Posts Tagged iPhone
App Store cheats?
I like the iPhone App Store. I mean I really love all the different kinds of cool apps available 24×7 on my iPhone which I can install over edge or wi-fi anytime I want.
It takes real hard courage to go ahead and buy any app from the app store. Mainly because we (Indians) are so much used to free software that we take it for granted. The thought of buying software just brings LOL to our minds.
The app store changed all this. I saw people in India actually buying these apps! Forget everyone else, even I went ahead and bought a couple of .99$ and 1.99$ apps. Due to the sucky conversion rate to INR, they do cost us little more than they should. But still, I buy them.
After reading a lot of positive reviews, I gathered a lot of courage to buy the Moto Chaser game @ 5.99$. The game lived up to my expectations. You can read my review here .
But today after reading the news that the game’s price was reduced to .99$, I feel cheated. I mean lowering the app’s price for a few days might be a good marketing gimmick, but it fucks up the courage to buy new apps. I mean after seeing this, I am not gonna buy any app right away. I will probably wait for the developer’s birthday or any other stupid reason for the price to go down and then buy it.
Apple should do something about this, else people will stop buying the apps.
Must have iPhone Apps
Here is a list of 3rd party iPhone apps that I would recommend everyone to install on their jailbroken iPhones. I have been using them for quite some time and believe that they will make your everyday life much easier. You can install them using the Installer application on your jailbroken iPhone. They are listed according to their categories in the Installer:
- System:
- Installer: You probably have this if you unlocked your iPhone using Ziphone. If not, use iBrickr to install it.You will need this to install the following apps.
- BSD Subsystem: These are UNIX tools for the iPhone. An absolute must have as this is required by many other apps. This is a pretty big app. Install it over wifi.
- Open SSH: Install this if you want to access your iPhone using SSH over wifi. You can do a lot of stuff using this as you can login as root. I don’t use it much but its kinda cool to have such an app. It does not add any icon on your screens and can be turned off using Boss Prefs (described below).
- SummerBoard: Another absolute must have to theme up your iPhone. Another comprehensive alternative is the Customize application. However, I found it overwhelmingly comprehensive. So unless you want to change little details like the battery icon, go with SummerBoard.
- Sources:
- Bigboss’s Recommended Sources: Install these to get access to a lot of useful apps from Bigboss.
- Community Sources: Needed to get access to many of the below mentioned packages.
- Utilities:
- BossPrefs: This is a great app to instantly turn on/off many of the settings of your iPhone. I use this a lot to switch on/off wifi, EDGE, Bluetooth & SSH. Saves a lot of taps.
- Converter: This is a unit converter for the iPhone. Its handy in situations when you have to convert from US$ to INR. Or from miles to kilometers. It also has the capability to download the latest currency conversion rates from the internet. Neat !
- Taskbar Notifier: This utility adds icons to the status bar (the bar on the top of the screen) when you have unread mail, SMS or missed call(s). This is extremely useful for email as you do not actually get to know that you have a new email unless you are at the home screen.
- Touchpad Pro: This is a neat utility built using VNC to control your mouse using your iPhone. Well, actually more than the mouse. It lets you use your iPhone as a touch pad. You can move the pointer, click, double click, right click, drag and also type in using the iPhone’s keyboard. Great when watching a movie while lying on the bed.
- Funiculus: This is a microphone based guitar (and many other instruments) tuner. It graphically tell you if a string is too high or low. You adjust the strings one by one to tune the guitar.
- Productivity:
- Contacts | Home Screen: A small utility to put the contacts app to your home screen. Saves a tap to reach the Contacts.1.1.2 and above only.
- PocketMoney: A comprehensive tool to manage your finances. Use this to keep track of the money you have lend to your friends.
- MobileToDoList: A small ToDo list manager. Very useful to remember things to do.
- Network:
- Bookmarklets: Adds useful bookmarks to Safari. iTransmogrify, Find text etc.
- smartRSS: An RSS reader for the iPhone. I would recommend using the iPhone optimized Google Reader in Safari as it allows you to read the feeds in landscape mode as well. smartRSS is good for offline reading while in airplane mode.
- Multimedia:
- CameraPro: Some professional features for the iPhone. Adds digital zoom. I particularly like the capability to take black & white photos.
- iFlickr: Take a pic and upload it to your Flickr account instantly !
- MxTube: A You Tube video downloader and viewer. A little buggy but useful.
- SendPics: Send photos taken using the iPhone’s camera in full 2 MP resolution.
- Games:
- Towers of Hanoi: The great game of the Towers of Hanoi. A must have for geeks. Great time pass. Always challenging.
- Tris: The classic Tetris game with great visuals and innovative controls.
- Tweaks:
- Smb Themes Fix: Yo need to install this only on 1.1.3 or higher iPhones for SummerBoard to work properly.
- Toys:
- Flashight: This a small app which shows a blank white screen with maximum brightness. A little heavy on the battery but extremely useful to find something in the dark.
- Unlocking Tools:
Thanks to the people who developed these !
Did I miss anything? Please add it to the comments.
iCopy – Copy/Paste in iPhone
All iPhone users want copy and paste functionality in the iPhone. Still, folks at Apple have not done anything. It seems Preston Monroe has finally answered our prayers. A new bookmark – iCopy enables you to copy and paste text or URL in your iPhone.
You have to first add it as a bookmark in your iPhone’s safari browser. Here are the installation instructions: http://www.biocow.com/iCopy/install.php
The installation is a bit cruel on your index finger. If you are too lazy to do it, wait for some time till it comes to the Installer app for jailbroken iPhones.
After installation, just use the bookmark to copy/paste a paragraph or url. You currently cannot select what you copy. It probably copies the text within a <p></p> or <div></div> or some other enveloping tags on a page. But who cares! I can delete the unwanted text once I paste it.
Paste currently involves 2 clicks. First to set the copied content in a cookie and other to actually paste it in a text box or area. Well, it might not be the best way, but given that this works in a browser, I can live with that.
Note that the stuff you copy is sent over the internet. So refrain from copying secure data.
Here are the links to videos to demonstrate how this works:
Upgrade 1.0.2 unlocked iPhone to 1.1.3
I recently upgraded my unlocked 1.0.2 version iPhone to 1.1.3 using Zibri’s Ziphone .
I tried looking for a guide for the same on the Internet. However all I got were comments from experts about the procedure and certain comments from people who had done this.
Here is what I did to upgrade. Note that these steps are meant for Windows users having 1.0.2 iPhone unlocked using the iUnlock method (prior to anySim ):
DISCLAIMER: The following steps worked fine for my iPhone. Try them at your own risk. I cannot guarantee that the process will always be successful.
- Back up your contacts and phone’s content in iTunes.
- Set auto lock to "Never" in Settings -> General -> Auto Lock
- Add "http://i.unlock.no" to Installer sources and refresh
- Go to Unlocking Tools in Installer and install Virginizer. This step will take about 15 minutes. Your phone will not recognize your Sim after this step.
- Download 1.1.3 firmware file from the link on http://iphone.unlock.no/#restore-firmware-files
- Connect your iPhone to the computer & start iTunes. Once the phone is detected by iTunes, hold "Shift" key and click on the Restore button on the Summary page in iTunes. Select the file you just downloaded. iTunes will start restoring (read upgrading ) your iPhone to 1.1.3 firmware. This process will again take around 15 minutes to complete. Close iTunes after this step.
- Download Ziphone from http://www.downloadziphone.org/
- Install .Net Framework 2.0
- Start Ziphone & click on "Do it All" button. It will detect the phone and start the activate, jailbreak & unlock process. This will take approx. 5 minutes to complete. Close Ziphone after this step. The phone is now upgraded to 1.1.3 and is unlocked. It will have Installer installed. You can test by making a call.
- Once you are done, start iTunes. Set up the phone using the backup you took in step 1.
I had a small problem with wifi after this process. I used ad-hoc wifi at my home to connect to the internet from the iPhone. However, after this process, the iPhone wasn’t able to keep the ad-hoc connection. I reached out to the folks at the official Ziphone channel (#ziphone) on irc.ziphone.org and they helped me out. The solution is to connect the iPhone to a proper router based wifi hotspot. Once it is connected to the hotspot, it will be able to connect to ad-hoc networks as well. I was anyways looking for an excuse to get a wifi router. So I utilized this opportunity. The iPhone works perfectly fine with the router wifi.
In case you have any queries regarding the unlock process or Ziphone, I guess its best to reach out to the experts on the IRC channel. I do not have much expertise in this. I am posting the above steps to help out people looking for a guide.
Thanks to Zibri, Geohot & iphone.unlock team for coming with this.
Update: Thanks to Mr. Farooqi for the discussion. You can use the above process to upgrade to 1.1.4 as well. Just download the 1.1.4 firmware file in step 5 above. Rest of the steps remain the same. Enjoy!