The iPhone is scheduled to be released in the UK and Germany this coming Friday, according to Apple's UK and German website. This isn't the only gift Apple is announcing, but Apple will be also pre-releasing their iPhones with the newest firmware that is not yet publicly available, firmware 1.1.2.
Apple's newest firmware, 1.1.2, is said to have a few fixes along with friendly new features. Some of the new features will include support for different international languages such as French and German along with fixing for the keyboards layout. Apple has also added a new hotspot service called "The Cloud" that will be available free of charge. While that is only the good news, there is some bad news. Apple has supposedly fixed the popular TIFF exploit, a method of directly unlocking and activating the iPhone.
What does this mean for the users that are using the iPhone with different GSM carriers besides AT&T? Apple has been trying to crackdown on this activity for the past few weeks. According to ModMyiFone, roughly 250,000 iPhones have been unlocked out of 1.4 million making it a total of about 18%. According to usatoday, Apple has limited iPhone purchases to 2 per person, and along with that, a credit card is required in order to purchase an iPhone. No cash is accepted.
Will this new firmware try to crackdown on the crackers even more? Is Apple losing more than they are gaining from this? The TIFF exploited is currently the most popular method of unlocking and activating the iPhone but once it is patched, it won't be long until another method is discovered.
Related: arstechnica
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