apt-get on iphone ? Wanna know how ? Install package 'aptitude' from cydia

Some of you who have come from 2nd Gen Iphone, or OS 2.0 or below (which is Jailbroken ofcourse) might be wondering what ever happend to apt-get command ?

Well, if you are like me then you've probably been searching high and low... the answer is simple. What you will need to do is :

1. Launch Cydia
2. select search
3. enter 'APTITUDE'
4. select the aptitude package > Install > Confirm .... voila!

Hope this works for you!

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Scratched Iphone ? there's a fix for that

I know that most of you guys reading this would have applied a case of some sort on your brand spanking new iphone. Whether the case is still on the iphone now is probably a different story, eh ?


Well you're not alone, I'm in your position. When I first got my iPhone 3Gs I left the original plastic protection for about 1-2 weeks till I got my case from ebay. It was one of those plastic cases that protected the side and back and clicked on nicely to the iphone. The front was meant to be covered by a clear plastic stick on, but I didn't get around to applying this.

Now I don't have that many scratches on my iphone, purely because I'm careful in making sure that the phone is not in the same pocket as the keys - left pocket for the iphone and right pocket for the keys. But somehow, with all these measures that I have taken to try and protect the phone from scratches I have still managed to scratch it ... slightly.

If you are in worse position than me, then you should check out this forum post which explains how to fix it.

When I had the 3G, I bought the ZAGG Invisible shield. Oh boy was that a mistake for two reasons:

1. It is nightmare to get it on... and it doesn't cover the phone completely. There are still gaps, small gaps. 
2. The corners which are a little annoying, end up sticking to fluff in your pockets and don't end up sticking to your phone... in the end you are left removing the whole thing.

Hope this help...

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Books that are Apps

I downloaded my first Book as an App, and this is major selling point for the new iPad, so I thought I would try this out.

I was disappointed and feel that this is not worth it.

I'm planning to travel to europe, so I decided to download the City Guide by Lonely Planet, I decided to get this via an app because I am going to go to several countries and couldn't afford the weight of paperback books. My expectations of a book as an app is that it would utilise features of being an application etc.. After purchasing the city guide, I felt that it hardly used the features of being an App. It offered some basic GPS location etc... where you see what is around you. Granted that this is a nice feature, but what I was disappointed about was that the book/app contained very little images and it was hard to read.

In fact I have found other apps, that are offered for free that are 10 times better than the lonely planet.

Now the problem is that I have downloaded the application, used it, found that it is rubbish and I am stuck with it. Most of the application in the App store work off micro payments, which means that you can sell items at small prices and if someone doesn't like it then they are only out by a small amount and the author still gets paid for the usage. However, the problem with the Lonely Planet book/app was that it is retailing at the same price as the hard copy. If this was only offered as a hard copy this is how it would have turned out:

• Make a trip to the mall to a book store
• Go to the travel section, look for the books about places I going to go to
• Flick through the books, read the sections that interests me (not sections that someone else decides)
• Compare different books to see which one suits me (keeping in mind that some people may actually prefer the way that lonely planet sets out its book).
• Pick the one that I want, most likely not the lonely planet book.

Now when people wonder why anyone would jail break their phone, some will say it is to be liberated and to be able to customise the phone the way that they want. Others will say that they want to try out an application before committing to it.

Thanks for reading...

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Upgrading from 3.0.1 to 3.1.2...jail breaking at the same time

As you may know, I have been trying to figure out how to move on to Firmware 3.1.2 safely from 3.0.1 without screwing up my iphone. Undoubtedly you may think that there are plenty of tutorials available online, and I acknowledge this. What I was concerned about was that I used a particular method to jailbreak my 3GS, which I can no longer remember (i think it was purp1erain, or something). Never the less, there are a number of articles describing the dangers of jail breaking an iPhone and Apple had also made a statement stating that it is not worth the risk.

So with that in mind, my $1200 investment had to be secure and hence my angst in making sure that i was doing everything correctly.

For anyone that is in the same position as me, I hope the following will help you.

I have now successfully upgraded my firmware from 3.0.1 to 3.1.2 and have jail broken my iphone. To do this follow this tutorial that I used from www.redmondpie.com.

Basically this is what I did:

1. I downloaded Pwnage tool 3.1.4, click here


2. I downloaded firmware version 3.1.2, click here


3. Backed up my iphone data:
   
   
   • Connect your iphone to your computer
   
   
   • When the Iphone icon appears, right click (or CTRL + Click) and select Back Up
   
   
4. Once this is backed up, open pwnage tool and follow the steps in the guide from redmondpie.com
5. After you have successfully completed jail breaking your iphone, if your iphone was previously unlocked(which means that you can use any carrier and it is not locked to a particular carrier), then make sure that you unlock it. This had caused some tears for me since after the jail break, I could not make calls until I had unlocked the phone.
6. Once you have done all of this, open up itunes and allow it restore the information from the backup that you made earlier.

Unfortunately, the downside about jail breaking and getting applications from third party sites is that after the upgrade you need to hunt them down and re-download them. Sometimes, the links are broken etc... I guess this is a small price to pay for the convenience of having the freedom of a jail broken phone. From now on, I think I'll backup my IPAs even the ones that I downloaded via Installous, I'll write up a post about this once i have done this.

Thanks

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Safari updates

After a lot of reluctance I decided to update Safari, actually this was by accident and I selected Safari when I meant to only select iTunes. This is part of my jail breaking adventure of version 3.1.2.

Anyway, after the update I noticed a new feature which appears when you open a new tab called Top Sites. At first glance this looked neat, it showed all these sites that I had frequented in a thumb nail... a thumb nail of what seemed to be the last page I had viewed....

I'm not sure whether this is a good thing or a bad thing right now. There were a couple of sites which I didn't realise that I frequented that much to make it into my "Top Sites". I would love to see someone who frequents porn sites, imagine that...

One thing that did concern me was that it showed my facebook page logged in, it showed my netbank page logged in, it showed my gmail account... logged in. Of course this is only just an image of some sort, and the account is not accessible like that. But it did show quite a lot of detail if you did Control and scrolled up to zoom into the cursor.

I managed to find a way to turn this off using a command line, so to execute this you will need

to open Terminal and enter the following (and then press enter of course), you may need to close safari and re-open it to work:

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeTopSites -bool NO

If you decide that you want to re-activate this feature, just simply change No at the end to a Yes.

Thanks

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Upgrading and Jail breaking from 3.0.1 to 3.1.2

Well it seems that the IPA file that I have been trying to get on to my iphone requires 3.1+, unfortunately since my last jailbreak I've left the firmware version sitting at 3.0.1.

Now, 3.1.3 has just been released by Apple around the start of this month. But apparently this is nothing special, unless you have had previous issues with it. Also, a proper firmware patch is not available yet. But it looks like a loop hole has been found. Now it's just a matter of time I guess.

Anyway, I'm not getting much luck in getting information on upgrading from 3.0.1 to 3.1.2 in one go, and jail breaking it. There is a lot of information on the net about jail breaking, with many tools, tutorials, and promises. Some of these even contradict one another. So, it feels like I need to filter the fiction from the facts.

If anyone can assist in answering this, please do... need help with this one.

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Installing IPA files from PC to Iphone without iTunes

I've been trying to install a custom IPA without much success. No matter which tutorial that I followed, it all seemed to get a point where iTunes was involved. However, my issue was that I didn't want to use iTunes on my laptop, because it wanted to wipe everything (remove all the apps etc...).

I thought, there has got to be a way without having to use iTunes. Surely since the iphone is connected via usb or by ssh wifi, we should be able to install the IPA. Initially I used Air Sharing app to move the IPA from my computer to the iphone. This wasn't successful at all.

The good news is that, after reading countless number of tutorials/guides/forum posts etc..., I have found a method that suited my situation which I can share with everyone:

Since I had already jail broken my iphone, I had Cydia already installed and I had installed Installous (let me know if you need instructions on how to do this). Also, you need to make sure that your iphone is connected via WiFi.

1. Open Cydia and goto Selections (tab) > Networking > OpenSSH > then select Install
2. Download and open up a SFTP client (an FTP client that can connect via SSH). Since I was using a Mac I downloaded Cyberduck to use as my SFTP client. If you are using Windows then you can use WinSCP.
3. Using your SFTP client, login to your iphone: The server address for the iphone can be found in Settings > Wi-Fi > select the blue icon of your network and the IP address of the iphone can be found there. The login name is root and password is alpine. If this doesn't work then you may need to google this.
4. Once you have connected to your iphone, navigate to /private/var/mobile/library/Downloads. Copy your IPA file to this directory, this is the directory where installous stores the downloaded IPA files.
5. Go to your iphone and launch the installous app, then go to the Downloads tab and select your IPA file to install. You should be able to install this like any other IPA file.

Anyway, I hope you find this useful.

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