iPhone4idiots

UPDATE 5/2/2012 Website is now just a landing page for ads. These things never last long.

I know things have been depressing ever since the USA shutdown MegaUpload. Well here is something I hope cheers you up. Open Safari on your iPhone, iPod or iPad and goto iOSLiveTV. There is no jailbreak required. The home screen gives you seven choices (United States, United Kingdom, Deutschland, France, Italia, PoccNR and XXX). The channel selection is massive. I haven’t looked through them all, but the United States includes (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, Syfy, USA, A&E, Showtime, Cinemax, FX, ESPN, ESPN 2, Fox Soccer, TNT, History, MTV, Food Network, Discovery, CNN, Spike, truTV, Speed and more). The network stations include a East and West feed and there is even a channel guide showing what comes on next. Continue Reading…

My five year old teaches me things all the time. Yesterday it was the VoiceOver feature of the iPhone, iPad or iPod. VoiceOver is a feature mainly for those with visual impairments as it allows the device to speak the names of onscreen menus and other items to the user. While this is a vital feature for some, it can drive you nuts the first time you encounter it. I’m not sure how but he turned it on. To do so goto Settings>General>Accessibility and toggle VoiceOver on. When you do this you are given the warning, “VoiceOver changes the gestures used to control iPhone. Are you sure you want to continue?” Apparently, my five year old tapped yes and a few minutes later came to me wondering why his iPod didn’t “work” anymore. I knew what he had done but it took me 15 minutes and a Google search to figure out how to turn it off. Continue Reading…

Want to have iPad like multitasking on your iPhone then Zephyr might be the tweak for you. Zephyr, $2.99, is a Cydia tweak from Grant Paul (aka @chpwn) who has worked on numerous jailbreaks and Cydia tweaks. Zephyr adds two multitasking gestures. Move between apps with left to right swipes and show the multitasking bar with a swipe up from the bottom. I didn’t download this til recently as I’ve always had Activator mimic a Home button tap for the swipe up from bottom gesture. However, many people kept talking about how great a tweak it was so I finally decided to try it. I think a lot of people are just sucking up to what has to be one of the 20 most important people in the jailbreaking community. That said, I do like the swiping left to right to move between apps. It feels very natural and is fast. As you can see in the photo I have Disabled the “Swipe up from Bottom” feature. I really don’t care to see the multitasking bar and I prefer this gesture to mimic a press of the Home button for when that fails (IMO, Home button failure is the biggest problem on an iPhone). I could choose another gesture to mimic the Home button tap, but I really don’t need to see my multitasking bar. Other than turning off Pandora I never use it. What would be nice is if @chpwn adds a third gesture to Zephyr. A five finger pinch to close any app. That would make this a must have Cyida tweak. Instead it is one I recommend you give a try to see if you like.

Just watch the short video to see what this Cydia tweak does. In short, it allows you to make in app purchases for tons of apps for free. It doesn’t work for all apps, but there is lengthy list of apps listed for which it does. I believe it only works for iOS 5.0 and above which means it will not work on the iPad 2 or iPhone 4S until the jailbreak is released for these devices. This tweak can be found in the Xsellize or Insanelyi repos. If you don’t know how to add sources to Cydia you see how to add these two repos here.

Let’s start with the bad news. There is no iOS 5.0 or higher jailbreak for the iPad 2 or iPhone 4S. Despite all the rumors other sites post, IMO there likely won’t be one until after iOS 5.1 is released which means it is still months away. Now the good news! Today @pod2G released an untethered jailbreak for iOS 5.0 and 5.0.1 that works on iPhone 4 (both GSM & CDMA), iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch 3rd and 4th generation and iPad 1. It uses redsn0w and is very simple. Watch the quick video as I spent that past hour re-jailbreaking my iPhone 4 and my kids iPod Touch 4th generations. If you were already using a tethered or semi-tethered jailbreak keep reading as I recommend doing a full restore to iOS 5.0.1 as opposed to using the Cydia patch. Continue Reading…

Chronic Dev Team (the one’s behind Greenpois0n) member @pod2g shows a working untethered jailbreak for iOS 5 in this video! It is on an iPod Touch, but will surely work on the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS as well. He tweeted it works on 5.0.1 too. However, he has not tested and it likely will not work on the iPhone 4S and iPad 2. He doesn’t own either device so he hasn’t tired, but I doubt it will work on the A5 device. Nevertheless, this is good news for iPhone 4 and iPod Touch owners that have been wanting an iOS 5 untethered jailbreak. It shouldn’t be long now. Maybe before the end of the year. For those iPad 2 and iPhone 4S users the wait likely will continue into 2012. Before you ask about what can or can’t be jailbroken see this chart.

I just don’t understand tech companies sometimes. Twitter just updated its iOS App and there are two major problems. The first and biggest is it no longer supports landscape viewing? Why would they remove this feature. I use it all the time. Landscape view makes the tweet stream easier to read in many situations and I used it daily. Removing features that your customers like and are used to is a big mistake. Not Netflix screw up big, but pretty big. The other problem is the bottom tab now labeled Discover. This was where you could quickly look at Top Ten trending topics which is one of the best things about Twitter. It’s how you can see what’s hot right now. As you can see in the photo, the trends are now displayed under Stories. Frankly I don’t care about the Angels, Ice Cube or Eddy Curry. I want to see the Top Ten trends and then pick which interest me. That now takes a swipe down and extra tap to accomplish. Twitter now only displays two trends. Sorry, I don’t count the promoted trend. That’s not what’s in the news, it’s just what’s paid for. Nice job Twitter, I might now offically move to Tweetbot.

Just released Infinity Blade 2, Chair Entertainment Group LLC $6.99, will set new sales records for an iOS game. I’m thinking $5 million the first week, but we shall see. Honestly, I rarely played Infinity Blade which price has dropped to $5.99 as I don’t really like this type of game. However, I can appreciate how nicely it has been done. It’s just gorgeous. Watch this video to see how the game starts, looks and feels. I was playing while watching Dexter. It was holding my interest as its a bad season IMO with no great villain. Anyway, I ramble as its over an hour past midnight and I have to be up early. I’m sure there are thousands of mostly under 40 males playing this well into the night. I also seeing numerous tweets about it in Japanese. I never stood a chance at making Gamecenter leaderboard.

See this tweet yesterday from Justin Williams. @JayWalker9988 is a member of the Chronic Dev Team which created the popular jailbreak tool Greenpois0n. The tweet implies that Greenpois0n has been “updated” for a iOS 5 Untethered Jailbreak and a public release might be very soon. Could we see it before Thanksgiving? As always, no one other than a limited number of developers knows for sure. However, I’ve been asked at least half a dozen times this past week about when the iOS 5 untethered jailbreak is going to be released. So this is latest on Greenpois0n. Of course, an untethered iOS 5 version of redsn0w might come anytime now as well. I for one can’t wait.

A second hidden feature in iOS 5 was discovered yesterday by Sonny Dickson. Unlike the panorama feature for which there are apps that do a better job this is one you might want to use. It takes about 2 minutes to enable with iFile, but if you aren’t jailbroken you can turn it on in about ten minutes after downloading iBackupBot. Watch the video to see if you want this feature. If yes, click continue reading for the simple step by step guide.

Continue Reading…