As I typed about yesterday, iOS 4.1 is out and it makes some important fixes/feature additions to iOS devices. Predictably, then, news of the 4.1 jailbreak has surfaced.

This jailbreak is a little different, however, as it exploits the boot ROM to break into the phone. This means that the operating system (iOS) is left out of the equation, which, in turn, means that an upgrade to the firmware won’t ‘fix’ the jailbreak. It has not been released for the general populace yet, but it’s something to look forward to.

Continuing the Apple news, they have announced that they will publish the guidelines that are used to judge whether an app is allowed into the App Store. This is great news for developers, because Apple have refused and removed seemingly random apps at times, and no one could be certain why. This could be particularly annoying if you are a small developer who has put a lot of valuable time into making an app, only to find out that it breaks some invisible rules that Apple won’t publish.

This is wise by Apple, because with the ever increasing market share of Android, Apple may soon find themselves a less attractive proposition to developers, and treated their developers like crap won’t help.

An interesting blog by Oliver Chiang for forbes.com talks about the fact that Sony, fifteen years on are pretty much back where they started.

I don’t want to go too deep with this story, because the aforementioned blog post is a good read, and I fully encourage you to read it in full (link in the links section below) but the main point that interests me is that observation that 15 years ago, when Sony first stepping into the gaming arena, they were massive underdogs, despite having superior hardware to their rivals; Nintendo and Sega.

Skip forward a decade and a half, and Sony are, once again, the underdogs to two other big players, despite having superior hardware to Microsofts Xbox and Nintendo’s Wii. Predictably, Sony feel that they will emerge victors in this particular console war.

As ToN is my thoughts on the news, and not a news site, I will share my opinion with you on this; Sony are delusional. I don’t think Sony will vanish from the gaming scene; they are too established and have too much experience in this market to just fall out of it, but to think that they, of all the competitors, will emerge on top is ludicrous. Sony are well known for trying to force their proprietary mediums on people, but it seems fairly certain that digital download will be the majorities preference in the near future, and while I think Sony will eventually come around to idea, they may be dragged there.

Some other stuff

Google Instant, the new real time search results that have been in the news for the last 72 hours solid, seems to be getting touted by a number of tech news outlets as a great thing for mobile search. This makes sense to me as the few seconds Google claim this service will save me on my laptop or desktop don’t concern me too much; I’m a fast typist, but I am yet to use an input device (T9 keypad, iPhone keyboard, etc) that allows me to enter text anywhere near as quickly. Google Instant may just be the answer. At least until we get a better input device… telepathy, maybe.

Apple have made a rare u-turn on the previous edict that barred developers from using any tools, other than Apple’s anointed tools; C, C++ or Objective C. There are good reasons for wanting developers to only use certain tools, but really the restriction was a dig at Adobe, who make Flash, which has a lot of developers. Having to write the same code twice for two different platforms is a bit of a turn off to a large number of developers, so this is a good move by Apple because , as I mentioned above, Android is fast becoming the platform to be if you want exposure, and if developers are forced to choose between them, iOS may lose out.

That’s my thoughts on the news for this Friday, brief as it may be. Check back here (or in your RSS reader… remember those?) on Monday for another dose of opinionated news punditry.

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