What Can Nokia do to trump Apple’s iPhone

I have been an iPhone user for almost 10 months now and have been thinking about getting a new phone. So when I started looking around for new models, I was amazed to see how none of the available phones would satisfy my requirements. Not even the super Nokia N97.

I am not sure if my usage pattern is unique but I tend to use my iPhone as a music player (podcasts mostly) more than as a communication device. My other iPhone activities would include checking emails, using Google Reader and Twitter (Oh yeah, follow me @acmhatre).

Back in 2005, Sony was the first company to introduce the concept of a walkman phone. Nokia soon followed Sony but both these companies faltered on the software and that’s the secret of iPhone’s success. What makes the iPhone so unique and loveable is not the highly responsive touch screen interface or the good looks - it’s the backbone - the iTunes software.

Unlike the half-baked software developed by Nokia and Sony, iTunes can hold its ground to be used a primary music management software so anything one does in iTunes gets synced to their iPhone. Similarly, iPhoto a great photo management tool and synching with an iPhone is a breeze. Before iPhone was introduced, nobody even talked about updating the firmware on a cell phone because it was just too difficult to be done by an average user.

I am not sure if Sony has the energy to stage a come back but I can see Nokia competing with Apple/ I am not taking about the revenue numbers or number of handsets sold. We all know that Apple is far from even competing on those grounds. I am talking about mindshare and perception based competition.

So what should Nokia do? How about Nokia using SongBird, a free and open source music management software from the Mozilla foundation to do everything that iTunes does for iPhone. It’s being positioned as an iTunes killer anyway.

Nokia, at least for its high end phones, should look into developing plug-ins that’ll allow people to manage and synchronize not only music but videos, photos and as a platform to provide firmware updates to Nokia users. Nokia needs to give its users a single point of interaction with their devices. Nokia should do negative of iPhone and do just exactly opposite. The iPhone App store is a closed environment; Nokia should open up a Symbian Appstore on SongBird and integrate it with Ovi. The solution just seems so obvious but sometimes it just is that obvious!

The writer, Aditya Mhatre, is based in Mumbai and hosts Indicast, a popular audio-video podcast show from India.

Creative Mobile Wallpapers Pack (240 x 320)

Creative Mobile Wallpapers Pack (240 x 320)

Creative Mobile Wallpapers Pack (240 x 320)
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Cell phone money transfers going international

When online payment services like PayPal were first launched over a decade ago, the sudden and disturbing ease with which regular people could electronically transfer money between each other online was nothing less than miraculous. Not only was it faster and easier than withdrawing cash from an ATM or even doing a wire transfer, an average Joe could accept credit card payments from other users without having to invest in any sort of equipment or processing system. That phenomenon is happening all over again in the form of cash transfers via text message. If you live in a country where there's a participating carrier and banking institution that supports it, all you have to do is send an SMS to your friend in order for money to virtually change hands.

One such carrier is Vodafone, which plans to announce a partnership with Western Union today that will allow users to make international money transfers just by using their cell phones. The companies, according to the Wall Street Journal, will initially launch a pilot program in parts of the UK that will allow them to send money to friends and family in Kenya. Assuming the service is as popular as many expect it to be, Vodafone plans to expand the service to other countries as an add-on service.

This will be the first time a company has gotten into the international money transfer business using text messages, but domestic money transfers via SMS have been around for a while. Users in the Philippines and India have been transferring money domestically via cell phones for some time, and Vodafone runs a domestic money transfer service in Kenya, Tanzania, and Afghanistan called M-Pesa that now has some 4 million users.

The Chicago Tribune outlines the story of a Kenyan mother of two who normally has to travel an hour by bus to get to a money-wiring office to receive cash from her husband, but can now get the money easily by text message. "It saves time, it saves money and it is safer," she told the newspaper. Other Kenyans now depend upon M-Pesa to get paid by their employers, who no longer need to take the dangerous risk of carrying around bags of cash on payday (banks are few and far between in many rural areas).

But you don't have to live on the other side of the world in order to being playing around with mobile money transfers. Obopay, a US-based company, offers a PayPal-like service that allows users to send and receive money. However, Obopay also allows users to text message each other with virtual cash, something that PayPal doesn't offer quite yet (Update: it appears as if PayPal does offer SMS payments after all). The cool part about Obopay is that you don't need to sign up for an account in order to retrieve cash that someone has sent you—just enter your personal information and bank details for wherever you want the money transferred, and it will show up there.

Apple's new in-ear headphones set to ship in about a week

Just yesterday, there were gripes about Apple's long-awaited, big-pimpin' new in-ear headphones and why they hadn't materialized. They were, after all, promised to arrive in October at the Let's Rock media event in September. This morning, however, AppleInsider brought it to our attention that orders are now being accepted via the Apple Store online, and the headphones are expected to ship in seven to 10 days.

Rumor has it that the headphones had to go back to the drawing board because Steve Jobs wasn't satisfied with the audio and build quality, despite saying in October, "I think we got it right this time." Though by no means cheap at $79, Apple's In-Ear Headphones with Remote and Mic include dual drivers for improved frequency response, volume and track control, and an integrated microphone for recording. Similar headphones from the likes of Shure or Audio Technica sell for about double that price and lack the remote control and mic features.

One curious detail is that Apple doesn't list the headphones as being compatible with any iPhone model—something that was confirmed to us directly by an Apple rep in September. This is apparently due to the fact the iPhones aren't designed to have the volume controlled remotely, though it seems like a firmware update could easily fix that. They are, on the other hand, fully compatible with the latest iPod classic, iPod nano, and iPod touch, however.

Whatever the delay issues might have been, Apple is now ready to sell you a pair, and should ship in plenty of time for the holidays.

OrbLive streams live television to your iPhone

Here at Gear Live, we’ve been big fans of Orb for quite a while. Back in the original iPhone days, they made an app that was only available on jailbroken phones that we really liked - we just knew it needed to run at 3G speeds to be useful when on the go. The time has finally come, though, as OrbLive has hit the App Store. To back up for a moment, Orb allows you to access files and media on your home computer while on the go. This means that any music on your home computer can now be played on your iPhone from wherever you are. Videos too. Oh, and if you have a TV tuner in your computer, Orb will even allow you to tap into that and watch live television on the go as well. Isn’t that off the hook?

The one caveat for the time being is that the Orb PC software is only available for Windows - but the Orb folks are promising that versions for Mac and Linux are coming soon. We definitely recommend this one - grab the full version of OrbLive for $9.99, or if you are on the fence, there is also a demo version, OrbLive Free.

iphone unlock is a very expensive brick

But we have reason to believe that Apple may go much further than just "breaking" the SIM unlocks that have been released so far. One move that the cat (or is Apple the mouse?) could make in this game would be to permanently and irreparably brick unlocked iPhones when they run this month's pending software update. It would serve as a warning shot to potential unlockers in the future—even if crafty hackers manage to rewrite their unlock apps to get around the changes made in the update, they could always be at risk of suddenly owning a shiny $400 chunk of metal and plastic.

We believe this is a significant possibility, so here's a word for those who have unlocked their iPhones: be extremely careful when the software update lands; let others be the guinea pigs before you run it. A software restore of the iPhone likely won't save you, either, as the radio baseband firmware used to identify the SIM card will still remain unlocked (as it stands now, those who have run unlocks can still do a software restore and have an unlocked iPhone). And if Apple writes its update to make changes to the radio baseband firmware based on what it was expecting, the iPhone will not react well.

Welcome to your new iBrick Extreme: the new paperweight from Apple.

Apple iphone Hacking is okay... sometimes

Apple's stance on stopping hackers is different depending on the hack. When it came to hacking the Apple TV and introducing the first set of native iPhone applications—something that cannot be done the "legit" way because of Apple's lack of a formal SDK for developers—Apple took a neutral stance. Apple's Greg Joswiak said last week that Apple wouldn't stop anyone from writing the apps or actively work against them, but the company would also not make an effort not to break the hacks when releasing its own software updates. After all, the hacks are not officially supported.

But when it comes to SIM unlocking the iPhone, the game changes drastically. Although Apple has less to lose by customers unlocking the device than AT&T, the company is bound by its contract to AT&T to do what it can to ensure that customers use the designated carrier. And Apple does have something to lose—the company is widely known to be getting a cut of subscription fees from AT&T for each person that buys and uses an iPhone. While it's unclear exactly how much Apple gets per customer, analyst estimates amount to millions of dollars per year in subscription fees going directly to Apple.

Apple's contractual obligations aside, consumers in the US are legally allowed to unlock their mobile handsets after the US Register of Copyrights approved an exemption to the DMCA late last year, noting that "The underlying activity sought to be performed by the owner of the handset is to allow the handset to do what it was manufactured to do—lawfully connect to any carrier." But don't tell that to Apple and AT&T—unless the government bars them from locking out the unlocks, there's virtually nothing stopping them from making sure that the unlocks mysteriously stop working.

Apple's fight against iPhone unlocks

Iphone unlocks

Apple will actively work against any SIM unlocks of the iPhone, says Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Jobs made the comments during a Q&A session that took place after yesterday's press event in London announcing availability details of the iPhone in the UK. When asked by a journalist whether unlocking was a concern for the company, Jobs said, "It's a constant cat and mouse game," according to ComputerWorld's account of the discussion. "We try to stay ahead. People will try to break in, and it's our job to stop them breaking in."

The break-ins that Jobs spoke of have been flying fast and furious in the last month or so. One of the first full SIM unlocks involved using a Turbo SIM card, a somewhat complex process for the average consumer. Then teenager George Holtz published a way to hardware unlock his iPhone with some soldering iron-fu and released instructions for other adventurous unlockers. But none of this was "big" news to the world until the first (commercial) software unlock of the iPhone was announced by iPhoneSIMfree. This sent waves through the iPhone community to push for a free unlock from the iPhone Dev Team, which was achieved just this week with the release of iUnlock, followed by the GUI app to go along with it, anySIM. This app began to appear in the third-party iPhone software update app, Installer, which enabled many iPhone users to install the unlock and experiment with ease.

Apple's fight against iPhone unlocks may result in expensive bricks

Apple iPhone lithium-ion battery pack

Electric car pioneer ZAP says its iZAP battery designed for the Apple iPod is more useful for the energy intensive Apple iPhone. "The iZAP battery was a life-saver during my business trip to China last week," said Apple iPhone owner Steve Schneider, Chief Executive Officer for ZAP. "Frankly, if an Apple iPod runs out of power, losing your music and photo or video is not as critical to your business trip as the Apple iPhone. You lose your cell phone access, text messages, Internet and email access, time zone clock, business notes, scheduling software, driving maps, calculator and all the other news and information for which the Apple iPhone was designed."

Apple iPhone silicone protection case

ZCover announced that its versatile, resilient and user friendly new iSAglove cases for Apple's iPhone are now shipping. zCover’s iSAglove design is available in four functional combos and focuses on intuitive usability while offering protection for the Apple iPhone in its fullest form. The iSAglove will first be released in five zCover ice series colors: blue, purple, grey, pink, & clear, each one designed to work seamlessly with Apple iPhone's light sensor. The iSAglove design is a perfect fit for every feature of the Apple iPhone; that’s because it was designed from a real active Apple iPhone. zCover’s iSAglove for Apple Iphone is available in four functional combination packages.

Apple iPhone protective case

iSkin announced the availability of the iSkin revo, the company's long-anticipated protective skin for the Apple iPhone. Designed as a complete protective solution, the revo includes a silicone protector, a touch-compatible privacy film and a ViSOR, an ultra-clear polycarbonate scratch resistant screen guard for the large Apple iPhone screen. Research studies have shown that the average mobile phone can contain substantial amounts of bacteria. The iSkin revo for the Apple iPhone features a premium silicone material with an embedded anti-microbial agent that protects the product by inhibiting the growth of microbes.

Apple iPhone in India - Your Questions on Unlocked iPhones

Airtel presents nationalroaming incoming at Re.1/m.STD at Rs.1.50 per min. Hurry! Get Airtel.www.Airtel.in


Want to buy an Apple iPhone in India ? Not sure if unlocked iphone works in India. Read this quick iPhone Guide before you purchase the iPhone from Indian mobile phone dealers.




1. Is the Apple iPhone available in India - Yes. you can easily purchase iPhone phones here.
2. If iPhone is available where can I buy i Phone in India - Apple hasn’t introduced iPhone officially in India but you can grab one from Palika Bazaar of Delhi or Heera Panna shopping complex of Mumbai. Alternatively, some online sites are also selling unlocked iPhone in India. The iPhone was earlier expected to debut in India via Reliance Retail. Most online iPhone suppliers in India do not share their contact address.
3. Will Indian iPhone work with the GSM SIM card of Airtel, Idea, BSNL or Vodafone? Yes but you cannot use the Visual Voicemail feature of iPhone. Also, iPhone is GSM based so it may not work with Tata Indicom or Reliance CDMA network.
4. Can I buy an unlocked iPhone in US and use it in India - Yes, the iPhone bought in US (or UK or Canada) will be compatible in India - you can just buy a local SIM card in India and replace the AT&T SIM. Make sure you read the Apple policies as this may break the warranty.
5. What about HCL and Wipro selling iPhone in India legally? There was a rumor that iPhone may be available in India through a legal route from Wipro and HCL as they were expected to sign a distribution deal soon with Apple for selling iPhone in India. No confirmation still.
6. Does Apple official sell an unlocked iPhone - Yes, they have launched an unlocked iPhone in France and it could soon be available in India. No need to pay mobile phone dealers for unlocking iPhone cell phones.
7. What about Apple Store - The first store will open in Bangalore for selling Macbooks, iPod, Apple TV and other Apple products but they won’t stock iPhone.
8. What is the price of iPhone in India - It varies but the time of writing, the unlocked 4GB iphone was around 20k while the 8GB unlocked iPhone was 30k. (includes shipping and taxes)
9. Should I wait for iPhone or invest in BlackBerry or Nokia N95 ? Read this comparison of smartphones - iPhone vs Blackberry, N95
10. I have bought an iPhone and manage to unlock it. Now what - If you are connecting to iTunes for transferring music, videos and photographs from the computer to the iPhone, iTunes may suggest that you upgrade the iPhone firmware to version 1.1.1 - Cancel and do not allow iTunes to update your iPhone as it will get locked again and become useless. Update: The new unlocked iPhones are shipping in India with firmware version 1.1.1.
11. I bought an iPhone in US and traveling to India on a business trip. How can I save on iPhone international roaming charges while making phone calls in India - Do not use the AT&T call service, instead make phone call over VoIP using the Wi-Fi option of iPhone. You can use Jajah or even Skype to make cheap international calls over the internet.
iPhone is a quad-band GSM mobile phone so it will working internationally in countries outside the US though you’ll have to ask AT&T to turn on international roaming on the iPhone and that the places you’re going offer GSM coverage. If you want to learn more about iPhone, here are iPhone books and iPhone tutorial DVDs that you may buy from Amazon.

Airtel ties up with Apple to launch iPhone

New Delhi, May 12: India's largest mobile operator Bharti Airtel on Monday announced a tie-up with US-based Apple Inc to bring the popular GSM-based iPhone in the country.
"Bharti Airtel has signed a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to India later this year," the telco said in a statement.
Sources, however, said that Airtel may start offering iPhones around Diwali festival to its over 65 million GSM-based subscribers.
Asked about the prices, they declined to give any details about the agreement, the company entered into with Apple Inc. But in the grey market the devices are available in the range of 500 to 600 dollars (about Rs 25,000), sources said, adding that these handsets procured from the grey market need to be unlocked.
Airtel's announcement comes on the heels of world's largest mobile phone operator Vodafone announcing last week to distribute iPhones worldwide including India.
iPhone is a mobile phone that allows its users to make calls by simply tapping a name or number in the address book.
It leads the customers to select and listen to voice-mail messages in whatever order the consumer wants.

Apple iPhone in India: Now on Airtel!

Recently Vodafone confirmed rumors that they were going to sell Apple iPhones in India, now Bharti Airtel, a top Indian telecom player has revealed plans to sell iPhone on their network in India.
Bharti Airtel released a press release that they “had signed a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to India, later this year”. That surely heats up the race to sell Apple iPhones in India, since Airtel is India’s leading integrated telecom services provider with over 60 million customers!
Last year Apple iPhone premiered at Apple Retail Stores in US and instantly topped the most wanted gadgets lists worldwide. Now Indians can become proud owners of Apple iPhone thanks to Airtel and Vodafone.
You can buy an unlocked iPhone in India from the gray market for Rs.25000 ($600 approx), but soon you can buy iphones legally and flaunt it to your friends. Apple crashed the iphone prices by $200 last year and recently Apple doubled the memory, so a 8GB iphone is now available for $399 at Apple stores. Lets await the pricing in India with the call service pack…

iPhone: Vodafone could sign deal with Apple

Apple is finalising a deal with Vodafone to bring the iPhone to Europe, according to the latest iPhone rumours.
Vodafone has once again emerged as a frontrunner to sign an exclusive deal with Apple for the European launch of the iPhone, although it's unclear yet which territories the proposed deal would cover.
The latest reports suggest Apple is on the verge of agreeing a deal with Vodafone which could be announced within the next couple of weeks. However, when asked about the impending deal by Tech.co.uk, a Vodafone spokesperson declined to comment.
Apple is addressing some issues with the iPhone requested by Vodafone and other potential European mobile operator partners, sources quoted by Unstrung suggest. These include getting the iPhone's YouTube application to work more like the internet version, with multiple word searches and ensuring that the iPhone's calendar application syncs more reliably with Outlook and Exchange.
3G capability
Added support for Cisco Systems' firewalls and simplification of the Wi-Fi security codes and procedures are being looked into as well. And in addition, improvements to the web browser, including the addition of a cut-and-paste option are being addressed.
Another more obvious enhancement European operators would like to see on the iPhone before it crosses the Atlantic is the addition of 3G capability.
Other recent iPhone rumours have suggested that Orange could be lined up to be Apple's iPhone partner in France. There is speculation that an announcement could be made at the forthcoming Apple Expo in Paris, which runs from 25th to 29th of September.
Meanwhile, T-Mobile has been identified as the most likely potential Apple mobile operator partner in Germany, while O2 has previously been cited as a possible UK candidate for the iPhone, too.

3G iPhone : Not too far away!

3G iPhone :

Ok for all you Apple iPhone fanboy and fangirls...it's official, AT&T have confirmed that next year you'll finally get that 3G version of the iPhone! I think with the new speed should come a more stable gadget, with time to have ironed out most bugs.

Enjoy the wait :)

Details at Computerworld.

Apple iPhone Screen Protectors here.

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Apple patches 10 iPhone flaws

Apple today released 10 iPhone security updates, including 7 within the MobileSafari browser. The update is available only through iTunes and is not available from the Apple Downloads page. The version users should see within their iPhone after applying this update should be 1.1.1 (3A109a). Further, Apple refuses to discuss pending security vulnerabilities not patched here, stating "For the protection of our customers, Apple does not disclose, discuss, or confirm security issues until a full investigation has occurred and any necessary patches or releases are available."

Bluetooth
This patch affects users of Apple iPhone and addresses the vulnerability in CVE-2007-3753. By sending maliciously crafted Service Discovery Protocol (SDP) packets to an iPhone with Bluetooth enabled, an attacker within range may be able to trigger the issue, which may in turn lead to unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. Apple credits Kevin Mahaffey and John Hering of Flexilis Mobile Security for reporting this vulnerabliity.

Mail man-in-the-middle attack
This patch affects users of Apple iPhone and addresses the vulnerability in CVE-2007-3754. When Mail is configured to use SSL for incoming and outgoing connections, it does not warn the user when the identity of the mail server has changed or cannot be trusted and could lead to a man-in-the-middle attack.

Mail telephone link
This patch affects users of Apple iPhone and addresses the vulnerability in CVE-2007-3755. "By enticing a user to follow a telephone link in a mail message, an attacker can cause iPhone to place a call without user confirmation." Apple credits Andi Baritchi of McAfee for reporting this vulnerability.

Safari 1
This patch affects users of Apple iPhone and addresses the vulnerability in CVE-2007-3756. "A design issue in Safari allows a Web page to read the URL that is currently being viewed in its parent window. By enticing a user to visit a maliciously crafted Web page, an attacker may be able to obtain the URL of an unrelated page." Apple credits Michal Zalewski of Google and Secunia Research for reporting this issue.

Safari 2
This patch affects users of Apple iPhone and addresses the vulnerability in CVE-2007-3757. "Safari supports telephone ("tel:") links to dial phone numbers. When a telephone link is selected, Safari will confirm that the number should be dialed. A maliciously crafted telephone link may cause a different number to be displayed during confirmation than the one actually dialed. Exiting Safari during the confirmation process may result in unintentional confirmation." Apple credits Billy Hoffman and Bryan Sullivan of HP Security Labs (formerly SPI Labs) and Eduardo Tang for reporting this issue.

Safari 3
This patch affects users of Apple iPhone and addresses the vulnerability in CVE-2007-3758. "A cross-site scripting vulnerability exists in Safari that allows malicious Web sites to set JavaScript window properties of Web sites served from a different domain. By enticing a user to visit a maliciously crafted Web site, an attacker can trigger the issue, resulting in getting or setting the window status and location of pages served from other Web sites." Apple credits Michal Zalewski of Google for reporting this issue.

Safari 4
This patch affects users of Apple iPhone and addresses the vulnerability in CVE-2007-3759. "Safari can be configured to enable or disable JavaScript. This preference does not take effect until the next time Safari is restarted. This usually occurs when the iPhone is restarted. This may mislead users into believing that JavaScript is disabled when it is not."

Safari 5
This patch affects users of Apple iPhone and addresses the vulnerability in CVE-2007-3760. "A cross-site scripting issue in Safari allows a maliciously crafted Web site to bypass the same-origin policy using "frame" tags. By enticing a user to visit a maliciously crafted Web page, an attacker can trigger the issue, which may lead to the execution of JavaScript in the context of another site." Apple credits Michal Zalewski of Google and Secunia Research for reporting this issue.

Safari 6
This patch affects users of Apple iPhone and addresses the vulnerability in CVE-2007-3761. "A cross-site scripting issue in Safari allows JavaScript events to be associated with the wrong frame. By enticing a user to visit a maliciously crafted Web page, an attacker may cause the execution of JavaScript in the context of another site."

Safari 7
This patch affects users of Apple iPhone and addresses the vulnerability in CVE-2007-4671. "An issue in Safari allows content served over HTTP to alter or access content served over HTTPS in the same domain. By enticing a user to visit a maliciously crafted Web page, an attacker may cause the execution of JavaScript in the context of HTTPS Web pages in that domain." Apple credits Keigo Yamazaki of Little Earth Corporation for reporting this issue.

iPhone users show affinity for Google searches

Maybe it's due to how easy Apple has made it to search the web via Safari on the device, but the number of search queries on the iPhone are shocking Google.

When Google first saw the results, executives actually asked its engineers to ensure that there wasn't an error in the calculations. The logs were run through again and the result was the same.

Even with the success of the iPhone, the company is still focused on its own platform. "We want every phone to be a Google phone," Gundotra told the paper. "We are ultimately talking about thousands of devices."

If that's the case, it's not out of the question that Google's dominance could extend from the PC to the cell phone very soon.

Korean CEOs Name IPhone Most Inspirational Gadget

South Korean CEOs consider Apple's iPhone as the most inspirational invention of last year.

In a poll of 590 CEOs conducted by the Samsung Economic Research Institute, 26.4 percent of respondents chose the iPhone as the no. 1 item of inspiration among devices included in Time Magazine's "Inventions of 2007" list.

The iPhone is not just a mobile phone, but rather a portable multimedia computer that plays music and video, takes pictures, and comes with a built-in mapping system.

The CEOs' choice of the iPhone shows that local business leaders think highly of functional integration and refined design, the research institute said.

A flexible display that can be folded or even rolled up like paper also received a favorable response, gaining 21.8 percent of the vote.

400,000 unlocked iPhones running on China Mobile

The Apple iPhone is not officially available in China, but according to a report by communications research firm In-Stat, as many as 400,000 unlocked iPhones were running on China Mobile’s cellular network at the end of last year.

If these claims are accurate, then roughly 10 percent of iPhones sold thus far are being used in China. It also helps explain part of the iPhone gap created by the difference between Apple’s shipping totals for 2007 and the activations reported by its carrier partners in the U.S. and Europe.

In the short term, however, Apple seems unlikely to convert this semi-underground trade into legitimate business. China Mobile ended iPhone talks with Apple in January, citing the infamous revenue sharing component of the deal as the main cause for dispute. This is a bit of an opportunity lost for Apple, since the iPhone is clearly a hot item already among China’s massive population.

The iPhone "Secret" key

Strip the first 0x800 bytes from your >= 1.1.1 firmware ramdisk

Run:
openssl enc -d -in ramdisk.dmg -out de.dmg -aes-128-cbc -K 188458A6D15034DFE386F23B61D43774 -iv 0

Ignore the error. Then there will be some garbage, signatures and certificates, at the end of the file. Remove it and mount your ramdisk.

Why would this key be published without any explanation of what it is? Apple knows what it is, not telling us how to use it doesn't serve a purpose for anyone. I don't know exactly what this key is or where it came from. But I do know it decrypts ramdisks :)

Nice job to Zibri, the dev team, and whoever owns Austin Heap for finding this key, I'd love to see the hack used. Sadly this will not help us unlock BL 4.6 phones, or sign our own SDK apps; sign anything for that matter. But hopefully this key is deeply embedded in the iPhone, and decrypting all future ramdisks will be a piece of cake.