With the iPhone news of the Apple launch, the number of iPhone hacks has increased exponentially and a great deal of energy has been put into working through the iPhone software to find where the passwords and the “glue” is for a number of apps. The “Holy Grail” at the moment is iPhone unlocking.

iPhone unlocking is in fact most requested hack, and unlocking means that the iPhone can be used on any network and not just AT&T’s. There have been a couple of claims to have managed this iPhone hack ultimate but so far it’s all just rumors though it seems that a couple are indeed getting close and have managed to gain ownership of the file system. Sieving through the iPhone software and especially the gif images that are embedded seems to be the number preoccupation of any self respecting iPhone hack merchant around the globe.

One writer at GigaOM claims that they have gotten all the iPhone functions working except the telephone, voicemail and text features. To be honest I don’t see the point in all of this, getting an iPhone hack to unlock the beast is not going to be of much use unless you use the iPhone overseas and on top of that you’ll have no 3G support.

Where I do see a value in getting the iPhone software opened up, is that once we have the iPhone unlocked then being able to use the device as an ultimately portable minicomputer working over a wifi network then we have something that’s going to be useful.

On the iPhone news grapevine, it’s not just iPhone hacks that are streaming in thick and fast, there are also a series of full-blown web apps which I have to say is pretty impressive – well done guys! Probably the best one at the moment is the iPhone hack “iChat for iPhone” which provides you with IM capability on AIM. More than that, the iPhone software source is available for this hack and you can host it on your own machine. If you are really serious about keeping up-to-date with the latest in iPhone unlocking and iPhone hacks then check out the iPhone Dev Wiki that seems to me to be the closest to getting an iPhone unlocking hack.

iPhone software that you can download onto your new iPhone can be found at iPhone Applications on the web. Here you’ll find all iPhone software and applications such as iWeather and more games than you can shake a stick at. Unfortunately, until we get iPhone hack that will open up the iPhone to third party applications we are going to have to make do with Apple iPhone software that we’re allowed to play with at the moment.

How long before we have an iPhone hack that will help us unlock the iPhone completely is like asking how long is a piece of string, but with the energy that is being devoted to it, I guess it could be any day now.