Seriously folks, what's up with these prototype iPhones falling out of nondescript white vans and ending up on eBay in the shadiest of manners? Just months after we saw an original iPhone prototype (ancient OS included) pop up on The 'Bay, now we've got one of the world's first iPhone 3GSs on there as well. According to the highly ranked eBay seller, the "guy" he "got it from" actually stumbled upon it at an airport, and rather than doing the nonsensical thing of hitting up lost and found, he decided to make the most of the sudden opportunity. According to the new owner, an Apple Genius has confirmed that it is an iPhone 3GS, but due to its prototype nature, they can't help him get past the "Connect to iTunes" screen. In other words, it's an incredibly rare brick. If that sounds like just the thing to complete your collection, you can visit the road to overpaying through the read link below.

[Via ElectricPig]

Be warned, this is beta stuff and we haven't been able to test it ourselves. However, a number of breathless tipsters and commenters are reporting a successful jailbreak and unlock of their iPhone 3GS. The magic begins with a 3GS jailbreak released by GeoHot. See, George is fed up with the Dev-Team's insistence on waiting until Apple releases iPhone OS version 3.1. As he puts it:

Normally I don't make tools for the general public, and rather wait for the dev team to do it. But guys, whats up with waiting until 3.1? That isn't how the game is played. We release, Apple fixes, we find new holes. It isn't worth waiting because you might have the "last" hole in the iPhone. What last hole...this isn't golf. I'll find a new one next week.

Meeeeow. After performing the jailbreak, ultrasn0w should then take care of the unlock although we haven't seen official comment on this by GeoHot or the Dev-Team yet. Good luck, backup, and kiss the children goodbye -- it could be a long weekend if you brick your new iPhone. Now hit the read link if you must.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Given the hype surrounding Apple's iPhone, we're actually surprised that we haven't seen more holes to plug over the years. In fact, the last major iPhone exploit to take the world by storm happened right around this time two years ago, and now -- thanks to OS X security expert Charlie Miller -- we're seeing yet another come to light. Over at the SyScan conference in Singapore, Mr. Miller disclosed a hole that would let attackers "run software code on the phone that is sent by SMS over a mobile operator's network in order to monitor the location of the phone using GPS, turn on the phone's microphone to eavesdrop on conversations, or make the phone join a distributed denial of service attack or a botnet." Charlie's planning to detail the vulnerability in full at the upcoming Black Hat conference, but Apple's hoping to have it all patched up by the end of this month.

[Via HotHardware]

Look Apple, your copy and paste feature is pretty intuitive and all but let's face it, you're late to the party. About two full software revisions late we'd say. And listing it as one of the "pretty incredible things" in your latest ad about the iPhone 3G S iPhone 3GS is kind of silly since it's available on your previous models too. Maybe you're just being ironic?

Your fancy new iPhone OS 3.0 starting to look a bit long in the tooth? Heads up, Apple's now sending out the beta OS 3.1 and its SDK to the developer community to finagle with. We're still looking to see what's been changed here, so for now, if you're someone who needs the Latest and Greatest and happens to have the right access, download away!

Update: Still tinkering, but we've seen a new "Save a Copy" option for 3G S video editing that lets you retain the original film while saving an edited clip (picture after the break, thanks Kevin), as well as some reports of MMS being activated, but it seems to stall before actually being sent out over AT&T's network.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Way back in the heady days of 2007, there was an iPhone without 3G data (hard to believe, we know, but trust us -- we were there). This iPhone, though revolutionary in some ways, was marred by the love-hate relationship its users suffered for missing out on some very basic features that they'd grown used to on mobiles of yore. One of those missing features, of course, was MMS -- and now, some two years later, here we are with a truly integrated MMS experience courtesy of the all-powerful hacking community. Granted, there have been MMS apps available for ages, but there's a difference: this is the same action 3G and 3GS owners are getting in conjunction with OS 3.0, which Apple curiously decided to hold back from original iPhone owners. As you might imagine, getting this going on your own phone is marginally more complicated than downloading from the App Store, so here's the question, you non-upgraders: just how badly do you want it?

[Thanks, Paul]

If you're one of the hapless folks out there still having trouble tracking down a new iPhone 3GS, Apple is making things a little bit easier on you with an online tool to check up on stock at Apple retail stores. There's a full breakdown of color and capacity, which might seem like overkill to some, but given the fact that stores with stock in all four current models are a bit of an exception (outside of NYC, anyways), we'd have to say that this is just the sort of overkill we need.

[Via iLounge]

Apple's guided tour videos have featured an endless variety of creepy-android perfect "Apple Store employees" in the recent past, but we'd just like to take a moment and pour one out for OG Bob Borchers, who kicked off the entire series in 2007 with the original iPhone tours and followed 'em up with the iPhone 3G tour. Bob's leaving his post as Apple's senior director of worldwide iPhone product marketing to join VC group Opus Capital -- yeah, it's not hard gadget news, but we're getting a little misty on Sunday evening remembering how closely we all watched those initial demos looking for any tiny nuggets of information about the then-mysterious platform. Peace out, Bob -- it's been a ride. Video after the break.

Now, we're hoping this isn't some elaborate hoax perpetrated on the kind citizens of the internet, because if it's real, it's amazing. Here's the deal: a man capturing video poolside with his iPhone 3GS somehow loses control of the device and ends up dunking the entire phone... while filming. Miraculously, he manages to fish out the handset and it's still rolling. We don't know what the lifespan was / is beyond this clip, but obviously long enough to upload the video or transfer it to a computer. Impressive stuff, though we strongly suggest you don't test this one out on your own. Check out the full video after the break.

[Via George Ruiz]

If there's one thing we can decisively say about iPhone users -- and everyone else, for that matter -- it's that they shouldn't see naked people, even if they want to. Ever. Apple agrees, and it turns out that they were responsible for the removal of the Hottest Girls app after all, contrary to a statement by its developer that the app had tapped out his server which supposedly forced him to ask Apple to pull it while he ramped up capacity. Apple released a statement today confirming this, but here's where it gets interesting: the company says that "the developer of this application added inappropriate content directly from their server after the application had been approved and distributed" -- in other words, the guy pulled a bait-and-switch on Apple by serving different content to his app after it had been approved using more PG-rated content. Look, we're all for filling our iPhones with gigabytes upon gigabytes of stuff that would make us especially anxious to trigger the Remote Wipe feature if we were to misplace it, but we've got to admit -- the dude went about it the wrong way here, Apple caught him, the world keeps turning. Come on, it's not like you don't have thousands of naughty pics in a folder cleverly named "recipes" that you can just sync anyway.