Given the amount of adverse news this week out of the Steve Jobs camp (or in some cases lack of thereof), I wanted to post up a few of my favorite images from around the web in reference to the iPod to “lighten the mood” if you will, remind us all why we purchased this thing because we are sheep.

Enjoy, and have a great weekend!

Apple announced this afternoon the release of iPhone OS 3.0.1, Available for: iPhone OS 1.0 through iPhone OS 3.0

As quoted from their website

Description: A memory corruption issue exists in the decoding of SMS messages. Receiving a maliciously crafted SMS message may lead to an unexpected service interruption or arbitrary code execution. This update addresses the issue through improved error handling. Credit to Charlie Miller of Independent Security Evaluators, and Collin Mulliner of Fraunhofer SIT for reporting this issue.

Meaning that an update on our post from yesterday was dead on (kudos to the BBC and Computer World), this patch should be available via iTunes.

Update 7/31/2009 1431hrs ET

According to an article posted by Computer World Apple will provide a patch to the SMS vulnerability/Virus by this Saturday August 1st. Apple has currently not released any kind of public statement providing confirmation about this report from the BBC.

Yesterday, news broke about a serious security flaw that could allow a remote attacker to take control of the victim’s iPhone by sending a specially constructed SMS message. Today, the man who discovered it [Charlie Miller] will release the world’s first iPhone virus. He discovered an SMS hack 6 weeks ago and reported it to Apple, but they have yet to release a patch. Miller and his fellow cybersecurity researcher Collin Mulliner will both explain and reveal their iPhone SMS exploit some time today at the Blackhat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas.

The security hole can breach your iPhone which can then be used to send messages, make calls, steal data and do anything else that is desired. The attack is enabled by a serious memory corruption bug in the way the iPhone handles SMS messages. The hackers or rather the demonstrators of this hacking attack informed Apple about this shortcoming, six weeks back — yet we’re not sure of an update to tackle the iPhone virus.

It’s worth mentioning that A [similar] vulnerability in Android was found, but then promptly fixed by Google, while another vulnerability in HTC’s code (company that makes Android and Windows Mobile-based phones) can render the phone useless, but it doesn’t allow the attacker to take control of it. iPhone’s security flaw, enabled by a memory corruption bug in the way it handles SMS messages, is by far the most serious.

How can you recognize and avoid the iPhone virus?
If you get a strange text message containing any square box, even if it’s from a recognized number you may be the victim of the iPhone virus.

You have two choices:

1. Put your iPhone in Airplane mode: Go to Settings -> Airplane Mode and slide the button to Off.
2. Hold down the power button, and slide to turn your iPhone off.

Don’t most of us that have iPhones feel this way (or some variation of it) about them? I know that if I’m away from mine for too long I start to get ancy and don’t “feel right.” I almost feel naked, literally naked and as if I’m cut off from the world (even though it’s not my primary phone, in fact it’s one of three I carry).

Last year’s global mobile phone sales of Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s Blackberry devices only accounted for 3% of all of mobile phone sales (actually unit sales), but according to the Wall Street Journal they’re raking in 35% of all mobile phone profits. Which by any measure is enormous considering how little of the overall sales market they impact. Forecasts for this year according to the Deutsche Bank are expected to be 5% sales, and 58% of mobile phone profits. This is of course contributed to the price of these devices, brand name, and obviously availability.

Apple and RIM have managed to coin and pretty much take ownership of the smartphone market crunching out these kinds of numbers. Given Apple’s time on the smart phone scene I believe that this is a much larger achievement for them versus RIM. Why? Well consider this, BlackBerry has devices on every major mobile (US) carrier, where as Apple has the iPhone locked to one (well technically two for all of the jailbroken/unlocked iPhone users), Apple has been out since 2007 with their device….the BlackBerry has had a five year jump on Apple and had has a huge following especially among working professionals. However Apple does have over a million applications available for their device and has sold 21.17 million phones in what, two years time?

In conclusion, it’s clear that with Smartphone sales accounting for 13.5% of all mobile device sales in the first quarter of 2009 (compared with 11% in the first quarter of 2008) companies like Nokia and Samsung are really going to need to take notice and begin to counter this threat. Based on theses numbers by RIM and Apple, it clearly shows that services and applications are now instrumental to smartphones’ overall success in this new market.