Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re all into destabilizing your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch whilst simultaneously reducing its battery life, we have good news. The “Spirit” jailbreak is now available for all iPhone OS devices (including the just-released iPad 3G).

The jailbreak, from SpiritJB.com, is untethered. This means that once you have hacked your iDevice using the one-click software, you can restart it at will, just like you could with a clean, Apple-approved copy of the operating system. Some alternate methods require that you hook the iPhone OS device up to a computer to enable it to boot.

Jailbreaking involves hacking the OS to give you access to the file system and to allow running of third party software (as much of it as you like at the same time, hence the possible battery-life hit). With this release, the third-party application repository Cydia is reported to be buggy, so much so that it may crash your iPad or iPhone and require that you restore it from your official and proper Apple backup.

What this hack doesn’t do is unlock your iPhone from its carrier. If you’re feeling brave, go grab the download from the link below. Happy hacking.

Download Spirit Jailbreak for iPhone 3.1.3, iPod touch 3.1.3, and iPad 3.2 [SpiritJB via Cult of Mac]

UPDATED 5/3/2010 with correct download URL.

If there’s one thing business types love more than their BlackBerry, it’s their BMW — or so we’re told. It makes all sorts of sense, therefore, that the two companies would partner up to help the things they sell communicate with each other more effortlessly. Using Bluetooth MAP (Message Access Profile), BlackBerry devices can now beam emails and contacts over to BMW’s iDrive dash system, where the driver can listen to his messages via a text-to-speech option or make calls using the car’s speakerphone. The first supported handset is the newly minted Pearl 3G, and we’re told this functionality will come as an integrated part of BlackBerry 6. To see how it works on a 335is, click past the break for the video.

[Thanks, Horatiu]

Continue reading RIM converts BMW’s iDrive into ‘a remote control for your BlackBerry’ (video)

RIM converts BMW’s iDrive into ‘a remote control for your BlackBerry’ (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 May 2010 04:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s hard to say at this point if this new spate of Inspiron machines are just region-specific lappies or totally new breeds of a tried-and-true original, but either way, they’re alive and well on Dell’s own website. So far as we can tell, the Dell Inspiron 13R, 14R, 15R, 17R and M501R are exactly like their non-R contemporaries save for a few choice options: the GPU assortment is far more robust on the new flavors, while there’s a larger quantity of choices in the operating system, RAM and wireless departments. There’s also word that a Dell Dock feature is built right into these, making it easier to access media for those who aren’t exactly technically inclined. To quote Walt Mayo, vice president Dell Consumer Asia: “This is a laptop that moms will love and youths will desire.” We can’t say we fit that demographic in any way, shape, or form, but we can appreciate the “smudge-resistant palm rests, full-size, ergonomically-designed keyboard and stiffer frame” when compared to the other Inspirons. These seem to be available now over in Australia and New Zealand, which means that order pages could go live at any moment for the rest of planet Earth.

[Thanks, Mitch]

Dell Inspiron 13R, 14R, 15R, 17R and M501R quietly surface originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 May 2010 02:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well, what have we here? A friendly tipster, who just so happens to be a registered Palm developer, has sent us the latest informational email from the recently-swallowed outfit, and while the tone here may be gentle, the implications are certainly serious. According to the memo, a new webOS update is “coming soon,” and developers are being alerted that they’ll need to be prepared to test their apps when it hits. Sometime early this month, devs will receive a specific launch date for the SDK release candidate, and while we’re told that the “scope of the changes in this [forthcoming] update is limited,” it’ll be particularly important for coders to “test PDK apps against this release candidate.” Seems like that promise of seeing PDK apps hitting the Catalog by mid-year is on track, acquisition be darned.

Continue reading webOS update coming soon, PDK apps likely to land

webOS update coming soon, PDK apps likely to land originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 May 2010 00:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve been seeing the iPad / iPhone Spirit jailbreak demoed here and there for a few weeks now, and here we go — the download is now available. The untethered jailbreak works on activated iPhone OS devices running 3.1.2, 3.1.3, and 3.2, although iPad owners are warned that “all this is still sort of beta” and might require you to restore if things break. That’s not the worst thing in the world, we suppose — anyone taking the plunge?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

iPhone / iPad ‘Spirit’ jailbreak released to the world originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 02 May 2010 21:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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