Apple has reportedly begun shipping iPhone 3GS units with a new bootrom, which might help combat hacks enabling installation of unauthorized software. However, iPhone hackers say Apple’s new firmware only causes a temporary inconvenience for jailbroken devices, and the handset is still hackable.

“It’s not going to be impossible to jailbreak even if the exploit we used is gone,” said Eric McDonald, a member of the iPhone Dev-Team, which publishes tools to jailbreak the iPhone, in a phone interview with Wired.com.

McDonald explained that current tools will still work with the latest batch of iPhone 3GS units. The “24kpwn” exploit used to help jailbreak previous iPhones and iPod Touch devices only made it easier to boot up the hacked devices.

The newly shipping iPhone 3GS’s bootrom interferes with 24kpwn, but that will only make the handset difficult to start up after it shuts down. Booting up will require being “tethered” to a computer. That means if you shut down a jailbroken iPhone 3GS, or if it runs out of power, you can only turn it back on by plugging it into a computer.

In short, changing the bootrom makes owning a jailbroken iPhone even more of a hassle than it already is. However, McDonald said the Dev-Team will just have to find a new exploit to enable untethered booting once again.

Several publications on Wednesday reported Apple’s latest iPhone 3GS units came with presumably jailbreak-proof firmware. The reports were half correct: The phones do indeed ship with different firmware with a new bootrom, but they are still hackable.

McDonald compared this situation with the newest iPhone 3GS devices to the second-generation iPod Touch. Apple shipped this iPod Touch with a different bootrom from the previous version, and for a while, owners who jailbroke the device needed to tether their devices in order to boot up. Later, the iPhone Dev-Team released another exploit to enable untethered booting.

The iPhone jailbreak community emerged soon after the original iPhone launched in June 2007. Hackers discovered methods to install unauthorized third-party software on the device, as well as unlock the iPhone to work with carriers that otherwise did not serve the iPhone.

Apple wasn’t pleased. At the launch of the British iPhone in September 2007, Steve Jobs said Apple would work to suppress unlock hacks.

Apple has even suggested to the U.S. Copyright Office that jailbreaking is illegal — to no avail, as the Dev-Team has been careful to only provide patches hacking the iPhone, as opposed to copying the software, according to McDonald.

“It’s a cat-and-mouse game,” Jobs said in September 2007. “We try to stay ahead. People will try to break in, and it’s our job to stop them breaking in.”

With the latest upgrade, it appears Apple has not stopped the Dev-Team from breaking in. But for the time being, the company has made hacking new iPhones very inconvenient and perhaps impractical.

via wired.com

Orbit, otherwise known as Expose for iPhone, has been submitted to the Cydia Store and should be available soon.

The application created by Steven Troughton-Smith was inspired by an Ocean Observations concept video. Using the app you can quickly jump to Springboard pages in an Expose type fashion.

Orbit will cost $1.99 to purchase (just enough to make sure he can afford to make a version 2.0) and will be available soon.

Via iclarified.com