Ahh, gotta love new updates coming to the iPhone OS 3.0 Beta and then finding out iTunes 8.2 might have Blu-Ray support. Yeah, finally Blu-Ray support coming to iTunes and long awaited Mac. Pretty awesome.

As of right now, there’s no mention of new features on Beta 4 of the iPhone OS 3.0 but I’m sure there’s great new fixes and a much much more stable beta.

Over at Macrumors, one of their forum posters discovered that iTunes 8.2 Pre-Release refers to Blu-Ray Data, of course, suggesting that the final release of iTunes 8.2 will fully support Blu-Ray discs.

You may be thinking, why blu-ray support on iTunes? Well, I have an idea on why blu-ray would be great, and thats for backing up your iTunes purchases. (Yes, I do buy stuff from iTunes) Before, you would be able to back up onto CDs and DVDs and now, hopefully, you’ll be able to back up onto Blu-Ray discs assuming, of course, you have a blu-ray burner. What do you guys think on the idea of Blu-Ray support coming to iTunes? Good idea? Bad Idea? Let us know in the comments!

- source: macrumors.com

In a brief note on SlingMedia’s website, the company notes the following: “We are in close contact with our partners at Apple and are optimistic that it will be approved soon. We hope the wait won’t be much longer.” SlingMedia had demoed SlingPlayer in action at Macworld and then a few months after that, SlingMedia submitted Slingplayer for iPhone for approval to the AppStore.

Since then, it’s been months of excitement and anticipation followed by the gruesome depression as lightly sourced rumors arise saying that Apple may turn down SlingPlayer for iPhone at the request of AT&T, who are worried about all bandwidth the app may use up. Of course, AT&T and other carriers do offer phones that the SlingMedia Mobile app works on but of course those phones will never come close to the footprint the iPhone has made. Hopefully, SlingMedia knows something that the rest of use don’t.

There have also been rumors that Slingplayer for iPhone will turn out to be Wi-Fi only which will be a huge downer for those who will be expecting to start Slinging away where ever they might be. Hopefully it won’t be wi-fi only, who knows.

Stay tuned!

- source: slingmedia.com

Wow, just wow. 1 billion (thats no typo, billion is correct) apps downloaded from the AppStore in 9 months! That’s just crazy awesome. Apple had put a contest, where whoever was the one to download the billionth app would win a ton of sweeet stuff. The winner would receive a $10,000 iTunes gift card, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule and a MacBook Pro.

Lucky winner, Connor Mulcahey, 13 year old from Weston, CT won the contest when he downloaded the billionth app – Bump. As a winner he received all that awesome stuff.

The one billionth app, Bump created by Bump Technologies, was downloaded by Connor Mulcahey, age 13, of Weston, CT. As the grand prize winner of Apple’s one billion app countdown contest, Connor will receive a $10,000 iTunes gift card, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule and a MacBook Pro.

Congratulations, Connor Mulcahey.

- source: apple.com

Update: There’s a video of “Baby Shaker” on Youtube. View it in the embeded player or on the source link.

Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris said Thursday that the game was “deeply offensive” and said it should not have been approved for sale. “We sincerely apologize for this mistake,” Kerris said in a statement.

Again, this incident has put Apple’s approval process in the spotlight. Though in the past, Apple has been criticized for being too restrictive with publishable content in the App Store. They have rejected a ton of applications from the Apple Store for a number of reasons.

- source: youtube.com

AT&T is offering a sweet discount for the iPhone 16GB model. You can save yourself $150USD and get a 16GB iPhone for $149USD with a two (2) year contract (commitment). Always nice to see the iPhone selling for less than what they are usually sold for, gives people with a low budget an opportunity to buy a precious iPhone to call their own – even if the iPhone was previously owned by someone else.

So if you’re inclined to save a few hundred bucks because you got problems thanks to United States’ bad economy (We wish you the best, by the way) or for whatever else then head over to AT&T and get your inexpensive iPhone!

iPhone 16GB Model are going for $149USD Black and white model!
iPhone 8Gb model are going for the usual $99USD in black only.

I say for $50 bucks more, it’s worth doubling that storage for more apps/music/video etc. Buy your iPhone at the source link, after you do so, come back to iPhone-hacks and learn how to hack your iPhone!

- source: wireless.att.com

Awhile ago, we mentioned voice control was found in iPhone OS 3.0 beta. The folks at Ars Technica have provided some details but specifics are still unknown, unfortunately. Apparently, the code name of this cool feature is “Jibbler” – Pretty awesome code name – “Jibbler” will enable both voice synthesis and voice recognition on the iPhone OS 3.0.

Not much information is known at this time, but according to our own people familiar with the matter, Jibbler appears be an enhancement to the iPhone SpringBoard application, the Finder-esque app that acts as a launcher and will support the newly announced 3.0 Spotlight search. Jibbler may be controlled via the iPhone headset — button squeezes could be used to record short voice segments from the user, which Jibbler will then interpret. Voice synthesis can then be used to give the user a response, similar to the latest generation iPod shuffle, which can “read” playlists and track names — the difference being that the iPhone hardware itself could handle real-time voice synthesis.

Ars Technica also notes evidence that the feature code-named “Jibbler” could possibly be made available via the SDK for third-party developers could make use of it. There is also no indication whether or not the application will be limited to the next generation iPhone – But I assume it will be limited to the next gen hardware, just because the new iPhone might be having a better cpu.

This is perhaps my new favorite and most used iPhone app in my iPhone App inventory. Rowmote, it’s a remote control for your mac. It’s just like the remote control Apple ships with all macs with an IR receiver but what if your mac doesn’t have an IR receiver? Well, for rowmote you don’t need an IR receiver since it uses your local network. Pretty damn sweet application. Works freaking awesome with my Hack Pro – Mac Pro Intel Core i7 clone, not to brag ;).

With rowmote, you can control almost everything you can with the standard Apple remote – Stuff such as, Frontrow, iTunes, iPhoto, QuickTime, DVD Player and a bunch of other cool Mac OS X applications. Just sporting 6 buttons, (Next, Previous, Volume up and down, pause/play, and menu) Rowmote has an extremely simple and beautifully designed interface that is such an ease to operate. Hell, you can even operate it like a real remote! Holding down the next button, for example, will fast forward the song you’re listening to! Now, how cool is that?!

From rowmote’s website:

On one side, Rowmote is just like your Mac’s remote control but over the wireless network. On the flip side, by tapping the Apps button, you get bonus abilities, switching between most controlled programs and toggling the iTunes Visualizer. Rowmote controls Front Row, Airfoil Video, Boxee, iPhoto, iTunes, Quicktime, DVD Player, Keynote ’08 and ‘09, PandoraJam, Plex, Powerpoint 2008, Skim, Spotify, and VLC. Rowmote 1.3+ also has preliminary eyeTV support (channel changing and volume control). Rowmote can even sleep and wake your computer!

Rowmote has definitely made my list of best iPhone app ever created! I personally tip my hat to the developer!

Requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.4.0 or later (Sorry Windows folks)
• The free Rowmote Helper program must be running on the Mac to be controlled.

Downloads:
You can download the Remote Helper app from either us on our iPhone Downloads section (Link below) or from the Rowmote’s website at the source link.
Download Rowmote Helper from iPhone-Hacks

Rowmote (iTunes Link) is a steal at $0.99USD and should be on every Mac user’s iPhone!

- source: rowmote.com

If you would like to check what bootloader your iPhone is running, this tutorial will guide you through on how to check if you’re on Mac OS X.

Before we begin, Make sure you have OpenSSH and Terminal installed on your iPhone. If not, go into Cydia and install OpenSSH and MobileTerminal. – Alright, now, lets begin.

1. Download BBUpdaterExtreme from here and save it to your desktop.
2. Launch the Terminal application from Applications/Utilities.
3. Make sure you iPhone is connected to the same wireless network as your computer and determine its IP Address

Click more for the rest of the tutorial. Note: Warning, contains lots of images if you’re on dialup it may take a while to fully load!
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DownBB, lets you do just what the title of this post suggests. Lets you downgrade your baseband from 2.30.03 to 02.28.00. 2.30.03 broke the hole needed to successfully run yellowsn0w, iPhone Dev Team clearly warned against updating to firmware 2.2.1 without preserving the baseband of 2.2 or previous firmwares with the world famous PwnageTool

It’s really easy to downgrade your baseband, you can do it right within Cydia with DownBB!

1. Fire up Cydia
2. Install iClarified source from Sources section or http://cydia.iclarified.com/
3. Refresh sources, if needed
4. Tap Sections and Scroll to iClarified and tap
5. Find DownBB and Install
6. Confirm you want to Install. Cydia will do the rest
7. After it installs, go to the homescreen
8. Open Terminal
9. Enter su into the terminal window then enter alpine when prompted for a password.
10. Enter DownBB into the terminal window to launch the baseband downgrade script.
11. You will be asked to confirm you would like to continue. Please make sure you are on the 2.30 baseband and have the 5.8 bootloader before entering yes into the window.
12. DownBB will now execute the script which downgrades your baseband.
13. Once the script has completed it will automatically reboot your iPhone.
14. you will now be on the 2.28 baseband.

If your iPhone is hacked and you downloaded the latest Skype for iPhone update then you might have seen it warn you that Skype for iPhone is only supported on an unmodified iPhone OS.

Fortunately, it doesn’t stop users from using Skype, it seems it only serves as a warning to inform users who have jailbroken their iPhone that Skype will not be providing support for the stability related issues. The warning will only show up once when you start up the latest update for the first time.

On a side note, the latest update fixes and improves various things:

• Improved support for calling phone numbers that don’t have a country code
• Improved error handling when making calls to landlines and mobiles, which previously may have failed if you had a monthly subscription.
• Resolved a problem with new account creation, which caused customers to be redirected to an incorrect web page, when making a purchase.
• Fixed a problem, which caused the application to crash, when tapping a contact image (avatar) within a chat.

If you want Skype for iPhone then Click Here and download it for free from iTunes