For all you people that think the iPhone moving to a different provider is going to solve any of your “data” issues or connection problems, you simply don’t understand how much data the iPhone uses per user. Several different sources have reported that iPhone users use about 50x the amount of bandwidth per day of a Blackberry or Windows Mobile user.  Think about what that means. Any network that suddenly had a large influx of iPhones would suffer the same issues AT&T is having.  Until the cellular infrastructure is rebuilt to handle data consumption at those levels, no network will be as stable or fast as users want.

This is sort of the most basic thing that all iPhone jailbreakers should know. It’s like leaving your computer on auto login, or using the administrator account on a Windows machine with the password, well, “password”. Whenever I read about these sorts of exploits, I kind of feel like you get what you get. You don’t have to be security paranoid, but you should at least lock the front door. A computer is only as secure as the person who uses it, which is why phishing scams work so well.

Apple’s new tactics are in direct response to something that has little to do with Jailbreaking itself, but is only possible on a Jailbroken device, pirating app store apps.  Back in February, when Crackulous was first released, the writing was already on the wall. If a single user could buy an app, and share it with anyone, this directly effects Apple’s revenue.  I won’t even go into how this hurts all the small developer shops and single person developers working on iPhone apps, it’s pretty obvious.

The latest numbers show that 1.5 million iPhones are using pirated software. Just think what that means to Apple.  If each of those apps only cost $1, and Apple gets 30% of that, you do the math.  Now that there are pirate app stores like Appulous, the possibilities are endless for cutting into those Apple profits.

I have been Jailbreaking since before there was even an App Store.  When the App Store came out, I actually was not that impressed by it because of all the great software available through Cydia already.  That has slowly changed, and all three, the Cydia Store, Cydia free apps and App Store are a vital part of what makes the iPhone great for me.  However, after seeing the figures, I can understand why Apple is beginning to take a harder stance against Jailbreaking.  Look, I don’t buy the whole it eats up bandwidth, it’s a security issue, blah, blah, that Apple released a couple of months ago.  It all comes down to profit.  Once again, lets thank those idiots who believe software should be “free”.  Open and free do not mean the same thing.  If a company or person takes the time to build an application, then they should expect compensation.   If said company/person wants to give that application away, good for them. Look people, we’re talking about apps that usually cost less than $5.  If you can’t spend $5 or less to support something you enjoy, then how did you afford an iPhone in the first place?

I’ve never had it not activate during a jailbreak before, so I decided to not use Expert Mode in Pwnage 3.1.4 and give it another try. I’m not sure if this is a bug in the new tool, or just something I inadvertently clicked clicked while making my custom firmware.  Like I said, I’ve never had that problem before while creating custom firmwares, so it seems a bit odd.

Things I’ve taken away from this: simple mode kind of sucks. You can’t adjust the size of root partition. You can’t pre-install Cydia packages. You can’t unselect installing Icy! I may go ahead and redo the install tonight, and pay closer attention to what I select under the general settings and bootloader.  For now, I’m jailbroken and 3.1.2, and everything seems to be running just fine.

In the past, I have always used BossTools to free up space, but this application no longer works on 3.x firmware. The thing to remember about the iPhone OS, is that all of the OS, including fonts, is located in the firmware package.  Fonts account for over 75mb of the 500mb total. The easiest way to fix this, is to simply move the fonts to the mobile partition. All the official iPhone software is installed under the user “mobile”. All you have to do is move the Fonts to this user’s directory.

The easiest way to do this is through a symbolic link. First, connect to your iPhone through SSH.

ssh root@iphoneIP
The  password is “alpine”

Next, move the fonts from their current location, to the other partition and create the symbolic link.

mv /System/Library/Fonts /var/mobile/
cd /System/Library/
ln -s /var/mobile/Fonts .

Just to clarify, that is a “.” at the end of that last line.

It really is that simple. You will suddenly gain another 75 or so MB on your root partition.

If you’re using a jailbroken iPhone then you can SSH to your iPhone, navigate to the Applications directory and then remove all permissions from MobileSMS.app. This prevents SMS application from running on the phone.

I rarely use SMS, having so many other ways of communicating with people, it’s just an overpriced waste of technology. Looks like I’m just going to disable it completely until Apple releases a fix.

fuckyeahstarwars:

are2:

the Emperor’s iPhone

This is what Nintendo and iPhone developers understand.  Why does the Wii and DS/DSi out sell everyone else?  Because their games aren’t designed for gamers.  They are designed for real people, who have things in their lives other than gaming.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there is anything wrong with gamers, more power to them.  Yet, there is something really nice about being able to play a game for 10 minutes and be done with it.  Why do you think Wii Play, Wii sports and the Wii Party games are so popular?  They are social, and each game is only a few minutes long.  DS/DSi games are the same way.  You can complete a level or even finish a game in a short period of time.

iPhone games are similar, with one unique difference.  They can remember exactly were your game play ended.  There is no boot up time, no game cartridges or discs.  I play probably 45 minutes to an hour and 30 minutes worth of games a day on my iPhone, maybe even more, but it’s never in one sitting.  I don’t have time for that.  But I do have time for 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there.

What developers for these three systems understand is what the PSP, Playstation and XBox have missed.  Most people don’t care about graphics and sounds.  I can’t even remember the last time I had the sound on in a game.  More importantly, if your game turns off the iPod function on my iPhone, just to hear your shitty game music, I’m probably not going to play it again.  When you see a kid in a store or restaurant playing a DS, do they usually have on head phones? No, they have the sound turned off.  Nintendo games don’t need sound, even for storylines. The text is shown on the screen, for this very reason.  And guess what, it also means they are being forced to read, what a novel idea.  Right now, I’m playing Geometry wars pretty much none stop on the DS.  I stopped playing it a while back, and picked it up again a couple of weeks ago.  That’s right, it’s pretty much Tempest on fucking steroids, line art and flat as hell.  But, I can play 4 levels while the girls take a bath, and I’m sitting there with them while they play and splash.

As more big name companies begin to develop for the iPhone, hopefully they will remember why all those $.99 games do so well.  They’re short, addictive, and just plain fun.

I want you to make a netbook.  Correction, I need you to make a netbook.  Lets just end this.  We all know that whatever Apple designs, the rest of the world will follow.  I’m tired of seeing all this little, under powered notebooks trying to pass as netbooks.  Lets do this thing right.  It’s not that difficult.  Put an ARM processor inside, none of this Intel crap.  Give it a beautiful 9 inch touch screen.  And by touch screen, I mean the whole thing is a screen.  A little slide out keyboard for when you really need it.  Add in a couple of USB ports, a mini-display for projecting in meetings, an Apple Remote, Wi-Fi, 10/100/1000 ethernet.  If you want to through in a 3G for good measure, that’s OK by me.  Then to really set you apart, put the iPhone OS 3 as the operating system.  What do I need to do on a netbook?  Surf, check email, watch movies, listen to music, and with 25K+ apps already waiting in the app store, there’s very little I wouldn’t be able to do.  If you add in Flash support and SilverLight, I’ll worship you more than I already do.  I know it’s asking a lot, but instead of racing to the bottom, lets show people what happens when you race to the top.

Thanks in advance, because I know we’re already on the same page.

Gabriel

Tweet Stats: If the first 6 days of March are any indication, I’m on record pace this month on number of tweets.  The graphs over at TweetStats tell an interesting story about my Twitter use.  Over the past month, since switching to a 3G iPhone, my Twitter use has really jumped.  It’s become one of my favorite sources of news and information, as well as, a place to meet and connect with people.  Go find out what your Twitter trends look like.