If you’re the owner of both an iPhone and a Mini Cooper, perhaps you’re frustrated with the current set up for plugging your iPhone into the car’s audio system. Todd Schneider was, so he took matters into his own Dremel-laden hands, hacking apart his Mini’s interior in order to provide a better resting spot for his beloved iPhone. He even posted the pictures to prove it.
Why Mini choose the location of the iPod adapter to be in the lower console is beyond me. If you’ve got an iPhone you’ve got to stuff it upside down in the cup holder. And the adapter is too short to use a Profit vehicle mount, its ridiculous.
I made my own adapter extension with cradle and relocated it from the console to the arm rest. It replaces the phone adapter kit and it works perfectly. The cradle fits nicely inside the armrest so you can slide the iphone in and out easily.
If Todd has inspired you, you can follow his example at the link above, where he also walks through the process step-by-step; the parts cost about $75 (assuming you have the requisite tools), but the result is awfully pretty.
[via The Apple Core]
I'm not sure how large the intersection between Linux user and iPhone owner really is, but you might blame at least part of that on the fact that there's no way to use your iPhone with a Linux box. At least, yet. But Linux users are a hearty sort—they're not about to let petty incompatibilities stop them.
Matt Colyer is a developer who's working on bringing iPhone support to Linux by creating a filesystem using fuse that would allow Linux machines to mount the iPhone and allow users access to the filesystem, all without having to jailbreak the phone.
Right now, the project is very much in early stages, and Matt's looking for help from anyone who's willing to contribute by adding information to the documentation of the iPhone's command protocol or by providing traces from iTunes that will help shed more light on the protocol.
So, if you're a Linux user who'd like to at least have the option of using an iPhone with your platform of choice, you might consider dropping Matt a line and seeing how you can help out.
Correspondent Chris Barylick reports:
On Wednesday, the New Zealanders as Polar Bear Farm announced two native applications for jailbroken iPhones capable of running third party applications. The programs, referred to as ShowTime and Search, allow users to capture video and search through contact information, respectively.
ShowTime, which is still in development, is capable of capturing video at a 320 x 427 resolution at six frames per second and can record up to five seconds on the unlicensed version of the software and an unlimited amount of video for licensed users. The video is captured in a raw, uncompressed file format. Future plans for the program include allowing for a higher capture frame rate and a post process option to transcode to a standard video format.
Search, the second program, allows users to search through contact lists on the iPhone by beginning to tap out search criteria such as a name, company, position or notes filed on the contact. Users can also search through iPhone calendar events by entering an event's name, time, location, etc. into the search engine. The program can also help sift through events entered into the iPhone's calendar program, helping to locate a specific event months down the road without having to tap through weeks or months of events as part of the location process. Polar Bear Farm says it would like to include complete contact information, physical addresses, contact pictures and other data in the returned results, localization for international users and possibly a more generalized/Spotlight style search style.
The programs have no cost, but the company is accepting donations via PayPal. If you're in San Francisco this week, you can see Polar Bear Farm at booth 4030 in Moscone West.
The beauty of jailbroken iPhones is the ability for developers to demonstrate the amazing potential of native iPhone apps, inducing the salivation of mouths throughout the techie world. And indeed, some incredible examples of mobile possibilities have already hit the interwebs, like the neat-o PlayStation emulator I wrote about before.
And they keep on coming: Erica Sadun, one of the most prominent names in iPhone cracking, put together Listen, an insanely sweet app that lets you identify songs playing on the radio by putting your iPhone up to the speaker. It listens to the tune for ten or so seconds, then displays its name, album, and artist info. A friend of mine tested it and said it worked "really well," ID'ing a song from Dropkick Murphys' album, The Meanest of Times, which has only been out since September.
If this isn't evidence enough that 3rd-party apps for the iPhone could effectively be its most attractive feature, I don't know what is. Here's hoping Apple isn't characteristically stingy with who gets access to the SDK -- some of the most innovative stuff comes from the independent, little-guy dev who whips up code in his free time, just for the hell of it.
Macworld's Jim Dalrymple reports that the first Trojan for the iPhone has been discovered. As originally discovered by modmyifone, this Trojan only works on phones hacked to use Installer.app. So stock iPhone users are safe, but users with hacked iPhones should be vigilant.
Of course, you should be vigilant anyway. And understand that as the user of a hacked phone, you are at the mercy of the software sources you've set up in Installer.app. In this case, the person who created the Trojan -- reportedly an 11-year-old kid -- used the source jmwiki.com to install an app that posed as Erica's Utilities, but was actually an app that removed files from the iPhone's /var/root/bin directory. Installer.app is really cool, but the fact is, you're installing software over the net -- and so you should only use trusted sources. Or be willing to take the risks involved from downloading and running random software! Your call either way.
In a mere two months, developers are supposed to get access to the famed iPhone SDK, which should let them develop a myriad of useful -- slash-freakin-sweet -- apps for our beloved iPhones/iPod touches. In the meantime, though, a team of brave guerrilla devs are fighting The Good Fight without support from above (and getting so much resistance from behind), creating unsupported-but-still-cool mini-programs that you can install through some clever hacks.
The latest chapter in the underground development tale is not so much useful or handy as it is just plain fun: the intrepid devs have put together an actual working PlayStation emulator for the iPhone and iPod touch. Via MacNN:
The software is installed directly to jailbroken devices, and utilizes images of PS1 discs converted to ISO, IMG, BIN, Z or ZNX formats. Users can also increase the performance of the emulator by installing a specific PlayStation BIOS file, and excuting hidden commands to increase the clock cycle and/or speed of their handhelds.
If devs are capable of feats like this without official support, imagine how cool some of the apps will be once the programming moguls get their hands on the SDK. Can anyone say touch-screen Halo 3?
I know, I know. Not feasible. Pft.
[via Infinite Loop]
Not terribly long ago I provided instructions for jailbreaking an iPhone that had been upgraded to iPhone software version 1.1.2. In short order the comments area was choked with questions regarding iPhones that shipped with 1.1.2. Could they also be jailbroken?
Seems likely to me, thought I, but am I or am I not the kind of guy who's willing to put a few bucks on the line to find out for sure? Turns out I am. I purchased a new iPhone the other day to see exactly how easy it is to jailbreak it without also signing up for another AT&T account (after all, how many iPhones does one person need?). The procedure is not that difficult, but it requires a few extra steps not required of an iPhone that has been updated.
I could regurgitate what I've previously written and then include those extra steps but, quite honestly, I think you'll gain the greatest benefit from visiting modmyifone.com to view its Getting Started iPhone Modding OS X guide. It's a clearly illustrated, three-page guide that takes you from a boxed iPhone running iPhone software version 1.1.2 to an activated and jailbroken 1.1.2 iPhone. For all intents and purposes, what you wind up with is an 8GB iPod touch that bears a camera and speaker.
(By activated I mean only that the iPhone won't bug you to activate it as, after you've followed this procedure, iTunes and the iPhone will believe that it's activated. Of course it isn't so you can't use it to make calls unless you really activate it.)
I performed the operation on a MacBook Pro running Mac OS X 10.5.1 (Leopard) and iTunes 7.5. Worked like a charm.
The usual disclaimers: If you muck it up, you're on your own. I performed the operation successfully twice but you may not be so lucky. Also note that this procedure will not unlock your iPhone for the purposes of using a different carrier. This procedure is useful only for installing third-party applications on your phone.
During the week's quest to install third-party applications on my iPod touch running 1.1.2 of the iPod software I was asked if the same technique worked with the iPhone.
Nope. Try a simple downgrade to software version 1.1.1 from within iTunes and you're faced with a seemingly inescapable error. Fortunately, you can restore the iPhone to 1.1.2 and it works perfectly.
But it can be done. It's simply a matter of assembling the right collection of tools. Follow along after the jump to learn how I did it on my Intel Mac.
Continue reading "Jailbreaking iPhone 1.1.2"
So I spent much of last night and today trying to turn my bricked iPhone into something other than an emergency cell phone. I went through the various methods outlined on the Web for downgrading the firmware from 1.1.1 to 1.0.2 (knowing full well that having run a software SIM unlock in the past, the best outcome I could hope for was a fancy iPod touch).
On my Mac Pro, I downloaded the old firmware, forced the iPhone into recovery mode, and told iTunes to restore from the 1.0.2 software. That failed several times. I then tried the same process with Parallels Desktop running Windows XP with similar lack of results. I then tried reverting to iTunes 7.3.2 on Windows (as written about on the same Web page) and restoring 1.0.2, which worked.
After that, I spent a while trying to reinstall AppTapp as directed. It failed several times on both OS X and Windows, but finally worked (can't remember which OS won in the end).
I then tried to run iNdependence in order to fake an activation of my phone without much luck. But when I brought the iPhone to someone else's Mac, it worked (he might have had a newer version of the software). When we finished, I was holding a previously dead iPhone that could now be used as an iPod, Web browser, Mail client, and various other things -- but not a phone. The hacks I subjected it to both pre- and post-bricking did damage to the cellular radio. Hopefully someone will come up with a way to fix that.
In the meantime, I'm using a brand new iPhone.
We previously reported that the recent iPhone update (1.1.1) not only bricks unlocked phones and wipes out third-party software, but also disables custom ringtones--even those installed using iToner, which had previously survived such updates.
However, it turns out that the update doesn't completely break custom ringtones. Apparently, iToner-installed ringtones remain on the phone after the update; it's just that the phone no longer displays them in the Ringtones list. In fact, if you set a custom ringtone before applying the update, the iPhone keeps that custom ringtone after the update--it appears as the chosen ringtone on the Sounds screen, and it still works (when someone calls, the custom ringtone plays). Unfortunately, the first time you view the Ringtones screen after the update, you lose that custom ringtone.
In other words, if you really want a custom ringtone, but you also want the latest iPhone software, here's how to get both: choose a custom ringtone, install the iPhone update, and then don't ever access the Ringtones screen (at least not until Ambrosia figures out how to get iToner working again.) Of course, this means you should choose a custom ringtone you can live with for a while; maybe a long while...
