There are a lot of things that you can buy for $299.  None could possibly be as exciting as a 4Gb iPhones that are being sold clearance from Apple’s website.  Apple was even offering $50 discounts for refurbished products.  Not bad for the world's best iPod and phone combination that were going for about double the price a few weeks ago.

Add to that the news that iPhone hackers have found a way to not only activate the iPhones without buying a two year plan from AT&T, but also allowing you to use a SIM card from any GSM provider in the US and abroad.  Since this sounded too good to be true and I spend the majority of my time in Europe – and don’t want to pay AT&T’s absurd roaming rates- I decided $300 was worth the risk.

As one would do with any project that has the risk of flushing $300 down the toilet, I started this endeavor by doing lots of research.  The body of knowledge in hacking the iPhone is huge and growing exponentially.  There is not any one repository for all of this information and the main group doing this actually doesn’t want incoming links to their website.  To further complicate things, a lot of these hackers communicate over IRC so it helps to gather a bunch of info and try to store it all in one place.

I found a product called iFuntastic that looked very promising but didn’t work well since the latest iTunes upgrade to 7.4.  There is a simple hack that involves copying iTunes 7.3 Mobile device files over 7.4’s but that is something I would rather not do.  Also iFuntastic didn’t play well with the other utilities that I found much more useful and reliable.   That being said it did create an interesting “Spaces” desktop environment that should make it into future builds by other projects.

I used a MacBook but any Mac running 10.4.10 should do.  If you want to try it yourself, here’s the list of stuff you will need to begin:

Beforehand.  
Make sure you have the correct version of iTunes (7.4.1) and iPhone Firmware version 1.0.2.  Subsequent and previous versions may or may not work.  Apple is likely to try to stop hackers in the future by  installing blocking mechanisms in the software updates.

Things you will need:  
A Mac running OSX Tiger 10.4.10 and a Wifi Network

A new iPhone – this can be one that has been activated on AT&T or a new one from the Apple (online too) Store.

Software (all free):
Download and expand the iPod 1.0.2 Firmware:
http://content.info.apple.com/iPhone/061-3823.20070821.vormd/iPhone1,1_1...

iNddependence software that allows easy Activation and Jailbreaking of the iPhone
http://iphone.fiveforty.net/wiki/index.php/INdependence

You’ll want the latest SIM activation Application called anySim from the download link from here:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/15/anysim-is-here-open-source-gui-iphone...

You’ll also need a SFTP program like Transmit, Fugu or Cyberduck

For SIM Card opening you can stop there.  If you want to journey further, you’ll want to check out AppTapp who’ve built an amazing repository of working iPhone Applications with an easy installer right on the iPhone.
http://iphone.nullriver.com/beta/

Getting Started:
A theme throughout the iPhone hacking journey for me is that you shouldn’t be running any of these 2 applications at the same time.  Also, it is nearly impossible – with software alone – to bring your iPhone to an unusable state that can’t be fixed by a restore using iTunes.  That being said, WE TAKE NO RESPOSIBILITY FOR WHAT HAPPENES TO YOUR IPHONE USING THE TECHNIQUES DESCRIBED BELOW.

Activating your iPhone:

1. Kill your iTunes helper application.  It means well but where we are going, we don’t want it opening iTunes at inappropriate times.  To do this, go into Activity Monitor.app and select iTunesHelper and hit force quit.  You might also want to remove if from your startup items if it is there and you plan on continuing to hack the iPhone.

Also make sure iTunes isn’t running.

2. Open up iNdependence.app.  Plug your iPhone into your computer and turn it on. If iTunes opens just quit out of it.  iNdependence should recognize the iPhone and should give its status at the bottom of the application window.

3. In the Activation Tab, click on the Activate iPhone button.  There will be a prompt for the device firmware location that you downloaded from above.  Point the app toward the unzipped folder.  And hit OK.

4. iNdependence should restart the phone twice and take about 3 minutes to finish.  At this point you should be able to use your iPhone like an iPod.  You will have access to all of the features including WiFi.   iTunes will even work properly.

To unlock the sim card we need to go a bit further:

1.    Make sure the SIM card that you want to use is in your iPhone.  If changing this unactivates your phone, simply reactivate it again in iNdependence
2.    Still in iNdependence.app, click on the Jailbreak tab and click “perform jailbreak”.  You will again be asked for the location of the iPhone firmware and the phone will need to be restarted by the application.
3.    Once it is restarted, you will need to put the anySIM.app on the iPhone. You can do this in 2 different ways:
a.) iNedpendence – click on the SSH tab and click “install SSHS/FTP/SCP”
b.) Quit iNdependence and run the Apptapp application.  Then install, in this order: Community Sources, BSD Subsystem, and OpenSSH – more on this later  
4.    Using your SFTP client, log into the iPhone.  (To get your iPhone’s IP address, Go to Settings>Wifi>SSID).  Log into the iPhones SFTP with username: root, password: dottie (you should change this ASAP)
5.    You’ll then want to go up 2 levels into the top level directory.  Then navigate into Applications folder.  Copy the anySIM.app to that directory.  
6.    Do a full restart on the iPhone.  You should the anySIM.app on your iPhone desktop.  Click it to unlock
7.    Follow the instructions and restart.  You should have a working SIM card on a new carrier.  Might take a few restarts.
8.    Open iTunes and it should see your iPhone as a new device, ready to sync.

During all of the SIM hacking research I found so much interesting information on the 3rd party applications that were being built, I decided I didn’t want to stop there.  By far the most developed SDK for native iPhone applications is the installer.app / AppTapp framework.  Installing this is simple:
1.    Make sure iTunes and iNdependence are NOT running
2.    Run AppTapp.app installer.
3.    Wait while it restarts your iPhone.  
4.    You’ll notice a Install.app has been placed on your iPhone desktop.
5.    Open it and install Community Services if you haven’t already.
6.    Browse the growing selection of Apps, games, wallpapers, themes, utilities, etc.
7.    Have fun!

It should be noted that these hacks are in no way guaranteed to work through upcoming updates in the iPhone’s firmware.  However, for people who aren’t able to use one of Apple’s chosen carriers, it makes more sense to stay at the very reliable and feature packed 1.0.2 version rather than break their features by upgrading the firmware.

The Application Environment that is springing up around the iPhone is so significant that it might even give Apple’s own developers a run for the money.  Apple is set to release a firmware update to the iPhone that could very likely break the development environment, however, just like the PSP before it, the hackers will likely be able to sneak into the upgraded version in what has become a cat and mouse circle.  

I currently have MobileChat on my iPhone that works beautifully.  I’ve also installed VNSea (a basic VNC client) and SuperNES Emulator – both of which are still buggy at this stage.  There are countless other applications and fun things to play with.  I haven’t had this much fun with my iPhone since June 29th!