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Cydia update courts iOS 7 jailbreakers with a new interface (video)
The availability of an iOS 7 jailbreak may have caught the Cydia team off-guard, but not for long. Jay Freeman and fellow developers have just updated their unofficial app platform to match Apple's minimalist look. It's more than just a cosmetic upgrade, too, as it includes iOS 7's swipe-based navigation and appears to run faster. Individual app writers will still have to update their code for everything to run smoothly, but jailbreak users who've just been waiting for an OS-native Cydia will want to check for the update today. [Image credit: iOS Hacker]
Developers gain root access on Google Glass, not yet sure what to do with it
Access to Google's Glass headsets is still limited to a lucky few, but that's more than enough to include several curious coders. Some have had success identifying the hardware contained within, but others are focusing on the software. Cydia founder Jay Freeman posted the above image on Twitter this afternoon to show that he had gained root access on his unit, telling Forbes he relied upon a well-known Android 4.0.4 exploit to take control of its OS. The bad news? He hasn't been able to use it much yet, since the Explorer edition isn't quite ready for prescription glasses wearers. For now, the question of whether the same technique will work on eventual retail versions remains unanswered, as well as what it's actually going to be useful for. Steven Troughton-Smith suggests developers can use it to try out more complicated apps than Google currently allows, including always-on heads-up displays or camera apps. Overcoming any remote deactivation Google may try to enforce or loading your own unauthorized apps are also definite possibilities, though we're sure others will surface soon.
Evasi0n used to jailbreak 7 million devices in less than a week
Forbes talked to Jay Freeman, aka Saurik, who confirmed that the recent Evasi0n jailbreak is the most popular jailbreak in iOS history. According to Saurik, the utility was used to jailbreak more than 7 million devices in the four days since it was released earlier this week. Freeman claims his Cydia jailbreak marketplace has been visited by an insane amount of traffic that includes 5.15 million iPhones, 1.35 million iPads and 400,000 iPod touches. iOS owners who used the Evasi0n tool can attest to this incredible amount of traffic as many could not connect to Cydia in the hours following the release of the jailbreak. You can read more about the iOS 6 jailbreak and its rapid adoption rate in the original article on Forbes.
TUAW Origin Stories: Cydia
This was a special treat for me, being a huge fan of anyone who hacks a closed system to make it better. In this Origin Stories we learn how Jay Freeman (saurik) got started in programming and how he came to create Cydia. Cydia is the premiere "alternative" apps venue outside Apple's own App Store. Jailbreak fans know it well, and yes, you must jailbreak your iPhone to use it. But as jailbreakers know, using Cydia means having access to a plethora of useful tweaks and enhancements in iOS. If you've ever wanted more icons in your dock, or the ability to ignore a paired Bluetooth keyboard (our own Erica Sadun wrote up something for just that), Cydia's vast repositories of useful goodies will help you customize iOS to your heart's content.
Come see Jay Freeman (saurik) at IndieDevLab today
If you jailbreak you likely are familiar with Cydia, so come hear the man behind the alternative to the App Store, Saurik (aka Jay Freeman) today at IndieDevLab in San Francisco at 11:45am. Also a reminder: we'll be shooting videos about why you created an app (and yes, it can be a jailbreak app) starting tomorrow and going through Thursday. We've sent out the confirmations for Wednesday, but if you come by Thursday we might be able to slide you into the schedule -- although read this post first and understand the caveats. This week in San Francisco has thus far been a great one, even for those who didn't get tickets to WWDC. And don't forget Appsterdam, another alternative workspace for devs during the conference.
Cydia Search enables effortless searching of Cupertino's least-favorite app store
Wish finding an app in Cydia was as easy as locating a slot machine in a Vegas casino? Then you might want to give Planet-iPhones' new Cydia Search a whirl, which lets owners of jailbroken iOS devices peruse the renowned gray-market catalog from the comfort of their desktop browser. That means you'll be able to search by name, description, author and a handful of other relevant tags, and once you've found an interesting app, you can view its price, version, repository, and its actual location within Cydia. While the project borrows a number of features first introduced with ModMyi, users will likely find the Cydia Search interface more rewarding -- though both are excellent utilities for browsing the entire app store before rooting your handset. So whenever you get fidgety and decide to replace Apple's boot logo with one from Subaru (or whatever tickles your fancy), you'll know where the journey begins.
Cydia 1.1 unleashed, performance improvements abound
Owners of jailbroken iPhones were greeted with a welcome tweet recently, as Cydia -- Steve Jobs' least favorite app store -- announced its version 1.1 debut. Despite third-party repositories getting hammered early on, and a now resolved 'hash sum mismatch' snafu, the update continues to roll, and hacked iOS devices are gobbling it up. Indie app seekers will notice a snappier interface, better search results (thanks to refined algorithms), and the ability to resume downloads. Saurik's efforts to streamline code have reduced its memory footprint as well, bringing increased stability to the marketplace that continues to rock the App Store's boat. 130,000 downloads were noted in the first three hours -- was yours among them?
Apple TV Hacking: hackers, grooveshark, Bluetooth stack
Family responsibilities have kept me from posting about many amazing developments going on in the Apple TV hacking community this past week but I assure you that things continue to move ahead quickly and in promising directions. Brian Chen wrote up a great summary of this effort over at Wired. This week has brought forth several new system enhancements including NitoTV enhancements and the recently-introduced Plex module that can be installed to the system menu. There's more to come. The first alpha of the Apple TV grooveshark client has been written as a collaboration between NitoTV developer Kevin Bradley and @hackfrag, as shown in the video embedded below. Grooveshark provides peer-recommended music streaming as well as Pandora-like playlist generation. It's yet another exciting Apple TV add-on in its new iOS incarnation.
Cydia merges with Rock, becomes your one-stop jailbroken iOS app shop
4.6 million installs later, Rock Your Phone is no more -- but over the next few days, it will join with rival Cydia to form what will surely be the largest alternative iOS app store. Not simply a merger of platforms, the deal will apparently see Cydia and Rock's software teams merge as well -- meaning not only should Rock users have all their software licenses transferred over, but that Rock-exclusive features (like backups) are now on the roadmap for Cydia, too. We'd recommend that jailbreakers the world over take to the streets to celebrate the joyous news, but sadly there's still some work to be done.
Alliance of the jailbreakers: Cydia acquires Rock
It's official: the two largest jailbreak app stores for the iOS platform, Cydia and Rock, are getting together. ModMyi is reporting that Jay Freeman (AKA Saurik) and Mario Ciabarra (AKA psuskeels) have been working through an acquisition of Rock Your Phone, Inc. by SaurikIT, LLC for several months now. That deal became official last night, and over the next 10 days there will be a transition from Rock to Cydia where users can continue to purchase and download apps from the Rock app. After that time, users will need a Cydia store login to continue buying apps. Many of the themes and apps on Rock are already found on Cydia; the remainder will be transferred to Cydia as soon as possible. According to the post, Ciabarra will continue producing the Intelliborn line of jailbreak apps, which includes such big titles as MyWi, Tlert, MyProfiles, My3G, and Intelliscreen. At a recent "geek lunch" in Denver that Erica Sadun and I attended, Ciabarra noted that Rock Your Phone has been quite successful, with total revenues from startup in March of 2009 accumulating to over US$3 million in August of 2010. Ciabarra's comments in the post indicate that he prefers doing app development to enhancing platform functionality, so the acquisition will let him get back to doing what he does best and loves the most. Although the two stores have both had their supporters and detractors, the merging of Cydia and Rock should be a win for the two companies and for the jailbreak community as well.
Older Apple iOS devices must jailbreak to be secure -- oh the irony
Remember that nasty PDF bug that allowed potentially malicious code to be executed on your iOS device? Right, the one that Apple recently patched with the iOS 4.0.2 software update, slamming the door on jailbreakme.com. Well, if you own the original iPhone or iPod touch you're still at risk since Apple's update isn't compatible with those devices. Hell, many iPhone 3G owners are also at risk after rolling back their handsets to iOS 3.1.3 due to sluggish (to put it mildly) performance running iOS 4. So what can you do to protect yourselves? Jailbreak. As counterintuitive as that sounds, Jay Freeman (aka @saurik) just released a patch onto Cydia (search for "PDF Patch") for all iOS devices, no need to update to 4.0.2. Of course, jailbreaking presents its own set of risks, so be careful -- and for crissake be sure to change the root password if you install SSH.
Found footage: the REAL iPhone 4 jailbreak, courtesy of Saurik
So, you have an iPhone 4, but you're missing all of that Cydia love? Well, in a recent interview with Make It Work, Jay Freeman (known to the jailbreak world as Saurik) talked about the iPhone 4 jailbreak. But wait, there's more -- he also showed the Cydia store on his iPhone 4, which is the App Store replacement found on jailbroken iOS devices. An extended interview will air tomorrow on KNX 1070 Newsradio in LA from 1 - 2 PM PDT, and in San Francisco on KSFO 560 between 3 - 4 PM PDT.
360iDev: Saurik on the mobile application market
Jay "Saurik" Freeman took the stage here at 360iDev last night to explain the mobile application marketplace. The entire mobile application marketplace, that is. Most people wrongly perceive the App Store to be a simple user-and-developer relationship, but in reality, it's a much more complicated place, with lots of inputs and outputs for time, money, and work. You can see the big picture of his chart above -- the "user" is the faceless woman near the middle, and the "developer" is the bearded man to her left. But everything else is a company or a connection that Saurik spoke about. Saurik runs the jailbreak app store Cydia (which has over 10,000 packages available, hundreds of which for a fee, on which they've pulled in over $1.3 million so far), and so he's closely interested in almost all facets of this relationship chart, and how money can flow from users of all kinds to developers across the world. In an entertaining and very insightful presentation, he basically walked the audience through his chart and, piece by piece, gave a wide-reaching overview of how the mobile app marketplace works today.
TUAW How To: Downgrading your 3.1.3 iPhone to 3.1.2
Last week I downloaded (but did not install) the iPhone OS 3.1.3 firmware for my 3GS. I wanted to have a copy of the firmware on hand, but didn't want to upgrade right away. I checked "Do not ask me again" and clicked Download Only. I thought that was the end of the matter. Unfortunately, this Sunday, I plugged in my iPhone and left the room to grab some tea. When I returned, the iPhone was 50% of the way through the 3.1.3 firmware upgrade procedure. It did something I had no idea that it would do: it upgraded me without asking. How frustrating! What's more, I didn't have a copy of 3.1.2 on-hand to downgrade to because iTunes automatically deleted the old firmware files and I was using default Time Machine settings; Time Machine does not normally back up ~/Library, the folder that contains the iTunes ipsw files. Fortunately, I had several resources. First, because I had jailbroken my phone and registered my device signature with Jay Freeman's caching service, I knew I could downgrade my phone. As Jay and I discussed in this LiveChat from a few months back, Apple no longer allows you to freely downgrade your iPhone software. All firmware installations must be verified with Apple's signature servers. By jailbreaking your phone and registering your device signature with Jay's system, you'll be able to bypass Apple's verification system and return to the firmware you prefer -- or at least to the earliest firmware whose signature you have stored on the caching site. To make this happen, you must both register your device and update your /etc/hosts file. Jay's site has complete instructions on how to comply. Second, I could grab a copy of old firmware from sites like Felix Bruns' http://www.felixbruns.de/iPod/firmware/ and iClarified's http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=750. These sites provide Apple download links for old firmware releases. I downloaded a fresh copy of the 3.1.2 ipsw (iPhone software archive) and installed it onto my system. Using a standard option-restore trick, I was able to put that firmware onto my iPhone. iTunes verified the upgrade with Jay's server and installed it onto the device. Note: If you receive the "The iPhone could not be restored. An unknown error occurred (3004)." error, make sure to quit iTunes and flush caches at the command line: sudo dscacheutil -flushcache. If your device updates properly, you will receive a 1015 error and your unit will now enter a semi-permanent recovery mode, the mode in which your device shows an iTunes logo and will not boot further. To proceed, you'll need to use iRecovery. Download a copy from this site. (It requires libusb, so read the entire post before running.) Run iRecovery from the command line and supply the -s flag. Wait for the "]" prompt, and do not type anything until you see that prompt appear. Enter the following commands: ] setenv auto-boot true ] saveenv ] /exit After, you will return to the command line. Reboot your phone by pressing the home and sleep buttons for 10 seconds, per the instructions on the site, and your iPhone should boot back to standard 3.1.2. Note: Be aware that this method does not downgrade your baseband. It remains at the 3.1.3 setting. Thanks Jay Freeman, Sjoerd (aka WiFone), and Paul "PhoenixDev" Griffin
Saurik live chat: Learn about Apple's new signature server
Something new, unexpected, and possibly worrying has popped up in iTunes. iTunes now "calls home" to the Apple mothership whenever you restore an iPhone or iPod touch. It tells you that it's "Verifying restore with Apple...", checking your device identifier and the firmware with Apple's new signature server.Today, TUAW has the pleasure of talking with Jay Freeman, otherwise known as "Saurik", the developer of Cydia. Saurik has constructed a server that duplicates Apple's functionality, ensuring that you'll be able to downgrade your iPhone or iPod in the future, even if you have not jailbroken your device. This topic is for all iPhone users, regardless of whether they use jailbreaking. Please join us with your questions and comments as we hear from Freeman about why this move matters to you. Read on to see the full live chat transcript.
Announcement: Saurik live chat at 4:15 (ET) today
Please join us this afternoon at 4:15 Eastern for a live chat with Jay "Saurik" Freeman. Jay is going to talk to us about Apple's new signature server and what that means to you as an iPod or iPhone owner. Have you noticed a new message in iTunes when you restore an iPhone or iPod touch? "Verifying restore with Apple..."? iTunes is now checking your unit against a registered database and deciding whether to allow you to install your firmware or not. Potentially, Apple could disallow downgrades to previous firmware versions. According to Freeman, this move allows Apple to "recall existing firmwares by keeping people from restoring to them in the future. To do this they simply would refuse to ever sign, for example, iPhone OS 3.0 again." Freeman will explain why this is a real problem to both the standard App Store community and to the jailbreak community. Join us with your questions.
Veency: VNC Server for iPhone
We recently got a tip over to this It's Just Poison post about Veency for jailbroken iPhones from Jay "Saurik" Freeman, the author and maintainer of Cydia. Veency provides a VNC remote desktop server for your iPhone, allowing you to connect to the shared screen of your handheld from any VNC client (Apple Remote Desktop, Chicken of the VNC, and more). I downloaded a copy to my iPhone, rebooted and gave it a whirl to see how well it worked using Chicken of the VNC on my Mac. From first go, it did what it promised: offering tap-interpretation of my Mac-based mouse clicks as iPhone-sourced finger taps. The current mouse position on the Mac was echoed as a small "x" on the iPhone, so I could always see where the virtual finger was.
TUAW Responds: iPhone LoJack
Way back, one of our readers begged for an iPhone LoJack solution. He wanted his iPhone to "call home" regularly in case of loss or, let's be more realistic, theft. Over the past week, I finally had a chance to give this request some time, and I put together findme. It's a command-line program that returns the location of the cell phone tower nearest to your iPhone. When run, it tells you the tower id, plus its latitude and longitude courtesy of Google Maps. Still, how to get the location report to a place you can get it... but nobody else can... and without receiving a zillion SMSes? For this part of the puzzle, enter Twitter. Twitter dev Britt Selvitelle helped walk me through the setup for a private account that allows your iPhone to phone home but keeps the location data relatively secure. To do this, create a new Twitter account just for your iPhone (it will need its own unique email address, separate from your main account, so have one handy). Open the Settings panel, and look for the "Protect My Updates" checkbox. It's towards the bottom of the page, just above the Save button. Check this and click Save. With protected updates, only the Twitter users you approve will see the updates for this iPhone-only account (just you? you + spouse? spouse, kids, and "special friends?" Up to you).Update: I've put an updated version of findme (findme-better) into the TUAW folder on my site. Please let me know if this works better for location for you. To use, just copy to your iPhone (you may have to use Firefox if you get errors after downloading with Safari), rename to "findme" and replace the original findme.
