It’s OK to upgrade to iTunes 9.01 if you have a jailbroken iPhone. I’ve tested it myself.  Also see this report.

As unnecessary as it is to point out the obvious pissing-in-the-snow metaphors used as the names by most of the recent jailbreak and unlock tools, it is perhaps worth calling attention to the fact that the snow of territorial marking has shifted from Apple itself to the budding rivalry between the Dev Team and new kid on the block GeoHot.

George Hotz (b. 1989) or GeoHot first beat the Dev Team to a viable jailbreak for the 3GS with purplera1n.  It should be noted that the Dev Team had already produced a 3GS jailbreak some time before, but had been holding out on releasing it by claiming that to reveal the exploit too soon might make it impossible for any new 3GS owner to jailbreak later, assuming Apple would close the exploit. GeoHot’s release forced the issue, and may have screwed later 3GS jailbreakers in the way the Dev Team feared. But it demonstrated that the Dev Team can no more lock down exploits than Apple can lock down the iPhone.  Like it or not, this kid is a new player and thus a new factor to contend with.

Then on July 13, 2009, GeoHot released purplesn0w, which he claimed to be a better software unlock than the Dev Team’s ultrasnow.  The Dev Team was quick to respond in kind. In their Winter Tires blog post the next day, the Dev Team announced that it had evaluated GeoHot’s claims about ultrasn0w drawbacks and the methods of his purplesn0w.  They defended ultrasn0w and insisted that GeoHot’s claims about deficiencies were overblown.  However they also admitted that some of his methods were better than theirs, and updated ultrasn0w to utilize some of the methods GeoHot found and used in purplesn0w.

While I’m hardly a proponent of free market logic, it seems in this case that a bit of healthy competition ends up good news for the jailbreaking community as a whole.

In other pissing war news, it was also reported today that the new iTunes 8.2.1 update closes the method used by the Palm Pre to allow its competing phone to sync with iTunes.  While I obviously own an iPhone and not a Palm Pre, it is my opinion that Apple is way out of line here, and deserves another law suit over this.  They gotta just relax.

Most jailbreakers will be familiar with Winterboard: the Cydia-installed package that allows you to theme your iPhone with custom springboard pictures, icons, sounds, etc.

But what if you only want to customize some of your alert sounds without the RAM overhead of Winterboard, which some have reported is considerable?

It is easy enough to simply replace any of the default alert sounds.  If you Google for “iPhone custom sounds” you will find a number of forum postings that describe how to do this.  Unfortunately most of those postings are very partial.  So here is a summary of what I’ve learned while doing this, along with a download for a nice set of replacements for new sms, new mail, and new voicemail that I converted from iRing Pro’s Zen Collection.

Step-By-Step Guide

1. Create custom .caf files or download some (See below.)
2. All of the default alert sounds are located at /System/Library/Audio/UISounds/
3. Since they are small files, backup the entire contents of that folder to your local hard drive. (Just download with Cyberduck.)
4. Rename a copy of each of your custom sounds to the corresponding iPhone sound filename, exactly. (See below.)
5. Replace originals by uploading with Cyberduck.
6. Ownership and permissions are root/wheel 644. (May or may not be necessary to set those permissions for replaced files. Use the Get Info button in Cyberduck after replacing.)
7. Reboot phone.
8. Turn on your ringer.
9. Reset iPhone Sound settings as appropriate.

Converting audio files to .caf

1. Replaced files must be in AIFF format. (Try Switch to convert to .m4r or .mp3 to AIFF.)
2. They must be in stereo 16 bit 44 khz sample rate. (These are default AIFF options in Switch.)
3. They must be 5 seconds or less.  Trim AIFF files with Amadeus, or Quicktime Pro and export to AIFF.
4. File extensions must be changed from .aiff or .aif to .caf.  (For batch rename, try A Better Finder Rename.)

Notes on default audio file names

1. Most of the sounds you can change are obvious by their file names, but note the following clarifications:
2. ReceivedMessage.caf and SentMessage.caf apply to the internal tuh-dum sounds in the SMS application. (Not “New Text Message” SMS notifications or sent mail.)
3. The “New Text Message” SMS notifications are named by number as sms-received#.caf.  The # corresponds to the sound choices in the iPhone Sound Settings for “New Text Message”, in the order listed.  So sms-received1.caf is “Tri-Tone” and sms-received4.caf is “Horn”.  Since Horn is the most annoying, most forum postings will suggest replacing sms-received4.caf.  Then in iPhone Sound Settings you must select the corresponding sound, ie “Horn” in this case. (But do this after reboot when finished, as in step 9, above.)
4. The other sounds you most likely might want to replace are new-mail.caf and Voicemail.caf.

Download my modified Zen Collection sounds

These are the sounds I converted to .caf formatted and trimmed for length:

Voicemail.caf (Tokyo Station)
sms-received4.caf (Kyoto Station)
new-mail.caf (Zen Lo)

Also included is a .caf file for “Zen Fade” but I didn’t end up using it.

Download them here.

Important note: I wrote this back in September 2008 when upgrading to FW 2.2 but never published it to the blog.  Much of it is outdated, but many of the same principles apply.  Since a lot of people will be upgrading to FW 3.0 if they haven’t already, and I don’t have time to completely rewrite this at the moment, I thought it would still be helpful.

Please see several of the most recent blog posts for information relating to FW 3.0, as well as the rewrites of the main pages.

Situation normal

So you have tricked out your jailbroken iPhone and want to upgrade its firmware as painlessly as possible without losing anything.  If you’re like me, you have both free or purchased App Store apps, cracked IPAs, and a bunch of stuff installed with Cydia and/or Installer.  You also probably have hidden apps and/or are using Categories.

What to do?  There are a lot of guides out there for this process.  In particular, see:

(#1). BigBoss’ “How To Upgrade In iTunes”

(#2). BigBoss’ “How To Restore Your 2.1 Backup”

(#3). modmyi’s “Upgrade from Jailbroken 2.0.2 to Jailbroken 2.1 without losing ANYTHING!!”

But these guides are contradictory or incomplete.  I will not try to claim that what follows is in any way definitive. Instead I will point out some considerations I had when reading over the ones above.  Then I will sketch out a re-do of the steps in BigBoss’ guide #1.

The Unlocking Chimera (or, keeping options open)

We know that as of October 2008, the iphone-dev team was still making “slow progress” on an unlocking solution for the iPhone 3G.  You will recall that unlocking means being able to use your iPhone with any SIM card in the world.  It is not the same thing as jailbreaking.  This is important to me.  In order to maximize the chances of eventually being able to unlock my phone, I did not want to use QuickPwn, which, since you must upgrade your phone in iTunes first, means that the baseband firmware will also be upgraded to 2.1.  We wanted to keep the original baseband firmware while upgrading to 2.1.  This required using Pwnage Tool 2.1 and not QuickPwn.

Most easily retaining everything

Several of the comments about (#1) talks about using the Mac OS X application iBaReS (formally iBackup) to backup your iPhone and restore after an upgrade.  This is a more complete way than using iTunes.  Unfortunately it has some quirks and limitations.  These are addressed below.

Dealing with cracked IPAs

(#1) says nothing about the whole issue of Mobile Installation framework patching to allow cracked IPAs to work. Note that Firmware 2.1 needs an upgraded Mobile Installation framework if you were previously using 2.0.x.

Comments and revisions to BigBoss’ steps in (#1):

First, these are amendments and comments on BigBoss’s steps given my considerations above.  Refer to Guide (#1) for complete details.   I will also underscore this:  “never use ‘upgrade’ on a jailbroken device…Restore, do not upgrade.”

Step 0) Same. Upgrade to iTunes 8.

Step 1) Same. Install & run apt backup.

Step 2) Instead of backing up with iTunes, use iBaReS in individual backup mode with all options checked.  First, review the iBaReS readme and usage scenarios file, and check out this thread.  I found as some others did that running an individual backup first before ever using the standard backup put iBaReS into an infinite loop while checking RSA keys and had to be force quit.  The solution, though sucky, is to let it do a standard backup first.  This of course doubles the backup time, so be prepared for this.  Hopefully this problem will be fixed sooner rather than later.

Step 2B) iBaReS even in full mode does not backup anything in your /User/Media/ folder, which means you need a way to back up anything important to you there. In my case this included /User/Media/Comics/ and /User/Media/ROMs/.  You could just copy files with CyberDuck via SFTP or you could try what I did, the terminal command rsync.  Of course you need to adjust the IPs and the paths:

rsync --exclude iTunes_Control/ -av root@192.168.0.203:/private/var/mobile/Media/
/Volumes/Disk/Archives/iPhone-Media/ --delete

The above command is one line separated by a space, but has been broken into two here for readability.

Steps 3 – 5) Instead of restoring the firmware through iTunes and then jailbreaking with Quickpwn in step 5, we used Pwnage Tool 2.1 in Simple Mode.  I made the mistake of answering “Yes” to the question about whether this iPhone had been pwned before.  Apparently, I should have said “No” even if it had, and let Pwnage Tool guide me in putting the phone into DFU mode.  As a result, I got the dreaded error 1600. Apparently I was in recovery mode and not DFU mode.  Heelfan71’s answer in this thread helped us recover from this, and achieve a successful restore of the custom firmware.

Step 4) Same.  Activate service in iTunes but do nothing else EXCEPT despite what BigBoss says, when you are given the chance to name your device, give it the old name.  I made the mistake of following BigBoss on this one and did not do that.  But after I restored from the iBaReS backup in step 7, iTunes would no longer recognize the iPhone.  No amount of re-installing iTunes 8 or restarting phone or computer solved that, so I was forced to start again with step 3 after making it through step 7.  This time naming it allowed iTunes to recognize the iPhone after step 7.

Step 5) Not applicable because we have already jailbroken in step 3.

Step 6) Same. Using Cydia, install aptbackup… Etc.  Unfortunately, whatever aptbackup did was not restored in step 7 either, so I chose to manually reinstall a bunch of stuff from Cydia.  For me this included: OpenSSH, BossPrefs, Categories, and Cycorder.

Step 6B)  Since you will be using your Wi-Fi connection, make sure you have entered any Wi-Fi password in general settings.  Set auto-lock to never, since we’ll need to restore things in step 7.

Step 6C) One of the things you need to make sure to do at this point is to install the new Mobile Installation Framework IPA crack.  One way to do this easily is to join xsellize and then add to your sources the xsellize repo. (http://xsellize.com/cydia/user-pass/) Then you can install IPA Prep 2, found in the “X Apps” section of Cydia.

Step 7) Instead of restoring from the iTunes backup, we’re going to restore from the iBaReS backup. Again, see the iBaReS usage scenarios document and read this thread.  In summary: 1) restore Applications ONLY with “update mode” checked, then 2) restore user and mobile data WITHOUT update mode.

Step iTunes will restore your settings, contacts, notes, pictures, and all your apps. Now to restore the rest of your Cydia installs. Open aptbackup and hit restore. It should reinstall all your packages from Cydia. If aptbackup is now hidden (missing icon) after your iTunes restore, load BossPrefs, go to hidden icons, and unhide it. You can also unhide any other hidden icons here.

Step 9) If you had a bunch of category folders and moved most things into it, the iTunes backup will have made these icons disappear. You  can unhide them via BossPrefs.

Those lucky enough to have a 3GS who intend to jailbreak it must find their iBSS certificate before jailbreaking it for the first time.  Apparently they must keep this certificate around for future upgrades & jailbreaks.

The process is explained by iClarified.

…the more they remain the same.

Much has changed since I first put together this blog for firmware 2.0, and it became apparent that a lot needed to be updated for firmware 3.0.  In most cases, only the names have changed.  In some cases, like tethering and installing WeDict dictionaries, things have changed more fundamentally.

I’ve now gone back through old blog postings and updated the information accordingly.  Please be aware that everything may change again with any new iPhone OS release, but hopefully this blog should provide a clear enough general road map to remain relevant for some time to come.

The Dev Team has released UltraSnow, the software unlock for iPhone OS 3.0 that replaces yellowsn0w.  Yellowsn0w is the originary sn0w that started the pwnage-oriented joke of color-coded territorial piss marking.  Cute, and funny, but rather confusing at times since each snow color release actually accomplished different things.  (See key terms here.)

This release completes the hat trick of releases over the past week that update the jailbreak tools for OS 3.0.  First, Pwnage tool was released for Mac OS X, then RedSn0w was released as a cross-platform successor to QuickPwn, and now UltraSnow makes carrier unlocking possible on OS 3.0.

The Dev Team is owed great gratitude by all the jailbreakers out there for their quality work.  So thanks!  Although days behind their own announced release ETAs, the cycle is now complete.  Watching the tens of thousands of comments on the Dev Team blog, it became abundantly clear that people were waiting for each release with a lot of impatience and frustration, many having upgraded to OS 3 before a jailbreak was available, or while needing the carrier unlock to use their phones, despite warnings to wait.  It also became clear that many people never understood the distinction between jailbreaking and unlocking.

UltraSn0w is available via Cydia after adding repo666.ultrasn0w.com to your sources.

We all know that iTunes will generally restore your application settings and documents after an upgrade. But if you are jailbreaking and restoring fresh, this rarely goes very smoothly. I prefer to have iTunes sync all my apps from scratch and not touch the backup, then restore the documents and preferences for each app.

For Mac OS X, I put together and AppleScript to do this. It is an advanced script that requires some knowledge of shell scripting, SSH, and applescript.

After reading the initial comments, if you want to go ahead, download the compiled application script from rapidshare here. (Because copy & paste wouldn’t compile, I’m just including the comments here. Must download actual script.)

This download is the version for 6/20/2009. (tested successfully with a couple bug fixes.)


(*
RESTORE APP SETTINGS AND DOCS
by metaclam
http://metaclam.wordpress.com
donations accepted via PayPal at web site above
06/19/2009 (see version history at end of beginning comments)

VERSION HISTORY
=====
06/19/2009: initial release
06/20/2009:
- fixed searching for apps with spaces
- other bug fixes and tweaks
- tested successfully after restore from FW 2.2 to 3.0!
*)


Although how much RAM the iPhone 3G has available was not in the published specs, the general consensus is that it is a puny 128 MB.  This means that all sorts of apps that push these limits, especially big games, tend to crash.  Sometimes simply rebooting the phone (power off & on) will resolve problems. (Edit: the new iPhone 3GS has 256 MB RAM which should solve most of these problems, but as of 6/2009 it is still unknown if it can be jailbroken.)

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while now, but was glad to see Big Boss has already posted a very helpful and comprehensive report.

To his comments I would add only the following:

• Close all Safari pages and/or don’t launch Safari after a reboot when you need RAM
• As cool as QuickGold is, if you have heaps of contacts and bookmarks, forget it. Either uninstall it or turn off indexing of bookmarks & contacts.
• Don’t run Backgrounder unless you really need it and are willing to do without the big games.
• Install Mobile Terminal and Top with Cydia, then run top or ps in MT to get process numbers so that you can kill them (requires some basic UNIX)
• The community desperately needs an activity / process monitor to force quit processes that works with FW 2.x
• Edit: The above is now possible with the Process “toggle” of SBSettings (Hurray!) and it works also on FW 3.0. KIll Safari & Mail.
• Edit: There are also a couple of good Memory apps that will free up some memory.  I recommend MemoryInfo. Using that in conjunction with the SBSettings Process killer (to kill Safari & Mail) resolves most problems without rebooting.

(Edit: iPhone OS 3.0 now has a built-in recorder, but it is really lame.  There is no way to name the file (it is named with a time stamp) and when it syncs to iTunes it creates a mess of your file system, placing recordings in the root of your iTunes music folder.) On the plus side, from the looks of it, quality seems OK, using a 16 bit apple lossless AAC file. My guess is the recording length is limited, though I’m not sure.)

The sheer number of applications available for iPhones on the iTunes App Store is fantastic.  At the same time, the sheer number of options to perform particular tasks can be bewildering.   In terms of voice memo recorders, there are at least a dozen good options!  Which one to use will depend on your needs. Unfortunately for my needs none is yet absolutely perfect.

Here is a quick comparison guide.  I tried iProRecorder, Record, Newpea, IDicto, Evernote, and Jott.  Comments on EccoNote & QuickVoice are based on App Store reviews and support pages.  I planned to get to Voice Record, SpeakEasy, and Plum, but ran out of time, so boxes are partial for those.

Notes:

• in addition to these, there are still several others

• comments refer to versions as of 11/9/2008.  it is unlikely I will update this.

Recommendations:

iProRecorder gives the most bang for the buck, but can be a bit unintuitive.  Unfortunately the file format is WAV (!).  Suitable for voice recordings and transcriptions.

Audio Recorder is the only one to support MP3/MP4 with a high sample rate (44.1K) — to maximize on file size.  But it’s expensive and really requires a jailbroken phone to get recordings off it.

Evernote & Jott are suitable for quick memos with web sync, but not for long interviews etc.

So far I have yet to find something perfect — high quality compressed or uncompressed files, easy to organize with auto-naming, easy to get off the phone (preferably with true sync), great appearance, unlimited file size, and cheap (free – $1.99).

Edit: I’ve since settled on Voxie Pro Recorder, which I did not even fully review above.  It meets most of the above criteria and costs $1.99. It allows for sample rates of 8, 11, 22, and 44 kHZ. It has an express record mode, easy naming, and a slick interface.

Please feel free to state your case in the comments or make corrections.

Prologue

As threatened, here we go far afield from the iPhone to realm of music, file sharing, and intellectual property rights.  You probably need no convincing about the joys and ethics of file sharing. But how often do you go out of your way to support artists, developers, and content producers who try to buck the system and make available their work affordably and fairly?

Hutzpah

Paul Westerberg, erstwhile front man of the legendary Minneapolis (p/dr-)unk band, the Replacements, recently released an entire album for 49 cents on Amazon and TuneCore.  The album, titled 49:00, received critical praise on Pitchfork media, the City Pages, and on blogs like the LA Times’ Extended Play, the ModernConservative, the Aquariam Drunkard, and ABC News’  On the Record.  Released as a single track and thus forcing listeners to take in the ups & downs of the album as a whole, the release paid tribute to the album-oriented rock (AOR) era that was killed first by mainstream radio and then by pay-per-song downloads.  The San Antonio Current called it “the biggest format-buster of our digital, format-busting age.”

Like several other artists such as 50 Foot Wave, Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, and Saul Williams, Westerberg was attempting to cut out the middleman in the faith that his fans would support his work if they knew they were supporting him directly rather than the evil media giants. Of those, Radiohead and Saul Williams have since pulled their respective direct downloads of In Rainbows and Niggytardust, making that distribution model seem more like a publicity stunt than a principle – despite Saul Williams’ manifesto on the matter, where he compares record labels to slave traders. (Check out his sales figures and this interview as well.) Former Throwing Muses front woman Kristin Hersh’s 50 Foot Wave seems much more committed to the idea.

Westerberg’s devious plan to make a whole album of must available for half a dollar was foiled by nefarious music industry baddies who apparently threatened to sue him for copyright infringement.  His crime? (Or, the pretext for alleging one?) Quoting some of his favorite songs, like Steppenwolf’s Born to be Wild and the Kink’s Dandy. The cowardly Amazon and TuneCore dutifully pulled 49:00.  His response? Release another track called 5:05, making up the missing minutes of the 43 minute, 55 second long 49:00. 5:05 is a fuck you, where Westerberg sings,“if you wanna sue me…bring on the lawsuit…” 

5:05 is 10% the length and costs double at $0.99 but this is a track you have to buy.  I downloaded 49:00  via bit torrents, but when I went to buy it at Amazon, I discovered it had been pulled.  So I bought 5:05 instead.  Tell the cowards at TuneCore what you think while you’re at it.

Paying for the Free and the Affordable

In the same vein, please support those software vendors and content providers who provide you with free software and free information!  If software vendors don’t lock down their products, buy them.  If content providers give you good information with no hassles (no or few ads, no e-mail farming schemes, etc.), donate to them!  (Box of Clams isn’t a bad place to start, is it?)  If you evaluate software using cracks and serial numbers, pay for the ones you use.  In fact, if they’re a great value, pay extra.

Background

A few days ago I discussed the problem of purchased iTunes app store applications suddenly crashing en masse.  As I suspected, the problem turned out to be some kind of bug in Apple’s DRM.  The problem has cropped up for a whole lot more people who upgraded to iPhone firmware 2.0.2., because, I suspect, a great many of those people had never synched their iPhone with iTunes 7.7.1 and now they have.

Steve Jobs has acknowledged the problem and promised a fix by September.

Solution

The bug appears to be specific to iTunes version 7.7.1.  Downgrading to iTunes 7.7 for me and apparently many others solves the problem, until Apple corrects the bug with a new version of iTunes.  (On the Apple Discussions forums, only one person claims he did downgrade and the problem has nevertheless recurred.  Everyone else reports total success.)

How to downgrade

• Obtain a copy of iTunes 7.7 if you didn’t archive it.  Here’s one host, otherwise try Google.  The established unofficial Old Apps iTunes page currently does not have version 7.7. The MD5 should be:

bdb3bff00fe98dc3d972a0e9de0d592c

• Remove all app store apps from iTunes, as explained in the first post on this issue. Note you will lose all settings and documents.  In iTunes 7.7.1, select your connected iPhone, go to the Applications tab, deselect all the app store ones, and sync to remove them.  Eject iPhone.

• Quit iTunes.

• Delete these files mentioned in this Apple Discussions thread:

/System/Library/Extensions/AppleMobileDevice.kext
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DeviceLink.framework
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework
/Library/Receipts/AppleMobileDeviceSupport.pkg
/Library/Receipts/iTunesAccess.pkg
/Library/Receipts/iTunesX.pkg
~/Library/iTunes/Device Suport (the entire folder)

• Trash iTunes itself.

• If desired, follow other directions offered by p+j in that thread. However, I found that step 2 above was sufficient preparation.

• Restart computer.

• Install iTunes 7.7.

• Logout of your iTunes account in the store menu & log back in.  Re-authorize your computer.

• Connect your iPhone.

• For good measure, try unchecking at least 1 music track or playlist etc, so the first new sync changes the music.

• Buy a free app from the store.  Go back to the iPhone applications tab and make sure that’s the only one set to sync.

• Sync the phone.

• Reboot the phone.

• If you have a jailbroken phone with cracked IPAs, add a cracked one, sync, then reboot phone again.

• If both work, it should be good to go.  Now you can sync anything else.

• If you are backing up, make sure to back up now and remove previous backups to make sure you don’t ever revert to a corrupted version.

Cautions

Downgrading to iTunes 7.7 may present other problems.  If you are running Tiger and have music with unicode text in their ID3 tags, iTunes may corrupt those tags.  This is apparently especially the case of the Tags are version 1.x.   Other bugs might also be present that were fixed in iTunes 7.7.1.

Hysterical Blog

Check out Jaime Hosticka’s site on this whole fiasco. It’s hysterically funny.  Jamie is the guy who provides the iTunes 7.7 link above (which he reports has had thousands of downloads). He is also one of the main people who figured out the cause of the problem was iTunes 7.7.1 and that downgrading works.

Note: reviewing this blog posting while updating this blog for iPhone OS 3.0, I see a lot is quite outdated.   Eventually I’ll do another App Review posting, but for now just look at the Edit: portions. (06/2009)

Essential iPhone Apps

These are my most essential iPhone apps.  Other reviews may follow.

Where is a decent RSS Reader?

I’ve tried just about all of the native RSS Readers currently available for the iPhone and they all are very lame: NetNewsWire (free, syncs with News Gator), azRSS, iRSS, Feeds, and Bylines.  None of them do all the main things I would want: import/export OPML files, save starred items for offline reading, handle offline reading selectively, have easy ways to mark all as read.

For my money, the best thing you can do is create a Google Reader account and then use Google’s iPhone specific mobile Google Reader web app in Safari.  If you add it to your springboard, it even has a nice icon (like the other Google apps).  Then presumably, you can use the native app Byline (way overpriced at $9.99) to read offline Google reader content (like when you’re on an airplane).

Edit:  Since writing this, I’ve settled on the ATOM/RSS Reader by enormego. Not updated too frequently but does pretty much everything I want. There is also a free version, but check the limitations.

How to deal with lack of a Notes sync for the iPhone

Until Apple caves to huge demand for Notes synchronization with the iPhone (edit: which they have with iPhone OS 3.0), iPhone owners have been left to their own devices.

I’ve seen some recommend creating draft emails in Mail and synching mail.  Certainly one approach.

You might try keeping notes all online with Google Notebook and accessing them all through Safari.

The approach I’ve settled on is to use EverNote, which has a native iPhone app, and clients for Mac and Windows which sync nicely with its web based database.

(edit: If you have OS X and don’t use Mail, even the 3.0 notes synching still sort of sucks.  Even if you do, you have to sync with iTunes, not Over-the-Air.  So Evernote is still a very good solution.)

How to read ebook content from your computer offline

There are tons of options here already.  So far I would recommend Files or FileMagnet.  The former takes an approach using WebDav, where you set the iPhone side application up as WebDav server, then mount it in the OS X Finder like a volume.  FileMagnet uses a similar approach, but through bonjour networking, making use of an OS X side client application that allows you to drag & drop files onto it.  FileMagnet is much more slick in appearance, but Files appears to handle more kinds of Files for viewing.

Both of these handle PDFs, RTF, and MS .doc files pretty well. However neither handles the newer .docx files MS Word is now using by default.

There is also BookShelf, which probably handles more files than those two, including more kinds of Palm OS .pdb files (but not all of them).  The problem is the Java based “shelf server” approach it uses is so clunky its pretty much useless at this point.  If it could use the method that FileMagnet does, it would be the best.

(Edit: there are now even still more such apps, and the one I’m using as of 6/2009 is Air Sharing.)

Finally, I should mention Stanza, which unlike the three above is free.  Unfortunately it provides no way at all to get your own files onto it.  It does however allow you to download a fair number of classic works, for later offline viewing.

The best and most essential of the free apps:

YPMobile is not only a yellow pages but contains local event listings. Very useful.

Dial Zero is an offline database of toll-free customer service numbers with instructions about how to bypass useless automated systems and speak to a human.

Writing Pad is an excellent alternative to tapping letters on the keys.  (Edit: now called ShapeWriter. There is also a Pro version.) You basically trace words on the keyboard, with auto-guessing.  It’s quite accurate and impressive.  Unfortunately, you can only use it to compose a new email or a new note.  You can’t use it to reply to an email, to send an SMS, or for any other text entry.  Apple should buy this one.

AIM is of course AOL Instant Messenger.  It has a reputation for being buggy, but so far its been stable, and if you can hook up your friends, its cheaper than SMS.  Although I haven’t tried this, it’s even possible to send an SMS using it to a cell phone, without paying the SMS charges that your money grubbing carrier charges.

Urbanspoon has the best coverage of the location-based restaurant and entertainment guides.  It even has pretty good listings in my smallish college town.

Showtimes has good local movie listings. (Edit: even better now is Movies from Flixter which has Rotten Tomatoes reviews.)

Pandora Radio allows you to listen to customized radio streams with some very impressive artist coverage outside of the mainstream. In case you’re not familiar with the concept, you create custom stations just by entering in a couple of songs you like, and it extrapolates.

Last.fm is also good along similar lines if you use the service on your computer.

Currency is a good and free currency converter.

Save Benjis is a price comparison application along the lines of pricegrabber.

Tips: a lament, and an opportunity

There are currently about a billion tip calculators available. Almost all cost money, and none of them is complete.  Some have slick interfaces but lack essential features, and some have some essential features but not others, and some have many essential features but terrible interfaces.

So developers, since people seem to be willing to pay a buck, here are my tips:

• have a slick interface using built-in interface widgets and big numbers.
• don’t require any text entry: do everything with sliders or buttons, and save last settings
• for sure deduct sales tax before calculating tips.
• Include a US state sales tax value database at least. Better would be to support major international countries and their standard taxes and tips.
• Include a bill splitting feature that shows amount owed by each person for both food and drinks and pre-tip and post-tip values, with a way to exclude non-drinkers.

(Edit: As of 6/2009 I’ve settled on iTipSmart, which does all of the above except the tax database.)

Completely non-intuitive way to set up MobileMe syncing

For a function as basic as syncing your contacts and calendars via MobileMe, its shocking that doing this is so non-intuitive.  You have add your MobileMe account to Settings -> “Mail, Contacts, and Calendars” even if you do not want to sync your MobileMe/.Mac mail account itself. That is where the Contacts, Calendars, and Bookmarks on/off settings are along with the mail on/off settings.

Set your default calendar

This may be obvious, but if you have multiple calendars in iCal, you’ll want to set a default calendar in Settings -> Mail, etc (under Calendars).  Because currently, when you create an event on your iPhone, unless you change the calendar when you create it, you won’t be able to change it on the phone itself.

Using a non-Apple bluetooth headset

This is entirely possible to do, though I won’t go into it here other than to say it works as you would expect. You pair your headset and your iPhone with bluetooth by going to Settings -> General -> Bluetooth to put your iPhone into discovery mode.  You will have to know how to put your headset into pairing mode, and know its pairing code.  For many phones, it will just be 0000 or 1234.  After pairing, you’ll want to turn off bluetooth to conserve batter life unless you are using the headset.  Later, when you want to use your headset, turn bluetooth on in the same place.

Conserving battery life

There are numerous things that drain your battery power, some more obvious than others.  Things to be aware of: pushing is more draining than fetching; turn off wi-fi and bluetooth if you’re not using them. Turn off SSH if you’ve installed it on a jailbroken phone when not using it.  Set your brightness lower. Turn on Airplane mode if you don’t need an internet connection at all and aren’t using the phone (such as when reading or playing games etc).  This CNET video lays it all out.

Connecting Apple’s Remote application to iTunes

Refer to this knowledgebase article if you’re having problems getting iTunes to recognize your iPhone for use with Apple’s iPhone Remote application. 

Note especially the ports that have to be opened on your firewall.

To establish the pair, iTunes requires that your iPhone have both a Wi-Fi connection and also be plugged in with USB and mounted in iTunes.

You should see a little remote icon right under your iPhone in the iTunes device list.  Make sure to close the disclosure triangle so it isn’t off the screen.

Sharing must also be enabled in iTunes preferences.

Dealing with firewalls and ports

This is not specific to iTunes, but many 3rd party apps need to communicate with your Mac, and firewalls will get in the way.  If you have a firewall active, you must make sure that Leopard’s application firewall allows incoming connections for whatever OS X server application some software uses.  Then, if your router has a firewall active, you must make sure to properly route the traffic to your computer.  Doing that is beyond the scope here.  But be aware that many developers don’t make it very clear which ports they use to communicate between your Mac and the iPhone.  You might have to research this or ask them directly.

Making reward wallpapers

In my opinion it is a good idea for the wallpaper you use for your iPhone lock screen to show a message that offers a reward for its return. Surely your iPhone is worth what you paid for it, to save you the trouble of having to recreate all your hard work if you are forced to buy a new one.  

There is a free application on the App Store called “If Found” to do this, but it just creates a white text on a black background image.  But what if you want something prettier and also show this message?

So make a 320×480 jpeg image in photoshop, add some reward text to it with your email address and a reward price, then save as a jpeg.  Add the saved image to iPhoto and then sync an iPhone Wallpapers album or similar to your iPhone through iTunes.

Needless to say, you set your lock screen wallpaper in Settings -> General -> Wallpaper

Making free custom ringtones

In this disgusting display of excess, Apple has voided iPhone warranties just for making custom ringtones!  However, if you have iLife, you can do it for free and presumably with Apple’s seal of approval in Garage Band.  Just save any song portion less than 40 seconds as a ringtone.  There is also a method to basically just rename .m4a files to .m4r files that accomplishes the same thing without Garage Band.

Probably one of the most productive things you can do in setting up your iPhone is spend some time with Safari, even if you don’t use it, setting up some neatly organized bookmarks for the iPhone.

I preferred to make an “iPhone” folder at the top level of my Bookmarks Bar.  Then I made a number of subfolders under that, such as Mobile Portals, Mobile Applications, Mobile Sites, Mobile RSS, etc.  Then you have them handy on your iPhone without ever having to enter URLs on the iPhone.

Here are some of my top ones:

• Google Mobile
• Google Reader
• Wikipedia (unofficial by PowerSet)
• CityTools Ambient News
• MSN
• FaceBook (still more complete than the native application through the App Store)
• Uh…Where (zip codes and area code lookups)
• iNetwork Test (maybe slower than native version but without the springboard space)
• GasBuddyToGo (still no native gas price app?)
• PocketBar
• Zagat Mobile (the best restaurant reviews, period; someday I’ll buy the subscription!)

Right click in Safari to copy the link rather than going to the site, so you have a non-re-directed link.

Find some more at AppSafari or at Apple’s web apps page.

Bookmarks won’t sync

But what to do if your bookmarks aren’t syncing through MiniMe, ah MobileMe, which is a common problem? Refer to this Apple Discussions post, which advises:

Paste the following line* in Terminal, then hit enter:

/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/SafariSyncClient.app/Contents/MacOS/SafariSyncClient
--unregistersyncclient com.apple.Safari

You should get a response of:

YES

Then, paste this line* in Terminal and hit enter:

/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/SafariSyncClient.app/Contents/MacOS/SafariSyncClient
--register

* Each of these single line commands have been broken into two for browser diplay. Each should actually be separated by a single space.

You should get a response along the lines of:

2008-03-23 09:21:08.106 SafariSyncClient
LightweightMallornLoginSession is registered.
YES

Then try syncing. You should be good to go.

If not, you may want to reset bookmark syncs from your computer, replacing data on MobleMe also.  Do this from System Preferences -> MobileMe (.Mac on Tiger) -> Sync -> Advanced -> Reset Sync Data.  Note you are able with Leopard to reset only the bookmarks and not everything else.

Hopefully we won’t need to do this constantly and Apple will fix this bug in an OS X update.

Recently, when I missed a call, I found the sounds settings of the iPhone were at zero level.  I am certain I never set them to that level.  At first I suspected a coy trick of Apple to f*ck with jailbreakers.  But once again, I found it was a known bug that non-jailbreakers were also having.

The solution that has thus far worked for me is to do this:

When your phone is locked [sic: sleeping], press the home button twice to bring up the iPod controls, adjust the volume up there and then the ring volume will stay high. This is a work around to a bug and you may need to do it again after you’ve been listening to music.

My 3G connection suddenly died. Rebooting the phone did not fix it. So I said to myself, “uh oh, what now”?

This MacRumors post fixed my problem.

In summary, BossPrefs, which I had installed with Cydia just to toggle SSH, has some issues.  Since I don’t want to use Edge, I had turned off the Edge display setting in BossPrefs.  Turning it back on also re-activated 3G connections, fortunately.

One thing that may have caused the crashing issue is that iTunes 7.7.1 seems to have a terrible problem completing backups. An interrupted backup corrupts it, and may lead to undesired corruption also of the DRM checking (just a theory).  Furthermore, the initial backup takes hours to complete, if it completes at all.

Tips for safer backup

• If you disable automatic backup (see below), you can still do a manual backup by right-clicking your iPhone device in iTunes.*
• Turn on airplane mode before starting a backup.  If you don’t and you receive a call, the backup will abort and leave you with a corrupted backup.
• Plug your iPhone into the USB port of the computer directly and do not use a USB hub.
• Turn off automatic syncing in iTunes Syncing preferences.

* I found that the supposed contextual-menu for the iPhone device manual backup option does not actually exist.  Looking into why, but it would be seriously annoying if the manual option were removed when you disable the automatic option.

Disabling automatic backups

As of now, the automatic backup is completely useless, and it is best to disable it.   Especially if you’re using cracked IPAs with a jailbroken iPhone, it is not advisable to restore from backup anyway, so why bother?

There is a simple application for the Mac called disablebackup that toggles this.

You can also do it directly in Terminal, with iTunes quit:

defaults write com.apple.itunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool YES

To turn it back on, issue the reverse command:

defaults write com.apple.itunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool NO

Locating or trashing existing backups

iTunes stores backups here on the Mac:

~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/

If you delete these, make sure iTunes is quit first.

You can also delete them directly in iTunes’ Synching preferences.

Backup using rsync instead

Instead of using the buggy iTunes to backup your iPhone, you can also do it in a standard UNIX way with the UNIX command “rsync”.  The TwiPhone blog explains how. I would add that you might want to make a shell alias for this.  In bash, you can add a line like this* to  your “.bashrc” file with pico or vi:

alias iphonebkp='rsync --exclude private/var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/ -av
root@my_iPhone.local:/ /Volumes/External_Drive/Archives/iPhone-Backup/ --delete'

* These two lines should be a single line separated by a space.  I broke them into two for readability. Of course, replace my_iPhone with your actual iPhone name and specify a proper path to a local Mac archive folder in the second path.

I was bit by this one hard, and spent nearly 3 days trying to fix it.  In fact, the sour experience was a big part of what led me to create this blog.

All my purchased App Store applications (free and purchased) were crashing at launch.  I assumed that the problem was related to the mobile installation patch needed to use cracked IPAs.  While this might have made it worse, I found out that normal iPhone users have been having this problem as well since upgrading to Apple iPhone firmware 2.x.

Diagnosis

This is somehow related to Apple’s overly-strict DRM checking, I believe, and MacRumors agrees.  With cracked IPAs present, it is very obvious since the cracked ones all work fine but the purchased ones crap out.  It is not a permission problem, it seems. But many people with non-jailbroken iPhones are also experiencing this problem. See this thread on Apple Discussions and this thread there too.

Conclusion: It is not the pwned 2.0.1 firmware that causes the problem. It is some as-yet-identified bad application that corrupts something, causing iTunes to recheck everything. Or else it may be the result of an interrupted backup: another major problem not specific to jailbreakers.

Cure

I had to go to the most extreme of measures to fix this problem short of wiping everything and re-flashing:

Remove EVERY application purchased from the iTunes store completely

What worked for me, and what I suggest, is not to delete them from the iPhone, but instead to CMD-DELETE them all from the Applications library in iTunes and sync. This makes sure to not only get rid of them, but to break existing links to the applications on the phone.

If necessary after doing this, SFTP to your device and make sure there are no traces left.  (Look in /User/Applications/ – then inside each of the hex code unique ID folders.)  It is not necessary to delete any cracked IPA apps at this point.

One tricky bit that I completely did not expect was I also had to use SFTP to delete WeDict, because although I thought iTunes was unaware of it since I moved it to the root /Applications/ folder, apparently iTunes still considered it a purchased application.

If you have at least one cracked IPA still left, you know it “worked” when you get a message when you launch it that says “this application cannot be launched”.  Remember when patching the mobile installation framework we had to install one purchased application first? Well, now we know there are no purchased apps that iTunes is aware of so that’s good news!

Putting one back

Now reboot your iPhone.  Quit iTunes, maybe even restart your computer for magic luck.

Restart iTunes and re-download one purchased app from the store.  You won’t be charged again if you paid for it.  Try purchasing a free app first though. 

Sync the iPhone with iTunes.

You should be good to go!  If so re-download each of your free/purchased apps and sync again.

A possibly easier way, if it worked:

This guy has a video that claims to show he can fix this problem by deleting an app on the iPhone and then re-downloading the same one from the iPhone’s App Store – without even needing to reboot.  However it seemed inconclusive and it did not work for me.

Cautions (or, Leave Britney Alone!)

I’m quite convinced this is likely to happen again with a bad backup or one bad application.  So this is a lesson to me to settle on a fixed set of applications and not overly mess with your iPhone apps once everything is working.  If it ain’t broke (anymore)…

If you must install more cracked apps anyway, I would follow the recommendation of a frog.  He says to always install one free one along with any cracked ones.   Until I get the green light as well, I will avoid installing or upgrading apps from the iPhone’s app store at all. If necessary I will delete them in iTunes, re-download and resync.  Now that everything is working, I am going to try to hold off as long as possible from ever letting iTunes sync my iPhone.  This might be overly cautious but its better than the alternative.

For your information

iTunes syncs the crash logs of iPhone apps and puts them here:

~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice/<iPhone_name>/

You can view these with Console on your Mac.

Appendix

Since writing this entry, I believe there is a more permanent solution:  downgrade to iTunes 7.7.

It is tempting to assume that when you encounter problems with a jailbroken iPhone, it is because the jail break exploit was faulty or you screwed something up.  In fact that’s a pretty good guess, and in the end you may have to bite it and restore your iPhone from a more stable firmware to a state that’s not screwed up.

Do not jump to this conclusion however.  Of the first few problems I had after jail breaking my phone (days after I bought it), it turned out that most of them were being experienced by other regular iPhone users as well.  I will cover each of these in the next few blogs separately.  

But for now, realize three things:

1. You might find answers to your problems in regular places like the Apple Discussion Forums, and not have to go trolling through the darknet.

2. A jailbroken iPhone, if you know what you’re doing, provides you with a much better chance of fixing the problem without having to completely restore.  Very often its a matter of deleting a corrupted file or changing some file permissions, which you couldn’t do otherwise.

3. If you do have to restore with a jailbroken phone, its a bigger PIA because of the extra steps you might have to take. So suck it up, you knew that.