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.

/System/Library/TextInput-bak

to

/System/Library/TextInput

Reload the Springboard, and you can now use the Auto-Correction under Settings->General->Keyboard.  The Apple fix to this annoying feature, offers a lot more options, allowing you to still use other keyboard tricks, without using Auto-Correction.

This is also a great time to point out that AptBackupRestore is one of the best little apts in the Jailbreak toolkit.  Since Jailbreak is nothing more then deb packages, this little apt creates a text file of installed Jailbreak programs, and then with a single click of “Restore”, all your apps show back up after a firmware install.

Some sites are nice enough to provide a custom icon for iPhone users, but if you’re on a site that doesn’t, and don’t want the ugly, here’s a web page looking icon, follow these steps:

1. Find an image on the page you like, maybe the logo.
2. Zoom in on this image so that it fills most of the screen.
3. Click the + to open up the bookmark screen.
4. Simply click Add to Home Screen button.
5. You will be presented with the new icon, of the image you selected.

If you’re running on a Jailbreak phone, you can do the same thing.  However, you have even more control.  I have a certain theme that I use for everything on the iPhone, and I want my WebClip icons to look like this theme.  Open up an SFTP client, and go to:

/var/private/mobile/Library/WebClips

You will find directories for all your WebClips.  Go into each one, and look at the icon.png file until you find the one you want to change.  Create the icon you want, and upload it to the directory.  It’s that easy.

The iPhone 2.0 firmware currently does not support the Overlay trick.  If you are still running a 1.X firmware, you create custom overlay PNG files to create WebClip icons to fit your theme.  Look in the Applications -> MobileSafari.app directory to see examples.

Having said that, there are some really useful apps on the App Store, some of which I’ve already talked about in past posts.  Here’s a sort of working list of what I’ve found to be fun or useful apps, both free and non-free, on the App Store (in no order).

• AIM – I know, it’s AIM, but the lack of iChat still blows my mind.
• FileMagnet – Move things to your phone without syncing.  No iTunes required.
• Animals – The kids love this little app, not so much fun for me.
• PhoneSaber – Come on, it turns your phone into a Light Saber, what’s not to like.
• WeatherBug – Because the built in Weather app sucks.
• Stanza – Create books, read PDF files, download books from 1000+ library.
• Mobile News – It sounds funny, but AP did a great job on this app.  Videos, photos and news, easy to use.
• Remote – Control your AppleTV
• Zenbe – I use this list program constantly.  Sync against online lists, that you can edit on desktop and phone.
• Bejeweled 2 – It’s Bejeweled, what’s not to like.
• Trism – Way addictive time waster.
• Othello – Much better than Morocco, which I also play on occasion.
• Shakespeare – Come on, it’s all of Shakespeare in your pocket.
• ShuffleBoard – So much fun.  Takes practice, but worth the couple of bucks.
• Twittelator – I actually prefer this one to both of the other well known Twitter apps.
• LifeGame – Don’t ask, if you don’t know what it is, it won’t matter to you.
• SportsTap – Keep up to date on all the major sports.  Really useful, and up-to-date.
• YouNote – Haven’t used this one much, but what it can do is amazing, and I know I’ll use it more in the future.
• Quordy – Good time waster, makes you realize how few words you actually know.

As for Jailbreak apps, there aren’t that many yet.  Most of them are command line, or utility/tweak programs.  At the moment, these are the ones that I use on a regular basis:

• BossTools – fix all the bad ideas Apple came up with for partitioning the drives.
• BossPrefs – Manage SSH, Wi-Fi, Edge, 3G all from one location.  Also, double tap home to bring up app.
• Flashlight – If anyone ever pays for one of these on iTunes, they need to be punched.
• OpenSSH – goes without saying.
• Numeric Battery – See your battery life as a number, not a stupid bar in the right corner.

The reason I liked ZiPhone was because it required no DFU mode.  If you’ve never dealt with the whole DFU mode, you’re lucky, because it sucks.  There are several really good videos on YouTube on how to put your iPhone into DFU mode.  This may still not work, as the Pwnage tool requires a restart of the iPhone between the install of the custom firmware and setting it back into DFU mode.  To install the custom firmware, you need to hold down the “alt” key when clicking restore in iTunes.  I suggest reading the comments section, in detail, before using the new tool.

The good news is, that my iPhone is now running 2.0 with Jailbreak.  The bad news is, that there is currently no Installer for 2.0.  Wish I would have known that before hand.  All the Cydia apps work, but most of the stuff I used came from the Installer community, not Cydia.

I do now have access to the root file system of my iPhone, and 2.0 Apps from the App Store running at the same time.  Much like every other Jailbreak I’ve used, this one broke the Mail app.  The fix is easy enough after installing OpenSSH.  Just change the permissions on the /var/mobile/Library/Mail directory.  Mail will work the next time you open it, with all your previous mail settings back in place.

There is still no Summerboard, so the Springboard looks horrible.  How do regular iPhone users tolerate how ugly the iPhone interface is.  A couple of hacks are working, such as the Battery, Notes and Dialer, but hacking Summerboard is way more important to me at this point.

I’ve done several syncs, and have imported pictures, etc.  All seems to be going well.  I am already missing several key apps that I simply can’t do without, and hope the Installer issue is resolved soon.