UPDATE: It seems CMW is at it again. He is going to create a WinPwn 4.0 which he announced a couple of days ago apparently. He also congratulates the iPhone Dev Team on their 2Kpwn exploit.

Hey everybody. Today is the iPhone’s 2 year anniversary! Back on June 29, 2007 Apple launched its unprecedented iPhone strictly in the U.S. and “exclusively” on AT&T/Cingular.

Well I just wanted to say congratulations Apple, and to take it back a notch and remember some things that have happened since…

August 24, 2007, New Jersey teenager Gerorge Hotz (GeoHot) had done the unthinkable! He had broken the the iPhone’s tie to AT&T! This would spark a golden era of hacking and popularity for the iPhone. Now, if you remember this was a hardware unlock, which I believe the Dev Team (today) uses for their iPhone 2G unlock, just converted it to purely software.

Shortly after, the first iPhone had been “jailbroken” by the iPhone Elite Team. You were required to use firmware 1.0.2. (They were, you could say, the primitive iPhone Dev Team, or would have been shaped into the iPhone Dev Team)

Then, in September of 2007, iPhoneSIMFree.com released the world’s first, and free, iPhone software unlock tool. Having hacked the baseband in just a short 3 months after the iPhone’s launch changed everything forever.

Later, the iPod touch came to be in October of 2007 (which I bought shortly after launch, which also changed the course of my life forever).

A couple days later it was confirmed that the iPod touch and the iPhone had the same OS, and they were jailbroken shortly after in the longest and most difficult jailbreak yet, a 72 step jailbreak, which was later obdolete as the iPhone Dev Team had found a huge TIFF exploit in Safari, by just visiting jailbreakme.com, your 1.1.1 iPod touch or iPhone would be instantly jailbroken. (Also, my first jailbreak was here)

A few weeks later Apple created a hell of a firestorm as they released 1.1.2, closing the TIFF exploit, and bricking hundreds or even thousands of iPhones, killing the jailbreak, and only giving iPod touch users one additional thing, editing calendar events. (Yeah, calendar events, I too had updated to 1.1.2 as soon as I heard the news, but luckily, I didn’t have a baseband.

A 3 step jailbreak followed, you had to install a package in Installer that would prepare for the 1.1.2 transition, then you had to update to 1.1.2, and run a special tool.

A few weeks after that, an astonishing, and very unexpected leak came out of Gear Live. They had actually had the next firmware, 1.1.3, in their possession. The entire firmware had leaked from inside Apple, and this update was huge, an would create the foundations Apple needed for its SDK, App Store, and 2.0 release soon after.

1.1.3, had the ability to edit icons by wiggling them, location services in maps using Wi-Fi and cell tower triangulation, and it brought the iPod touch and the iPhone together by allowing the weather, stocks, maps, mail, and notes applications to be added to the iPod touch. This was also the first time Apple would ever charge for an update for iPod touch users. A $9.95 update for iPod touch users was unprecedented. They charged for “significant updates to the OS” on the iPod touch due to “accounting issues”. (A.K.A.- You didn’t have, or potentially could have, a contract with AT&T so Apple could get their chunk out of the contract you were paying.

Apple had announced their intentions to create an App Store in 2008 during a special event. This gave us the SDK, and 2.0.

When 1.2 (2.0 beta 1) was released to (exclusive people) the iPhone Dev Team also had an announcement for the world, they had created a permanent jailbreak for the iPod touch 1G, and iPhone 2G, and in its exact form, would work with Apple’s upcoming iPhone 3G. (Yay!). The revolutionary “Pwnage” method was incredible, though only Mac OS X compatible. Until CMW created WinPwn (which was later abandoned for some reason after the 2.0.2 release of the firmware)

2.x has been, in my opinion, the worst and most embarrassing excuse for software Apple has ever dared to ship. 2.x was laggy and unreliable in every way imaginable. The only reason I could think of that Apple changed the entire OS from, in my opinion, the best OS ever shipped (1.x) due to its stability and reliability, was to try to kill jailbreaking.

Well, it worked… for a while. The 2.0 release of the jailbreak and Cydia wasn’t great at all. There were only a handful of packages available, and they also weren’t exactly good or stable even.

Jailbreaking had died down a lot up until 2.1, Apple had released a major update that improved everything about the OS. This is where jailbreaking picked up again.

Later, in September, the iPod touch 2G would be released, which also changed things. This was the first device to kill the Pwnage 2.0 method of jailbreaking. This was also the first device to have an updated processor and GPU.

The iPhone 3G jailbreak finally came to be on New Years day in 2009.

Suddenly, shortly after Apple’s last MacWorld 2009, Steve Jobs announced that he would be taking a “medical leave of absence” until “late June”. This shocked everyone.

In February, the iPod touch 2G finally had a jailbreak. This new 2Kpwn method was also a permanent jailbreak. Just like Pwnage, this would jailbreak the iPod touch 2G, and later the iPhone 3G S forever. Though, originally the jailbreak was teathered, which meant that to reboot you had to re-initiate redsn0w via a terminal.

(It sucked so much, plus my friends were dicks and tried turning off my iPod every chance they had)

Then in March, Apple announced iPhone OS 3.0, which was exactly what everyone wanted. It had copy and paste, MMS (for some people, not AT&T yet!!!!!), teathering (again, none for AT&T!!!!), Spotlight, landscape apps, search bundles for the iPod app, mail app, and notes app, along with the greatly needed 1.x stability we had been deprived of in 2.x.

Unlike 2.x, this was an open beta to all App Store Developers. (Which I had all the betas, and 3.0 GM on my newly bought iPhone 3G, whooo hooo, no waiting for me!)

So then in April, Apple announced that they were about to hit 1 Billion app downloads.

So this brings us to WWDC 2009 where Apple announced the new iPhone 3G S, which I had believed was jailbreak proof, until we saw that 2Kpwn was still there.

So now this brings us to today, June 29, 2009. After all this, just look back on your lives and see how the iPhone and Apple have changed your lives. I can guarantee this has changed everyone’s lives in one way or another.

So happy birthday iPhone, and may you have many more!