity of this app. Thus, by not distributing the app, we can prevent our servers from crashing. Those who already have the app will still be able to use our app. To answer the question on everyone’s mind: Yes, the topless images will still be there when it is sold again. -ATG dev team

So is this BS? Is this just them covering up for Apple pulling it? I don’t think so.

The tech blogosphere was abuzz yesterday with the news that Apple seemingly started accepting applications that contain nudity into the App Store. Now, it appears someone over at Cupertino as ultimately decided to reject the first such app to get into the store after all. In our tests, we could still locate the app via the iTunes link, but were unable to purchase it and download it to our devices.

Other applications with the new rating (”Rated 17+ for “Frequent/Intense Sexual Content or Nudity.”) could still be downloaded without a problem, so it seems Apple just let ‘Hottest Girls’ slip through the cracks - something we suggested as a possibility yesterday as well - and has now fixed it.

AdMob has released its metrics report for May 2009 (PDF download link), and looked closely at the actual distribution of users of the iPhone apps in their network this time. The main take-away? There may be tens of thousands of applications available for the iPhone, but a whole lot of them simply never actually make it onto the device.

Out of 2,309 tracked applications (representing 15.1 million unique iPhone and iPod Touch users), no less than 54% are actively used by south of 1,000 persons. That’s a very long tail there, and not an economically interesting one at that. Only about 20% of the tracked apps have more than 10,000 active users, and only 5% (or 116 apps) boasts more than 100,000 active users. For the record, an active user is considered to be someone who used the app at least once in May.

Just as we were speculating a couple nights ago, Apple has apparently decided that with the new parental controls now built into the iPhone 3.0 SDK, nudity is now okay in iPhone apps. The first such app, Hottest Girls, has actually been around for a little while. But an update today “upgraded” the pictures from girls in bikinis and lingerie, to topless and completely naked girls.

“We uploaded nude topless pics today. This is the first app to have nudity,” Hottest Girls’ developer Allen Leung tells Macenstein. Quite an accomplishment.

While some will undoubtedly see this as a bad thing, I think this is actually a good thing. First of all, allowing mature content like this should free up the App Store screeners to be able to focused on finding apps that are actually malicious or out of line, rather than being prude-police.