Doom Classic is finally now on the App Store, available for iPhone and iPod Touch.  Priced at a reasonable $6.99, the game boasts the following additions and improvements.

• Play the legendary first person shooter, DOOM, with an iPhone or iPod Touch. Fight through 36 missions in four action-packed episodes: Knee-Deep in the Dead,
• Shores of Hell, Inferno, and Thy Flesh Consumed.
• Experience DOOM multiplayer on your mobile device, including Deathmatch and Cooperative play for up to four players via wireless internet.
• Choose from three different control types and customize the interface to suit your style.
• Explore the depths of Mars while utilizing the topdown map to help you explore and save your game on the fly.
• Listen to the original soundtrack or disable it and use your own iPod music.

Doom Classic [iTunes App Store]

Apple are now attempting to halt jailbreaking for the time being.  Latest 3GS models are now loaded with a new booting firmware update, iBoot-359.3.2 which fixes the popular 24kpwn exploit.

Another exploit will have to be found in order to jailbreak future iPhones, but fear not there will always be a way around this.

In other jailbreaking news, jailbreaking for the 3GS 3.1.2 is now available.  The PwnageTool coming from Dev-Team and blackra1n coming frmo Geo-Hot.

I went the PwnageTool way and was successful. Creating an custom IPSW was easy and restoring it to my 3.0 Jailbreak worked perfectly.  However PwnageTool is mac only at the moment.  Geo-Hot’s blackra1n however only works on 3.1.2 stock phones, which means you will lose the ability to unlock with this tool.  Nevertheless blackra1n does its job well and fast.  Whichever method you go, you won’t go wrong unless you need the unlock.

Latest iPhones Block Jailbreaking [via Lifehacker]

Hopefully Google and Apple won’t keep pushing these updates onto users without warning.  Also, hopefully, but unlikely, there will be a way to disable the ads on google maps as well.  Or at least filter them to useful ones, such as restaurants, hotels, gas, and whatnot.

.

[Content and Image via TechCrunch]

Remember that you have to connect your iPhone to iTunes and install a updated carrier file to receive the MMS features.

As millions of iPhone users rush to test the new service, traffic is expected to be as much as 40% higher all day on Friday.

Full Story [The iPhone Blog]

So the first part of the process?  Of course, since this was my first time making apple pie, I went to look up a recipe (By the way, this is my friend’s macbook, not mine).  Allrecipes.com provided me with a relatively fool-proof one:

• 1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1/3 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 7 1/2 cups peeled, cored and sliced apples
• 1 cup raisins
• 1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie
• 1 egg

So I omitted the raisins.  I don’t think that screwed me up too much though.

Went to the store, bought all the ingredients, and 16 apples; 8 granny smith and 8 red delicious.  I had no idea how many apples to get for a pie, so my friend and I asked some random lady in the store.  She said about 8-9 apples per pie.  Oh boy – mistake #1 right there.

So I went through the painstaking process of peeling and slicing the apples up.  So you can see the apple pieces floating in a pot of water right now.  Something I picked up off lifehacker is that if you leave apples in water right after cutting them, it prevents them from turning brown.  Since it was going to take a long time for me to cut up all of the apples, I decided to implement this trick.  This could have been mistake #2.

And now comes the mixing!  Basically you just have sugar, sugar, flour, cinnamon, some lemon juice, the apples, and sugar.  You mix it all up together so the apples are coated, and bam!

This is a lonely pie crust waiting to be filled…

and this is a bulging pie crust with too many apples inside.  I could NOT fit 8 apples into this pie.  I think about 6.5 got into it, and it still looked about ready to tear this pie crust up.  Mistake #3: I forgot to cut slits into the top of the pie crust.  Probably the biggest mistake I could have done.  The next pie, I only cut up 4 more apples and used the leftover ones from this pie.  This still filled the second pie up a good amount.

And so pie #1 looked like this.  Eww…The crust actually wasn’t that bad though.  It looked like this because the egg I used to coat the top crust was not spread evenly, so the black is just where there was too much egg.

The second pie looks much better, no?  Well enough of that for now though, because the appearance was the least of my worries when I let the pies cool and decided to take a look inside.

I think a combination of putting the apples in the water and not cutting slits in the crust caused this outcome.  The delicious gooey filling of the pie was instead just sugar water!  And the apples themselves were not dried out the way they should have been.  As a result, I conclude this apple pie making a complete failure.  After refrigerating it overnight though, it doesn’t taste half bad; but as a cook – I have failed you, apple pie.

Anyway, I realize by now that most of you are snickering at me because I have failed probably the easiest pie recipe in the book, but hey – we all learn from out mistakes, right?  I plan on re-attempting this apple pie again very soon and I hope for much better results.  Until next time!

There is an official compatibility list here by Apple, however there is a more robust wiki available that catalogues a ton of applications.

[Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Compatibility List] – WikiDot

So far the reviews from the press have been extremely positive with Snow Leopard numerous under the hood improvements in speed and functionality.

I will give impressions on Snow Leopard when I get my copy for my MacBook.

News has just come out from Apple that Snow Leopard, the next iteration of OS X is set to ship August 28th.

Snow Leopard is available for an upgrade for $29 for single user and $49 for 5-user family pack.  The improved OS boasts OpenCL, Grand Central Dispatch (makes even more efficient use of processor), QuckTime X, and a whole bunch of under the hood improvements.

[The iPhone Blog]

It seems like AT&T are answering the numerous service complaints by rolling out 850 MHz 3G to areas that need it most, in this case Atlanta and in San Francisco.  These improvements according to AT&T will offer more speed capacity and coverage.  Other areas will have 850MHz  at later date.

I own an iPhone myself in New Jersey and I have found the coverage to be pretty reliable.  I get service pretty much everywhere except in the basement of my house, but thats no suprrise (my old t-mobile didn’t get service there either).  I personally can’t wait for AT&T to flip the switch for some 7.2 Mbps action.

Full Story [TiPb]

• Apple iPhone 3GS 32 GB
• Sharp SH-06A
• Panasonic 830P
• Sharp SH-05A
• NEC N-08A
• Sony Ericsson Walkman Phone Premier3
• Sharp SH-02A
• Casio W63CA
• Apple iPhone 3GS 16 GB
• Sharp SH001

I have an iPhone 3GS 32GB myself and I absolutely love it, it does everything I ever needed a phone to do an much more.  It is essentially now my second computer.  I can only wonder how the 3G speeds are in Japan since they have probably the most advanced mobile infrastructure in the world.

The iPhone Blog [via @ MobileCrunch]

Brian recounts his whole tale of getting in contact with his source, ‘[redacted],’ and what [redacted] says, but here are the details you probably want to hear the most:

• The Tablet will have a 10″ screen
• Probably gonna look like a giant iPhone/iTouch
• Same black resin back, same home button as iPhone/iTouch
• Two Editions: 1. Webcam 2. Mysterious Education Use
• Device can act as a secondary screen for iMacs/MacBooks
• Cost: $700-$900
• Tentative Release: Holiday Season ’09

My impressions?  This is going to be another overly expensive apple ‘toy’ that will come out for everyone that can afford it.  The cost absolutely irks me, but I guess it’s nothing new from Apple.  Oh well – no Apple products for me still.

[Contents via Gizmodo]

Full Story: [PHP-Princess]

If you ever played the ‘Bells’ game with the jumping bunny [Orisinal Bells], it is quite similar to it.  Doodle Jump, however, puts their own twist on it with different boost items and creative usage of the iPhone’s capiblities.

Doodle Jump uses the accelerometer to control the doodle’s direction.  In action, it works quite well without any noticeable delay.  When playing through the game, you will encounter different types of platforms; for instance the brown platform will break once you land on it and blue platforms move side to side.  Some platforms even have springs that will boost you higher and faster.

There are also several item pickups you can get like the flying cap or jetpacks that will boost your doodle as well. As you progress further up, there are even more obstacles to avoid such as holes and monsters.

The game uses ‘Facebook Connect’ as a way to track high scores.  Additionally, what is great about the way they implemented it is that you can see people’s high scores as you play through the game.  A small dash on the right side of the screen with the players name will display as you jump your way higher.

Overall I would highly recommend this game – when I first started playing it, I couldn’t put it down.  A simple concept with excellent execution and only at a price of 99 cents!

[$0.99- iTunes Link]

The application for now has been pulled off the app store due to the developers having problems with their server.  It seems as if they didn’t even know their application got approved, however they are now working on getting their servers back in working shape to be re-released on the app store (no re-approval required).

iTunes Link
Tiverias Apps