iPhone 3G Unlocked! (+Apple Breaks iPhone Jailbreaking in OS X 10.5.6)

Great news for those of you who want the freedom to use your shiny new iPhone 3G with any carrier you wish! (T-mobile in the US, many others around the world) - the iPhone 3G has been unlocked by the wonderful folks at the iPhone Dev-Team!

The bad news? You'll have to wait until December 31, as those enterprising hackers finish up an easy to use application for end users to sick on their iPhones for maximum unlocking goodness.

There are a couple of caveats attached:

1. You must NOT have updated your iPhone to the latest modem baseband. You must have baseband 2.11.07 or earlier (Settings -> General -> Modem Firmware to check.) The iPhone Dev-Team warned about this when Apple released the 2.2. firmware update, since 2.2 updated the baseband to a non-unlockable version. If you didn't update to 2.2 using iPhone Dev-Team's tools, you're SOL.
2. Your iPhone 3G must be jailbroken. The unlock software package will be a downloadable package for your iPhone installed via Cydia.

The iPhone Dev-Team will make a video demonstration available closer to the release date so you'll know exactly what to do.

In related news, the recent 10.5.6 update to Mac OS X has apparently broken iPhone Dev-Team's jailbreaking software tools. While many on the Internets have suspected that this was an intentional block by Apple (a la the iTunes update that tried to detect jailbroken iPhones, but was worked around), the iPhone Dev-Team says that this seems to be accidental and a result of a kernel bug introduced in 10.5.6.

Workarounds include using a USB hub in between your iPhone and the Mac while jailbreaking, and replacing a few kernel extensions with old ones from 10.5.5.

Happy unlocking!

'Tis the Season to be Jolly! - yellowsn0w [iPhone Dev-Team]