Posts Tagged ‘apple’
Late Friday night with the help of Jeremy I jailbroke my iPhone, and for the past 2 days I’ve been loving it. So, if you have an iPhone (or an iTouch) and you think it’s missing a couple features, read on. First, I’ll tell you about 4 apps that I think are worth crossing over for, and then, just incase I convinced you, I’ll tell you how to do it.
Ok, so, why should you jailbreak. Apple has a crazy lock down on their devices, which can be a really good thing, but when the device is missing something that you really want, that makes for irratation. So, here’s what you can get that might make you want to liberate your phone.
Qik: This is a video app that let’s you not only take video, but upload it to the tubes on the internet at the same time. Awesome. This overcomes the lack of video taking capabilities as well as the demelia about what to do with the video once you have it. You can even hook your twitter account up to it so that once you start taking video you tweet that you are as well as a link to what you’re tweeting, which means that your twitter buddies can be watching what you’re doing in almost real-time. If you’ve got an iTouch, then this probably isn’t a big deal since your lacking a camera to begin with, but if you’ve got an iPhone then this is the money-app.
Backgrounder: Do you hate that you can’t run apps in the background? I did. Ha. But sersiouly, I did. Backgrounder changes all that. This app will let you run the apps that you really like without taking away the other parts of your phone that you can’t use while you’re using that one particular app. For me, the best part about this app is that I can run a chat app (Fring) in the background.
Pushr: This is another one that is useless if you’ve got an iTouch, but if you don’t this solves the problem of what to do with your pictures on your phone. Sure, some of them go to Facebook Mobile albums and other go to BrightKite, but there are those that you don’t really like spending the time emailing, but you’d like to have on the web somewhere. Also, if you’re like me, you don’t sync you iPhone with your computer much, so you don’t really access those pictures much on the computer. This app let’s you (only when your on WiFi) upload your photos to Flickr. That’s easy to do with email or something else if it’s only one picture, but when you’ve got 70 something it’s a pain. Pushr changes that, and let’s you connect with Flickr in a really easy way.
Categories: I had like 30 game apps installed on my phone, but is was annoying to try to find a place to put all those since I rarely used them. There were also apps that I used very rarely, but I really liked having installed on my phone so they were easy to access at those rare occassions. It’s annoying though to keep having to rearrange those apps to make room for new more important apps, but categories solves that. Instead of 3 screens getting filled up with game apps, now I’ve got one icon that’s like a normal folder icon that lets you keep all those apps in one small place.
So, maybe that didn’t convince you, but maybe it did. If it did, go download QuickPwn and have your i-whatever jailbroken in like 40 seconds. The first time I tried I didn’t use QuickPwn and the thing froze and I thought I bricked my phone. Fortunately it was fine, and then I found QuickPwn and now things are great. The instructions are simple, and they tell you how to do everything step by step including putting the phone in DFU mode. And remember, if at anytime you are unhappy with your jailbreaking, you can restore the phone to its original factory settings with just the click of a button in iTunes. Just make sure that if you do jailbreak that you don’t update you phone to a new firmware without either restoring first or waiting until the jailbroken version of that firmware is out. Also, if you’re looking to unlock your phone so you can use a different carrier, then you’ll have to talk to someone else. I use AT&T.
Let me know if you’ve done it and you’ve got some great apps that I missed.
Update: I figured I should add a picture of my second page screen with some jailbroken apps running on it. Here it is…
As someone who owns an iPhone, the iPhone v. Android debate is a fascinating one. Now, I haven’t touched the G1 and probably won’t for quite some time, but I’ve read plenty about it and watched some videos so I suppose I’m just as qualified to talk about this as most people who weren’t in NYC the other day. Anyway, the interesting part for me is what features the iPhone needs now to make sure that people don’t start switching devices. My friend wrote a piece the other day about apps that he would turn his iPhone in for, which is a good list. And just now I read a crappy list about what new features the iPhone needs for it beat or stay ahead of Android.
So… now it’s my turn. I think Google has brought some seriously good features to the mobile platform, but here’s what I think Apple needs to churn out to make sure Android is like Linux instead of Windows.
1. Chat: The fact that the iPhone still doesn’t have a built in that app that runs in the background is sad. My brother-in-law’s Blackberry Curve has that, and so does Android. I’m not going to say much more though because I think this one is a given need for the iPhone.
2. Push Notification, ASAP: I understand the fear of letting people run all kinds of crazy apps in the background because it could kill the phone’s performance. I disagree with the conclusion of just making it off limits, but I understand the concern. Apple came up with a seemingly great response in their idea of Push Notification, but the problem is that it’s still not out yet. I thought it was suppose to be out in September, and while that still leaves it, it doesn’t leave much. Releasing this now could quell some of the Android hype as well. The day I can get push twitter notifications will be a good day.
3. Copy and Paste: Seriously. Get copy and paste and get it sooner rather than later. I thought this was a petty request before I got my phone, but now I recognize my ignorance. Just get it on the phone.
4. Walking Directions: I guess this isn’t so much Apple’s fault as Google’s and Google may not be all that interested in helping the big A now that it has it’s own platform, but let’s just hope that isn’t the case. I phone with GPS is great, but when you’re in a place like downtown NYC with lots of one way streets, driving directions are the opposite of helpful.
5. Push Gmail: While we’re on what Google can do for Apple, let’s talk about email. I think it’s safe to assume that Gmail is at least one of the best if not the best web-based email programs - especially with the ability to use Google Apps for your domain. However, the fact that my girlfriend gets crappy Yahoo! email pushed to her phone and I can’t get Gmail is terrible. It’s so bad that every once and a while I think about getting a new Yahoo! address - and then I back away from the ledge.
6. Get Rid of the NDA: Ok, so this isn’t really a feature, but it could help with the addition of better looking and smoother running apps, which is basically a feature. Whatever the reasons for the non-disclosure agreement, they need to be overlooked. This should make developers happy, and make better apps which makes customers and Apple happy. Happy-ness is a good thing. I guess Apple read my post. The NDA is O-U-T out.
7. Hulu: Stealing this one from Jon’s post, Apple needs to partner with Hulu to make all of Hulu’s content available on the phone. This would be a killer app.
8. Turn by Turn Directions: I’ve heard rumours of turn by turn coming in the next big update, but who knows if that’s even remotely turn. I do know that turn by turn would appeal to a lot of people when they think about getting phone, because they could think of it as one great purchase that would cover two things (i.e. Phone and GPS).
9. Landscape Mode for Everything: For some weird reason a lot of Apple’s included apps don’t have landscape mode. I’ve gotten used to no slide out keyboard on the phone, but typing an email or SMS is so much easier and more comfortable in landscape mode than in normal portrait mode. You built the feature in on some stuff, why not everything?
10. MMS: I actually like sending pictures as emails better than sending them as MMS, but the problem comes when people try to send them to you. This should be simple. Just like copy and paste. Do it.
11. Video: Again. Just do it.
All of these (I think) could be done without needing to change any of the hardware on the phone. The only changes that I know of in that realm would be a better camera, and a better or at least replaceable battery.
Ok. Those are my thoughts. You got any?
