This seems like bad news for Apple, to say the least. A few Chinese websites are now selling $200 gift certficates to iTunes for less than a few bucks, which means that it's likely hackers have figured out the algorithm to determine gift codes on Apple's music store. As with most online codes, iTunes gift certificate numbers are generated by a formula somewhere -- figure out the formula, and you can generate your own codes (though it's of course tough to do and highly illegal).

The good news is that this might be an easy fix for Apple: they'll just have to re-figure the formula. The tougher thing to do will be to determine which of the old codes to honor -- they'll want to make sure to approve all of the cards on the shelves at Best Buy right now, while still trying to catch all of the illegal codes generated by hackers.

But then again, we're talking about a digital store that's already making cash hand over fist. Maybe even if one hacker on a shady website has figured out how to generate iTunes codes, Apple isn't too concerned about losing a few thousand dollars when they're still selling millions of dollars worth of music and content legitimately.

iPhone hacker eok writes to let me know that he and Samuel have gotten SIP registration and signalization working. They took a few mobile terminal shots, but the real work is being done via ssh. Samuel is working on connecting the audio in/out to the pjSIP. If you have iPhone or iPod touch coding skills and want to get involved in the project, connect to #touchmods on irc.undernet.org. It looks like most of the work will be done on European time.

Oh, and if anyone is giving away free iPods to worthy developers? eok recommends that Samuel gets one first. He writes that Samuel has been the driving force behind the compilation.

The iPhone appears to have an installed base somewhere upwards of one million units according to Apple's official numbers. A majority of those units have been sold to early adopters; that is people with a certain adventurous spirit, not just those who got to the story early. Some have been hacked by hand, others through tools like AppTapp. Hard data on the number of hacked units is indirect.

I haven't been able to get in touch with "lg", the man behind AppTapp/Installer.app but I was able to talk to other developers: there have been over 70,000 Open SSH downloads and upwards of 600,000 unique visits to the SMXY repository this month. Since only a portion of Installer.app users will install SSH, that hints at a much bigger base.

What is my best guess? I'm thinking conservatively that between 10-20% of early adopters have hacked their iPhones for third party software and that a similar number are unlocking their iPhones for non-AT&T service; and, no, I'm not sure what the overlap might be. Either way, I expect the software-hacks to plunge as we enter the holiday season where most purchases will be from less adventurous customers and the unlock percentages to rise as the iPhone hits Europe.

Thanks to Shaun Erickson and Nate True.

Update: The fabulous Drudge has uploaded a complete breakdown for his most popular hosted packages. In addition, he reports nearly 800,000 unique visits between the Conceited and SMXY repositories. Even taking EDGE into account, that's a lot of visits. "Kroo" lent his able assistance to the stats gathering effort.

One of the very first questions that popped into my head after hearing, during the liveblog last week, that the iPod Touch had wireless capability was how soon the hackers would get wifi VOIP running on it. Michael over at the Apple Gazette had the same thought, and he's even got a plan on how to do it-- if the iPhone's mic-enabled headphones work in the iPod Touch, we're golden.

Unfortunately, I agree with what Erica said on the last Talkcast-- it's probably not that easy. But even she agreed that if someone can hook the dock connection up to a microphone, then we might be in business. Skype is already working (in some form) on the iPhone, and considering the iPod Touch and the iPhone are as similar as Apple says they are, the software shouldn't be a problem. Getting the audio in and out to the right places is where the trouble lies.

But after everything we've seen come down on the iPhone, you won't catch me betting against the hackers. If there's a will, there's a way, and so if you really want to get your iPod Touch running wifi VOIP (like some kind of psuedo iPhone clone), my guess is that you'll eventually be able to do it.

[ via Macenstein ]

The InsanelyMac Forum has a post concerning an apparent modification Apple made to their Public Source License, the license that guards the open source portions of Mac OS X such as its Unix kernel, called Darwin. The changes the InsanelyMac Forum cite seem to have been made to set up another roadblock for those who are trying to hack Mac OS X to work on non-Apple hardware, though Apple's site for the license say the latest version is dated August of 2003. Semantics aside, the changes quoted in the forum reflect the application of another fine-toothed comb to what users are not allowed to do with the source they download from Apple's site. Too bad; with Vista receiving mixed reviews, I'm sure Michael Dell would still be interested in offering customers a better choice.