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I finally took the plunge and hacked my iPhone 1.1.1 firmware.  What an ordeal!  The proceedure took close to an hour using iFuntastic 4.6.1.  Another hour later and I’ve perused the latest releases in Installer.app and installed a couple dozen packages.

There are quite a few new packages to be explored.  Some of my favorites are:

Nikotalkie- voice messaging over EDGE & WiFi

Labyrinth- an awesome iPhone rendition of the classic marble game

CrossWalk- NYC cross street calculator & subway map viewr

All in all, not a bad way to spend an evening.

I’m getting pretty stoked about the release of Leopard next Friday.  The 300+ feature list posted on Apple’s site is much more detailed and dreamy than ever before.... 10.4, 10.3, 10.2 10.1, 10.

Apple is changing the price of all DRM-free “iTunes Plus” songs on the iTunes Store from $1.29 to $0.99.  Certainly this is a response to recent announcements from Amazon (DRM free and often less than $0.99) and now Napster’s web portal.

Jobs is quoted in the WSJ as saying: “It’s been very popular with our customers, and we’re making it even more affordable.”

Update: Apple now claims largest DRM-free catalog with 2 million songs.

Led Zeppelin is apparently going to be available on iTunes next month.  Sounds like nearly the entire catalog will be available.  This is great news as it means that more people than ever will be able to enjoy easy access to one of my favorite bands. 

“Over the Hills and Far Away” was the first song I every figured out how to play on the guitar all by myself.  Shout out to Mike Sabatino for introducing me to Zep and teaching me to play many of the songs on guitar.

Stats: Led Zeppelin is the only band in history that managed to get all of its albums into the U.S. Billboard Top 10 and has sold more than 300 million albums globally with almost 110 million of those sales occurring in the U.S. alone.

I came across this interesting interview with Will Friedwald, “Owner Of The Worlds Largest iTunes Collection” this morning.

I’d also love to see a “Pro” version of iTunes geared toward massive collections. But, I do think that iTunes will finally get there on its own.

Just look at the growth of the capacity of iPods: a 160GB model holds 97% more data than the original. iTunes will have be enhanced to hold a similar growth in music libraries.  iPhoto has been similarly enhanced in recent versions with exponential storage capacity updates.

For the record:

Will’s Library:
849 GB | 172,150 tracks | 809.2 days
2,935 artists | 11,561 albums
iTunes library database file - 282 MB
iTunes library XML file - 259 MB

Mine:
260.37 GB | 59,915 tracks | 147.6 days
9,778 artists | 7,083 albums
iTunes library database file - 104.9 MB
iTunes library XML file - 91.5 MB