Woke up this morning and I got myself a …. PwnageTool. Been waiting for this since iPhone OS 3.0 was released in iTunes Wednesday (6.17.09). Well me and thousands of others who were “refreshing” the crap out of the Dev-Team blog/website the past several days, or following the Dev-Team on Twitter, waiting for PwnageTool to post. That may not seem like a long time to most, it’s like seven lifetimes to those caught up in the iPhone reality distortion field. But here it is, with its new updated app smell. And it’s ability to unlock my 1st Generation iPhone.
You have to love these guys. They are modern day heros. Now Apple might think contrary, but you have to admire the Dev-Team’s vibrato. Their stamina. Their commitment. This disparate group of programmers, hackers, telecom industry workers, et al, from all over the world, doing what Apple should have done all along. Make the iPhone open to any and all GSM networks around the world. There might be those who would brand them thieves and hacker-thugs. But I commend them.
Having been an early adopter of hacking my iPhone, I am in awe of these guys. They have taken the task and turned it into an art form. They’ve taken the time to find the vulnerabilities of the iPhone and the OS to deliver their payload through any available vector. And then they wrap what use to be a terminal command line nightmare, into the slickest Mac and Windows applications I have seen so far, to accomplish the task. Thank you all for the hard work you do. And thanks to Apple for not trying to rain on the Dev-Teams achievements.
I spent maybe 30 minutes total this morning using PwnageTool and iTunes to get my custom 3.0 .ipsw file built and onto my iPhone. Once that happened, the Pwnage payload did its “magic” on the iPhone by auto configuring itself. While this was going on I Tweeted about it. (Okay I’ve become a TwitterNerd or perhaps a TwitWit now). Then I did a restore from the backup I did before starting all this, like a good little iPhone citizen should do. While that was happening I made my Peet’s coffee and breakfast. I knew it would take a bit of time to load all my iPhone apps, music, etc back on the phone.
The next step is to get all my Cydia apps and hacks loaded … WinterBoard, Five Icon Dock, Open SSH, BossTools, TMobile Carrier Logos, etc. These things are the icing on the iPhone cake. So now it’s time for me to SSH into my iPhone and load my custom desktop, and dock I’ve created. It’s a job … but someone has to do it. 
I know. I know. It’s just a phone. Get a life! But hey at least … I pwn it!
