Recently, the iPhone 3.0 software came out. I did not get it straight away because I would only update when a jailbreak was out for it.. As soon as that happened, I updated to a jailbroken 3.0 and then went through the painful process of restoring my Cydia apps and such. Anyway, here are my 5 reasons why I need to jailbreak.

The iPhone 3GS added video recording the the iPhone. Unfortunately for us iPhone and iPhone 3G users, we are left out. Well lucky for us, there is Cycorder. This allows for our devices to record video. It may not be as nice looking and smooth as the 3GS video, but at least it’s something. It’s good enough to just whip out your phone when you want to take a quick, dirty video using your phone.

The YouTube app in the iPhone is great. It does what you would expect it to do and does it really well for a phone. Unfortunately it is only really useful when you have Wifi or 3G data. Well for when you don’t have that, there is MxTube. No, it doesn’t save every video on YouTube to your phone, but you can get it to save you favourite videos or any YouTube video you want to view offline, or even online to save mobile data. This app is great for that and a lot of people like having their favourite videos on their iPhone to watch and to show others whenever.

There are many reasons why you’d want to get into your phone. For me, that is looking at files in my phone, modifying files in my phone, even backup files in my phone. This would only be possible with OpenSSH. This app has helped me back up some files before updating to 3.0, mostly stuff on my phone from jailbroken apps, but I would have lost over 500mb of files without this app. It is extremely useful.

I wish Apple had a simple way in the OS to toggle different things such as Wifi and Bluetooth from anywhere in the phone. Well for us jailbroken users, there is SBSettings. With a simple swipe of the top menubar, a box comes down with various toggles including Wifi, Bluetooth, Phone, Location Services and a few more. SBSettings makes it easy and elegant to get to those options without having to navigate out of our apps and deep into the settings on the iPhone.

This last one isn’t as useful as the other app but is more a interesting app. SMS Counter shows the number of SMS sent and/or received by your contacts between any date you specify and also shows this on a pie chart for you to see. It is really interesting to see how many SMS I’ve sent and received and to and from who since I first started using the iPhone. This app is pretty cool and can show you quite a bit about your SMS habits in a cool way.

And that is pretty much why I jailbreak. Hopefully one day Apple can include some of these things with the OS and loosen up on the apps to allow more interesting and useful apps into the App Store. I’ve been using jailbroken apps since the get go and have become heavily reliant on them. If I had to choose between 2.1 with jailbreak or 3.0 without, I would definitely pick the first. I couldn’t live without those apps. And that is why I waited a while to get to 3.0.

It wasn’t until Sunday night that I finally got around to watching the WWDC 2009 keynote. Apple keynotes are always interesting, no matter what they announce, whether it affects me in anyway or now, regardless of if they announce something huge or just show off a few things that they’ve got. Apple keynotes are the best. This keynote covered 4 main bits, MacBook Pros, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, iPhone Software 3.0 and the iPhone 3Gs.

When I first found out about the MacBook updates, I was a little annoyed. My MacBook is only 6 months old and they update it already. The only changes to it from my one are the FireWire 800 port, SD Card Slot, theoretical 2 more hours of battery life, slight CPU bump, double the RAM and the Pro on then end of the name. After an hour or so i was over it though, I love my MacBook and the features it adds wouldn’t affect the way I use my computer, although the RAM and Battery upgrades would be nice.

Snow Leopard really amazes me. It is a better Leopard. I love Leopard how it is and couldn’t have imagined it any other way. This is a perfect operating system (I come from a Windows background so what do you expect.) Well Apple blew my mind and showed some really cool stuff that they’re including in Snow Leopard. I find the current OS to be blazing fast and the new OS will see increases in speed. I can’t imagine how fast it will be but if it really is as fast as they say, I’m going to be blown away. Maybe Leopard isn’t really that fast, it’s just that I came from Windows. But that wasn’t all, Apple once again blew my mind with Snow Leopard by releasing it for a small $29 USD. Wow, I’m buying this day 1! Amazing price.

iPhone 3.0 stuff had been out in the while for some time so the stuff showed off was really no surprise, it was nice to see them on screen though. The thing that was interesting were the demos of apps utilizing some of the new features available to developers. I’m not a huge fan of in-app purchasing, I could go into more detail but I’d need another post for that. The GPS app that Tomtom showed looked pretty awesome. I would buy it, and the stand if I had my own car and needed a GPS unit. I am really looking forward to seeing apps developed especially for 3.0.

The last thing announce was a new iPhone, the 3Gs. This seems more like a spec bump, similar to that seen by the MacBook rather than a new model. Basically it adds a better camera with video support, a compass and voice control. Someone with a current iPhone 3G would get little out of the 3Gs. Someone new to the platform or someone upgrading from the original iPhone on the other hand, this would be a great next phone. For me, having fast data over the cellular network, the 3.0 megapixel camera and the 32GB of storage is enough reason for me to upgrade to it from the original iPhone model. The only thing I’m worried about is that I’m going to wish I had waited a year longer when the new big revision gets announce next year.

Overall this was a get keynote for me. I didn’t particularly care for new MacBook but it is nice to see progress for when i do eventually upgrade my 13″ MacBook to a 15″ MacBook Pro probably when I finish University. I am really excited for Snow Leopard and will definitely be purchasing it in-store on the day of release. 3.0 seems like a huge improvement over 2.0 adding features people have been wanting since version 1.0 so that will be nice to have. Finally, I think I am going to be getting an iPhone 3Gs. It is about time to upgrade to a model made for current generation mobile technology. WWDC 2009 was better than expected. I can’t wait to see what they have to top this one next year.

This week was a big week for the video game industry as the biggest show, E3 was this week. This is where the big dogs showcase what’s to come over the next 12 months. Being someone with a big interest in video games, and someone who has invested into this generation if console games, this event is exciting for me. To be honest, the only Press Conferences that interested me were the Microsoft and Sony ones. I am so over Nintendo, not that I was really into them in the first place.

The first day of E3 was Microsoft. I watched their Press Conference and was really pleased with what they showcased. The whole 2 hours was pretty much about showing the games that are coming out. That kept me entertained the whole time. A few of the games looked interesting, but since I don’t have a Xbox 360, I didn’t care that much for them. That and the fact that the games aren’t in the genres I tend to stick to. Probably the most interesting thing from the conference was Project Natal, but more on that later.

The next day was Sony’s Press Conference. Unfortunately I found there show less entertaining.They talked about other things when really all I wanted to see was the games. They showed a few games off, most of which I wasn’t really interested in. They didn’t go deep into as many games as Microsoft did, but they did have a few cool montages with hundreds of titles coming out over the next months. The only problem is that they went too fast and didn’t tell me what games I was looking out, so it felt very uninformative. They also announced “E3′s worst kept secret,” the PSP Go. The most interesting parts of the conference were Assassins Creed in-game footage, the God of War 3 E3 Demo and the PlayStation Motion Controller.

Sony and Microsoft both announced quite different motion controller peripherals for their systems. Sony’s was a controller with a glowing ball on the top with a few buttons that was tracked by the EyeToy camera. Microsoft have something really amazing. Being able to use you as the controller by tracking your movements, and other stuff like voice and facial recognition. This is definitely the future of computer technology, not only in video games. You have to search for the videos of these to really see how amazing both of these technologies are. It’s not something you can get an idea about from words. You have to see it with your own eyes. To be honest, I feel that Microsoft’s take on it seems a bit gimmicky, much like the Wii motion controls. I can see how it can be used in a casual gaming sense, but I don’t think it is something that can be utilized by a traditional gamer. Sony on the other hand, I can see how this could be used by a traditional gamer and they showed it too, and it looked like a lot of fun. We won’t be seeing anything really till next year but I am excited to see how both technologies pan out.

Other than watching the two Press Conferences, I also kept up with E3 by watching the Co-op podcast. I think they did a great job covering E3. Heck, they do a great job covering video games in general. Definitely check them out, especially their E3 coverage. But this week has been a good week and there are definitely a few titles I am looking forward to, including Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time, Assassins Creed 2 and God of War 3. I can’t wait to get them in my hands. I wonder what will be the next big thing and what E3 2010 will bring for us next year.