Archive for the ‘iPhone hacks’ Category

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1.1.4 stock to customized - howto notes

Saturday, March 1st, 2008

Starting point is a stock 1.1.4 iPhone, as installed by iTunes doing a full system restore.

1. Back up (sync) your data.  Don’t forget the pictures.

2. Upgrade to 1.1.4 using iTunes if you haven’t already.

3. go to the ziphone site, Zibri’s site, here: http://www.ziphone.org/

4. Download, unzip, and install the ziphone app.

5. You’ve got some choices here.  I’m going with just jailbreak but, let’s talk about terminology for a minute here.

“Unlock” means, set your iPhone to be able to use a carrier other than it sold with (AT&T in the US).

“Jailbreak” or “Unjail” means, open up the system so installer.app can be installed, you can ssh into it, etc.

I’m going with just “jailbreak”.  I don’t need to switch carriers, or run without one.  So, “Jailbreak”

6. Wait patiently.  Your iPhone will reboot a few times, and in the length of time it took me to type this, it’s done.  My screen now has two new buttons, “Zibri’s blog”, and the familiar Installer.app icon.

7. Before you go nuts installing things in installer, get some of the likely prerequisites installed first:

- Update installer itself (it will prompt you for this)

- BSD subsystem (under “System” category)

- Community Sources (under “Sources” category)

8.  That’s it.  You’re set.  Far as I can tell, all the features work; I had heard reports of things like google maps auto-locate feature not working on a 1.1.3 iPhone that had this run on it, but, it seems to be working fine for me.  If you have any problems, I’d love to hear about it, register and reply to the post.

Tags: ,
Posted in Updates, iPhone Updates, iPhone hacks, zibri | 3 Comments »

1.1.3 jailbreak apparently accomplished, details to follow

Sunday, January 20th, 2008

I’m seeing reports that 1.1.3 has been jailbroken, but that it apparently involves some hardware. Trying to get details now.

In the meantime, DON’T UPGRADE TO 1.1.3 UNLESS YOU WANT TO GET STUCK THERE. The jiggling icons & google maps pseudo-GPS are cool but, they’re not that cool.

So here’s the deal.  The motivated geniuses on the iPhone Dev Team have got the method, and have posted a couple of videos to youtube showing the results.  But, here’s where the cat-n-mouse game comes into it.  They’re not going to release the method until after Apple releases the SDK.   Makes sense if you think about it - the SDK may come with yet another upgrade, or maybe not.  But, it would be bad to have to choose between jailbroken and the SDK apps.  By waiting until the SDK has been relased, then we have a sweet spot where we’ve got that and all of our third-party apps.

The annoying thing is, that this is so completely unnecessary.  Wouldn’t it be so much easier if Apple would just give us OpenSSH and terminal.app with the new upgrades.  The cat & mouse game goes on, they break our unlock for a day or week or two, and then we’re back to playing our games on the new firmware.  It’s not going to end, there are more smart motivated people trying to unlock it than there are trying to keep it locked.  I hope Apple isn’t wasting a lot of effort on this, which could be better spent improving the iPhone/iPod Touch with, oh, I don’t know, maybe Flash viewer or something?

Posted in Updates, iPhone hacks, iPod Touch hacks | 1 Comment »

My hacked iPhone, and Apple Warranty service

Saturday, January 19th, 2008

So, my iPhone died last week.  Plugged it in at night, next morning, it was dead-dead.  Not just “mostly-dead”, but dark, unresponsive, no combination of button-pushing got any response at all.  Even tried swearing at it in several languages; nothing.  So no option to re-load the standard 1.1.2 firmware, just completely dead is the point I’m making here.  As you’d expect, I had “Installer.app” and a few dozen third-party apps installed on the phone.  Well, _this_ could get interesting, let’s see what happens.

So, I called Apple support, and talked to someone whose primary language is actually English (nice surprise), who had good communication and technical skills, and was helpful and informative.  Just like every other call center / helpdesk we all call, right?

So anyway.  Explained what I had done (well, the parts they needed to know, anyway…), tried it on 2 different computers, 2 different cables, 2 different chargers, etc.  He verified a few button-push combinations with me, went off to check something, and came back with “OK, let’s get you a loaner then”.  Long story short, even though my iPhone went back in with a huge amount of third party software, they warranty-replaced it for free, no problems.

Now, it could be that it was so dead, they couldn’t boot it and find that out - if you send one in for service and you _can_ put the current firmware on first, do that.  But, if it’s dead-dead, my experience at least, was that it’s not a problem.  Good to know that Apple does the right thing…a hardware failure wasn’t related to me having Solitaire and whatever else installed on the phone, obviously, and they didn’t pretend it was.   Also good to know that Apple hasn’t outsourced their tech support to a country where we can’t understand the people trying to “help” us.

Timeframe, in case you’re interested:

Call to Apple: Sunday Afternoon

Loaner iPhone arrives at house: Monday

Shipped broken iPhone to Apple: Tuesday

Apple receives phone, decides to replace, and ships out replacement: Wednesday

New phone received at house: Thursday

So, I was without an iPhone for less than 24 hours from when I called, and the hardware failure was fixed no charge.  Not bad, Apple.

Posted in Warranty issues, iPhone hacks, iPod Touch hacks | No Comments »

1.1.3 is here. Upgrade & downgrade notes

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

It’s here, in all it’s un-glory. OK, the google maps auto-locate thing works well, centered the bullseye on the building I’m in. Pretty impressive, glad to see it works. The moving icons around thing, well, we’ve had for a few months. Implemented well though as one would expect from Apple. Being able to put bookmarks on the main page is nice, but it doesn’t use the favicon as the source for the button, which seems to me to be a blisteringly obvious oversight. Ah well, we’ll see in 1.1.4. Dramatically missing continues to be Flash Player.

So the “upgrade” to 1.1.3 is simple and painless, as expected. Let’s talk about getting back to hacked. I have a bet for a lunch with a coworker (I’m informed it’s for the sushi place) so I have some motivation here.

Update:  I know a lot of ways to not do it so far.  Got a couple more things to try but, worst case, I’ll post a list of what _doesn’t_ work.

Posted in Updates, iPhone hacks | No Comments »

You’re still brave, but…

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007

Hey, guess what? Remember that Part 2 of the jailbreak mentioned last week?

Its out: http://conceitedsoftware.com/iphone/site/112jb.html

It’s pretty simple to follow, but I’m sure that the other writer here will provide you with a step-by-step because that’s what he does. Stay tuned if you’re waiting for that. Otherwise, proceed and good luck.

(This writer is still on 1.1.1 as 1.1.2 provided NOTHING of interest to me)

Posted in iPhone hacks, iPod Touch hacks | No Comments »

If you’re a brave one

Friday, November 9th, 2007

If you went ahead and ran “OktoPrep” prior to upgrading to 1.1.2, don’t worry because your phone looks stock. We have some news.

I just received word that the OktoPrep package is part 1 of 2. There is a second tool, a “Post-Upgrade” if you will. It has not been released yet, but it will be soon. So, either hold out and run the 1.1.1 hacked for a while, or do 1.1.2 and wait for the tool to bring your phone back.

Either way you look at it, it seems that the iPhone hack community has certainly out “Tom and Jerry’d” Apple. What will Tom, errr, Steve, do next?

Posted in iPhone hacks, iPhone tricks, iPod Touch hacks, iPod Touch tricks | No Comments »

Upgrading 1.1.1 hacked to 1.1.2 (will lose mods)

Friday, November 9th, 2007

I don’t see a compelling reason to do this, but it’s good to know that you can without bricking the phone. 1.1.2 doesn’t add any killer features, and seems to only patch the .tiff vunlerability (which, if you’ve followed the normal process, is already fixed). But, as an exercise so you don’t have to, I’ve upgraded my iPhone to 1.1.2 to see how it goes.

Here’s how you get from 1.1.1 to 1.1.2 without having to go through and reinstall all your music. As usual, no guarantees, smoke & flame, backup your data, and your mods will go away, etc etc, but this worked for me:

1. (you know it’s coming) sync your data & download your pictures.

2. Not really a step but, remember, you might your voicemail and email passwords to enter after the upgrade. So get those ready. (I didn’t need them but doesn’t hurt to check)

3. Go into the installer.app and select “oktoprep” from “recent packages”. You’ll get a popup window on the iPhone/iPod touch saying “You are now ready to perform an “Update” to 1.1.2 and continue with the TouchFree process.” Now, it doesn’t tell you or me what the “TouchFree process” is, or how we are continuing with something we didn’t know we were using, but lets read on together and find out.

4. Click “Update” in iTunes. Hmmm. “This version (1.1.1) is the current version.” What’s up with that? Turns out Apple hasn’t pushed it yet but it’s on their download site: http://appldnld.apple.com.edgesuite.net/content.info.apple.com/iPhone/061-4037.20071107.5Bghn/iPhone1,1_1.1.2_3B48b_Restore.ipsw

5. Click on that URL and when your browser asks you what to do, save it to disk somewhere you can find it in step 7.

6. Wait patiently for the download to complete.

7. in iTunes, hold the shift-key while clicking on “check for updates”. It’ll open up a finder window asking you which file to use. Select the file you just downloaded (iPhone1,1_1.1.2_3B48b_Restore.ipsw) from where you just saved it to.

8. “Extracting software”

9. “Preparing iPhone for software update…”

“Waiting for iphone”

“updating iPhone software” (phone goes to silver-apple screen)

“Verifying updated iPhone software” - this step takes a couple minutes, phone screen still showing silver apple.

“Updating iPhone firmware”

“Your iPhone has been updated”

Phone reboots. My pictures are still there, because it just asked to download ‘em again to the OS.

“Waiting for activation”

“iPhone is activated”

“Slide to unlock”

OK, so, there’s the stock screen with the standard 17 icons. Pictures are there. No music but I didn’t have any music on it before so hard to say. But, I’ve shown I can get from 1.1.1 hacked to 1.1.2 without problem, in case you feel some compelling reason to move that way.

     

Posted in Updates, iPhone Updates, iPhone hacks, iPod Touch hacks | No Comments »

1.1.2

Friday, November 9th, 2007

Its out in all its unglory. It has no features at all that are worth mentioning, except it plugs the tiff exploit hole and disables all your apps again. Oh, but what’s this? Apparently, 1.1.2 was hacked before it was released.

In installer.app, check the recent packages, and you’ll find “OktoPrep.” This app will supposedly allow you to upgrade to 1.1.2 and keep everything it was at 1.1.1. Pretty fancy, but since this is so new, we would suggest holding off until its a proven method.

That being said, what does Apple need to do in order to make people update their Firmware who are reluctant because of a couple games? Right here: Flash. That is the “Killer App.”

Posted in Updates, iPhone Updates, iPhone hacks, iPhone wishlist, iPod Touch hacks, iPod Touch wishlist | No Comments »

Aftermath

Tuesday, October 30th, 2007

Some first time jailbreakers may have an issue with apps after doing the newest 1-step method.

The fix is to have the BSD Subsystem installed via installer.  This should fix the apps crashing issue seen by a lot.

Posted in iPhone hacks, iPod Touch hacks | 1 Comment »

Enter: AppSnapp

Monday, October 29th, 2007

I was going to post the method I used to jailbreak the 1.1.1 iPhone, which was done in less than 10 minutes. However, the guys over at www.iphoneatlas.com beat me to a better post with a simple 1 step way to jailbreak, WHICH NEEDS NO COMPUTER NOW!

So, we will bring to you, AppSnapp. The process will jailbreak the iPhone or iPod Touch in 1 step, using a website you can visit via EDGE or Wi-Fi.

Just navigate to http://www.jailbreakme.com , then click the “Install AppSnapp” button at the bottom of the page. If Safari disappears and returns you to the Home screen, it’s done, just wait a bit longer for your unit to restart - don’t touch anything until you see the “Slide to unlock screen”. If Safari hangs, just exit Safari (press and hold Home for 4-8 seconds) and try it again. After sliding to unlock, you should have the “Installer” icon on your screen.

That’s $%&*ing simple, huh?

Afterwards, you should then tap the “Installer” icon, then tap “Sources” and install the “Community Sources” package. Next, install the BSD Subsystem and OpenSSH, under “System.” Then, an application launcher. I recommend XLaunch under “System” as it is made for 1.1.1.

Please be aware that some of the utilities require an iPhone and will NOT work on an iPod Touch.

Also, install Summerboard (there are 2, if you are on 1.1.1, don’t use the one labeled “old”). This app will give you a way to change your icons, themes, and gives you a ’side-scrolling’ method to look at all your icons on your home screen.

WARNING: STAY AWAY FROM CUSTOMIZE. It is a package used to customize your interface, reorder icons, etc… What it actually does is turn your iPhone into an iPod touch, minus the iPod part (no icons, but top bar gives you the time and the “iPod” label instead of “AT&T”). I had first hand experience with this and had to restore my iPhone - no other way to reverse this issue. Others are experiencing this as well and there is even a post on the developers site saying “Sorry for the iPod issue.”

I would only recommend Customize after it’s been through at least 2 revisions.

Posted in iPhone hacks, iPod Touch hacks | No Comments »

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