I have updated the SBSettings SDK guide to document the new invokeHoldAction function that allows toggles to trap a held action by the user for special menus. For example, one use would be in a wi-fi toggle to allow the user to select the APN.

Today a repository released an app called “PushMod”. The description of this app says “PushMod gives you the option to choose 1 minute push time and allows you to turn any mailbox into a push mailbox.”

I wanted to clarify a bit what this app is and is not. It will be a heavy battery drain. To understand why, read on.

First this does not turn any mailbox into a push mailbox (like it says). Push mail is a technology where the server and the device register then disconnect. After this, when new mail arrives, the server “pushes” the notification to the device sending it a notification. The notification is initiated by the server. The device can be asleep or in a low power state in between notifications. You get real-time notifications with no CPU cost or battery drain.

Unlike push, regular mail is fetched by the device from the server. The device has to connect to the server, ask if there is any new mail, and pull the content down if so. The process is called polling. Polling is not “free”. On a hand held, battery powered device, it can be very battery intensive. One of the reasons Apple provides the options to set your mail poll from 15, 30, 60 minutes is to avoid the heavy battery drain. In many cases, 15 minutes is considered to be too much of a battery drain!

In comes “PushMod”. If you need to get your email instantly, this will help. It will set the poll interval to 1 minute rather than 15 minutes. But don’t be mislead by what it’s doing. It is not installing push mail. Instead, it is having your iPhone fetch mail every 1 minute. This uses CPU, network, and drains a lot of battery.

If you need your mail to be retrieved virtually realtime, this is still a good mod. But it was misnamed and you need to understand what you are getting into prior to installing it. It may be worth the battery tradeoff for you to get mail every minute. But consider yourself warned.

Last October, pseudo developer “El Jabon” tried to swindle us all by submitting a fake app called idontcrash. The premise was great, but the app was totally fake. The developer had no credibility and was caught in multiple lies. The whole event was recorded in my posting in October in this post. (It’s a fun read!).

Apparently, “El Jabon” is still at it and has a whole website dedicated to his scam. In addition, he has supposedly “rewritten” the app and posted it new with astounding results!

After further careful analysis, I have arrived at the following conclusion:

This app is still totally fake! Do not install it!

This post will tell you how to downgrade from 3.0 to 2.x.

iPhone 3.0 beta is out for developers. You may find that the feature list sounds great, and it does! However, this is an early beta that is for developers only. Do not download and install this version on a live, iPhone. Doing so will result in:

1) The iPhone OS will probably expire every couple of weeks. If you are out and need a phone the day it expires you are screwed. You will not be able to use the iPhone until you restore to the “upgraded” version. If the current version is “leaked” (meaning you are not a developer and got it through unofficial means), there is no guarantee you will have access to the next beta to keep the iPhone running.

2) The iPhone v3.0 OS is due out for this summer. That puts the release date to be about 3 months away still. That is a long time! The OS is not done. Why would you want to run a buggy incomplete OS on your iPhone?

3) The beta will have compatibility issues with some apps.

4) You will not be able to jailbreak your beta.

5) If you want some of the new features, read this post on how to use them on a 2.x.

6) Your 3g baseband will be updated, and you cannot go back. Yellowsn0w on 3g will also stop working. There will be no fix for this. It is permanent!

7) The 3.0 beta is likely very battery hungry and has a lot of debug symbols in use. It is likely also to use more memory than expected causing some apps to outright crash. Such is often the case with beta operating systems.

8) The 3.0 beta baseband is likely to not be very efficient and tested.

Too late? Already upgraded and don’t know what to do? You can downgrade the OS (but not the baseband) using these instructions:

iPhone v3.0 –> 2.x downgrade:

Step 1) Shut off your iPhone and then enter DFU mode. Instructions here.

Step 2) Restore your iPhone in iTunes to v2.2.1, 2.2, or such. Remember you will need to hold shift and click restore in Windows, Option-restore in OSX. If you need to locate the firmware to download, look here. If you need help on how to restore in iTunes read this guide.

Step 3) Your restore will get an error message. It should be one of these: 1011, 1013, 1015. If you get something less than 100, you did not enter DFU mode correctly and need to retry from step #1 of this guide. If you get 160x something else went wrong. The 1011, 1013, 1015 type error codes will be a failure to write the baseband and will be expected. After this, your iPhone will remain in recovery mode. Note: on 2g iPhone you probably should not get a restore error since the 2g baseband is not updated by the 3.0 update so there is no reason for the baseband update to fail.

Step 4) Windows Load quickpwn for Windows and select your device and run through the first 3 or so prompts until your iPhone resets.

Step 4) OSX:

iRecovery is a command line tool that requires you to install a library. For this, you are required to understand how to use the terminal. These instructions are *very clear* if you understand the terminal and shell commands. If you do not, this is not for you. Find a windows computer or someone that can help you. Teaching how to use the OSX term is way beyond the scope of this guide.

1. Download and extract iRecovery. This is a console app to be run in terminal. Extract it with finder.
2. Copy libusb-0.1.4.dylib to /usr/local/lib and chmod both iRecovery and the dylib to 755 using chmod 755 /usr/local/lib/libusb-0.1.4.dylib and chmod 755 iRecovery.
3. In terminal, run iRecovery -s
4. At the iRecovery prompt, type: fsboot
5. Wait, iPhone should boot. If not, type fsboot a second time.
6. ctrl-c or close the term. You are done with iRecovery.

Here is a more detailed set of instructions by Max:

1) Download iRecovery
2) Place both files on the Desktop
3) Open terminal and type ‘cd ~/Desktop’
4) Run command ‘chmod 777 libusb-0.1.4.dylib’
5) Run command ‘chmod 777 iRecovery’
6) Run command ‘defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE’
7) Run command ‘killall Finder’
8) Navigate Macintosh HD > usr > local > lib
9) Copy the file libusb-0.1.4.dylib into that folder
10) Open a new terminal
11) Drag-and-drop the iRecovery file into the Terminal so that you get a shortcut to it.
12) Append ‘-s’ to the end.
13) Run command ‘fsboot’ (i had to do it twice)
14) If the phone starts up locket once again, just run through steps 10-13 again.
15) When done, open terminal again and type ‘defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE’
16) Then run ‘killall Finder’ once again and your done!

Step 5) Run through the quickpwn guides for your operating system. Depending on which OS you have, you will need to click next a few times and your iPhone should be reset. At this point, you should continue through quickpwn to finish the jailbreak of your iPhone.

At this point, you should have a working iPhone although your baseband will still be upgraded. This is the best we can do at this point. Good luck.

The CydiaStore is open for business. There is currently only one package that you can purchase in it. I have captured the purchase process so you can all see how it works.

Cydia store packages are going to be in blue writing. when you click on one, your install button says “purchase” instead of “install”.

See the install process of the first app with screenshots.

The “Cydia Store” should be out today with a couple packages. What is the Cydia Store? Saurik, author of Cydia, is adding a checkout service for developers that sell software so they can sell it inside Cydia as an alternative to AppStore. This is already happening today, but developers are on their own to figure out how to charge and register their apps. The Cydia store will make this process easier for both developers and users.

Some facts about the store:

1) Cydia will still be Cydia. There will still be free apps, themes, and all the packages there are today. This is not a new app, there will not be a 2nd Cydia icon added to springboard.

2) The same sources work. Nothing changes there either.

3) Some packages may have a shopping cart next to them indicating that they’re not free. You will have to buy them. Paid packages currently show up in a blue font.

4) Registration is currently being handled by Facebook, but other registration methods are being implemented.

5) Checkout is currently being handled by Amazon shopping but other payment methods are being implemented.

6) Only a few packages are going to be part of the “store” to start in order for more testing of the process.

Gaming Robot and I rewrote the SBSettings autolock toggle from scratch. It should now work. The toggle will also save your current autolock settings value from the settings app and restore it when you toggle it. When the toggle is on, autolock will occur. When the toggle is off, autolock will not occur. Thank you to Erica Sadun for help on getting SpringBoard settings to take effect immediately without a respring.

As you read this, keep in mind that I am not a lawyer and do not give legal advice.

There has been a lot of news surrounding the legality of iPhone jailbreaking. It started when the EFF announced that it plans to add iPhone jailbreaking as a DMCA exception. (http://www.eff.org/action/free-your-phone). After this, Apple made an announcement that they consider jailbreaking to be a copyright infringement (http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/02/apple-says-jailbreaking-illegal). So what’s really going on?

The DMCA has a set of exemptions that are reviewed every three years. This year is the year where these exemptions are reviewed and also when new exemptions are added. The EFF is pushing to have jailbreaking added to the exemption list. By adding this, it basically says “jailbreaking your iPhone is legal”. Remember, not having it in there does not say that jailbreaking is illegal. It simply doesn’t say. For example, there is no US Law that says “clothes shopping is legal”. But there is no reason to think it is not legal either. The EFF is pushing to add an exemption so that jailbreaking is actually called out as legal.

The original exemption requests can be found here:
http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2008/comments/lohmann-fred.pdf
http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2008/comments/lohmann-fred-summary.pdf

A month after the exemption requests were made, the responses were due. These can be found here:

http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2008/responses/

There are responses from a number of people for 5A from a number of end users and small businesses the obvious players: EFF and Apple. A few people who are definitely interested in this problem for other reasons (VOIP): Virgin Mobile and Skype. Mozilla also chimed in with a rather short document.

Skylar wrote an interesting article on this here: http://www.ipodtouchfans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=147164

And the NYTimes has an interesting article on it here: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/0…our-iphone/?em

I have updated Categories today addressing some stability issues in the configuration app. It’s still not perfect but it should at least run better. Hopefully sometime I will get enough time to really go through this thing.

The main issue was a pretty substantial memory leak in the configuration app. What would happen was springboard would detect a low memory state and shut the app down. The then on close, the app would respring. The respring would not have enough memory to complete and springboard would freeze up the device. I have done a lot of work on this, but there is still some smaller memory leak left. The launchers are fine so the hassle is just setting up the folders the first time. I have also removed the respring when low memory state is detected so hopefully it will prevent the freezes.

v2.23
• Fixed issue where users behind a proxy had the app close and safari open in some cases.
• Worked on memory usage. Fixed a large memory leak. (There is still a memory leak in the configuration part of the app, but it’s not as big. I hope I get time to fix it in the near future).
• The iPhone 2.1 and newer froze up when trying to respring with less than 7MB RAM. When memory got low, springboard would kill the app causing it to respring and freeze up. The respring flag should now be cleared in most cases when memory gets this low.
• The app will now detect if it gets closed due to low memory and allow you to continue your editing where you left off.
• Memory free and respring state are now in the status bar while the app is running

The iPhone battery is one of its weak points. Luckily, several after market add-on batteries exist. I have bought many of these batteries and am writing a review and comparison of each. Below is an extensive comparison of 5 addon batteries for your iPhone and recommendations on each. One thing that all batteries have in [...]

I believe the iSpazio source should be up if you update the source package to v0-3.1 or newer. He had some domain issues and his domain, ispazio.net seems to be “lost”. The package update just updates the source to use one of his other existing domains.  !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?’http’:'https’;if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+’://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js’;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, ‘script’, ‘twitter-wjs’);lang: en_US

The main bigboss.org server has been having some troubles the last couple days. It is not a traffic issue as the server has plenty of horse power to handle whats coming in. The issue has been tough to nail down but I have made changes every day and enabled different logging. I check the server multiple times a day and fix it right away if I notice a problem. So if you are having issues, just try again in an hour or so until the problem is solved. I have enabled some additional log files so I may need a couple more days of reproduction with logfiles to solve it once and for all.

Edit: if you are able to read this post, the server is up!

The Dev Team released the iPhone 2.2.1 jailbreak. You can download the files pwnage or quickpwn (Mac) / quickpwn (Windows). At this point, only MAC OSX Quickpwn and pwnage are released. You should read the dev team blog for details and warnings on the upgrade relating to the 3g unlock. The 2g baseband has not been upgraded so you will not lose your unlock if you are unlocking a 2g iPhone. The 3g yellowsn0w 0.97 has been released also.

Additionally, the procedure is the same so if you need help head on over to the guides section and read the pwnage or quickpwn guides.

Confused about which one to use?

Pwnage – use this if you are going to unlock your 3g. It will prevent a baseband update. Use this to build a custom firmware and program it on. This will do the upgrade for you so you do not need to update in itunes.

Quickpwn – use this if you want to just upgrade in itunes then jailbreak. Do not use this if you are unlocking a 3g. Use this if you have already updated to 2.2.1.

Finally, a personal comment. Should you upgrade at all? If you are running 2.1 or 2.2, I say no. 2.2.1 is pretty much worthless. If you are running anything under 2.1 yes you should upgrade. 2.0-2.0.2 are horribly buggy and slow. 2.1 and newer solve this. If you are below 2.0, you dont even have appstore and you are obsolete. Upgrade!

There’s a hacked up version of quickpwn 2.2.1 going around. This is basically just quickpwn 2.2 with a hacked up bundle added to it by a 3rd party. This is not the official quickpwn 2.2.1. The official version is actually still being tested. The dev teams prefer to release tested software rather than untested software. Still, if you are interested in trying it out early and are totally fine with having unstable, unknown, untested software, you can try it out from here. This only has 2g bundles so if you have an iPod or iPhone 3g, you need to wait.

Apple released iPhone firmware v2.2.1. As always, hold off on your upgrade. This one sounds pretty worthless anyway. In this upgrade, it claims to fix safari stability (which was already stable on 2.2, and they always claim to fix this anyway) and solved some issue in emailing photos. The 2g baseband did not get updated. The 3g baseband is at 2.30.03. If you were using yellowsn0w, this will shut you down. I’m sure jailbreak will be available soon. So just hold off.