1 July 2010 Lots of fixes in relation to the biteSMS conversation list and conversation contents now being consistent when opened after backgrounded via multi-tasking. Contact pics are now displayed much FASTER and are cropped and scaled correctly. Passcode feature in biteSMS now works correctly (except when using open from QC and QR). Some draft [...]

If your 3g on 4.0 is really slow, chances are you enabled backgrounds in redsn0w. This causes the icons to get a nice shadow, but this shadow processing is just too much for your little old 3g. You can disable the backgrounds by editing a file. How to edit this file will not be covered here in much detail. I will give SSH instructions expecting users to know how to do this. If you don’t know how, wait a couple days and I will release a tool to do this (or maybe add a switch in sbsettings).

1) SSH in as root and install ericas utilities
2) Navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app
3) Convert the plist we need from binary to xml so you can edit it in a text editor:
plutil -convert xml1 N82AP.plist
4) Edit N82AP.plist file, and change this line:

<key>homescreen-wallpaper</key>
<true/>

to this:

<key>homescreen-wallpaper</key>
<false/>

5) Save the file, respring (maybe reboot).

Final suggestion to help get your 3g back up to speed if this isnt enough. Go to settings, general, spotlight and uncheck everything except apps and contacts.

If you want backgrounds after this, you can use bosspaper or winterboard (no javascript themes in winterboard though).

- iSmart Dialer+ adds layers of functionalities to your Phone-Dialer application. Including: Searching for contacts using the Keypad, Speed Dial, Auto-Complete, SMS/Email from inside the dialer and much more.  also Included (free of charge) is iFoto Favorites features (On Rotate & Favorites) which allows you to easily set 12 contacts as favorites in a graphical/cool [...]

- Firewall iP, the first and only Firewall for the iPhone, has been updated to 1.45 and now supports iOS 4.0. YEAH! You are able to protect your device and your privacy right from the beginning of 4.0 :)! Changelog 1.45: – full support for iOS 4.0 – minor enhancements Firewall iP is the only [...]

Some guys have been working on a jailbreak compatibility chart in a google doc spreadsheet. It’s pretty good. Check it out and see if your favorite apps are compatible yet or not:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AiQhySsi_10adHoxbGtUQUF3dERpXzdISnhlZjBWZ2c&hl=en#gid=1

22 June 2010 biteSMS now works on the recently released Apple iOS 4 Software Update!!! For existing users on OS 3, this release is functionally the same as biteSMS 4.8 apart from some minor bug fixes.  !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

Edit: a 3g jailbreak is now out. The jailbreak chart has the details, link to guide and download of software for windows and mac.

Jailbreak chart updated to take into account for new Ultrasn0w released. (All firmwares are unlockable now).

For those of you that cant wait, there is a 3gs pwnage jailbreak for 4.0 devices. There are stipulations though so pay attention before you try it:

1) Pwnage is MAC ONLY
2) You must have an older bootrom. That means you could jailbreak 3.1.2 or 3.1.3 without being tethered.
3) You must already have a pwned device running 3.1.3 or lower. If you do not, you will have to downgrade your 4.0 device first, pwn it, and then you can use the pwnage to jailbreak your 4.0.  Once more, if you restored 4.0 in iTunes, you cannot use this method without downgrading first.  (Downgrade instructions are here).
4) You must have pwned your device using redsn0w or pwnage. Spirit does not count!
5) This is not for any other device than a 3gs on older bootrom.
6) There are a lot of extensions that are not yet updated to work on 4.0 so don’t expect it to be all smooth sailing yet! This is for early adopters only.

If your device does not meet the criteria above, you will need to wait for a new jailbreak tool. Please dont ask about it. It will be ready when it’s ready and will not be until after dev team members have the iphone 4 in hand.

Here is the link with further instructions thanks to Kaatje. You can get the official pwnage 4.01 from the dev team directly.

New Ultrasn0w unlocks all iphone versions.

Thanks to sherif_hashim who found the exploit, the dev team has updated UltraSn0w. The updated UltraSn0w can be installed via Cydia in the Ultrasn0w repository. The new ultrasn0w works on all 3.0 and 4.0 baseband versions for 3g and 3gs devices.  For those of you currently unlocked and having wifi issues, you can now remove blacksn0w and install ultrasn0w and be up and running in a more stable fashion.

If you are updating from blacksn0w, make sure you uninstall blacksn0w in cydia before installing ultrasn0w. If you installed blacksn0w via blackra1n, you probably need to restore.

Note, this is an unlock. There is no official 4.0 jailbreak yet.

AlarmDisplay is a new MobileSubstrate tweak that will help display your alarm information easily. There are options for displaying a badge on the Clock.app for how many active alarms, total alarms, or just keep the normal no badge. Also there are options to display the next active alarm in the Carrier Name spot when tapped. [...]

Update: 6/23 – I have discovered that the email issues is invalid. It was caused by the exchange unlock extension by Zataang. It turns out you must enter a passcode at least once before exchange unlock kicks in or the email issue below will occur. I have rewritten the exchange unlock extension and synced it into Cydia.

The memory issues also seem to be non-existent on the the 4.0 final. 4.0 is actually running very well jailbroken.

Update: 6/22 – After using 4.0 release version, the memory issue below (#6) seems to not be happening. I cant tell if it’s fixed or just hasnt happened yet. The mail issue did occur one more time (issue #5 below) but fixed itself. There may be indications of a real issue here. I will update if I find more. I have released “remove recents” for anyone else that thinks having recents in the task switcher is a bad idea. It’s in Cydia now for 4.0 jailbroken users.

iOS (iPhone OS) 4.0 is on its way out most likely Monday sometime. After using it a while as a developer, I suggest you hold off for a couple weeks and allow for a stable jailbreak before updating. Here is a comparison of my iPhone 3gs running iOS4 and iPhone OS3.0 (Yes, 3.0. Nothing Apple has released since original 3.0 has been worth the effort of updating). Yes, some of you Apple Lovers out there will probably hate me for what follows. But it’s the way it is.

Before I begin, I should make sure to note that iOS 4 is not yet out. There is no such thing as iOS4 GM. There is a “GM Seed”, which is fancy, lame, hype-talk for “Beta 5″. Yes that’s right. It’s just beta 5. It even says so in the file system. It will probably expire. There may be changes.  You should consider it more of a release candidate. It is not a gold master. Therefore, many of these issues may be solved in the final release Monday. I will update this post a couple days after release if I find this to be the case.

Onto the comparison:

1) New in iOS4, Apple has a fancy task switcher that looks nice as the screen slides up letting you see the running tasks. On my 3.0 3gs, I had a nice, but not as fancy app called Circuitous that did something similar. The only difference: Apple adds all recent apps to the launcher. Yes, that’s right. You cannot tell the difference between which tasks are running and which ones aren’t. After launching a few things, the task switcher shows 10, 15 icons. You have no idea what’s running, whats not, where things are. It’s a horrible mess. (Note: I have solved this problem with my own extension which will be out by the time iOS 4 is actually released in Cydia for jailbreakers).

The task switcher is activated by double tap of home. At the same time, Circuitous on the 3.0 installed from Cydia also can be set to activate via double tap of home, and sit at the bottom of the screen so it works in a very similar fashion to Apple’s new task switcher. Circuitous does not keep all recent tasks in the bar, making it actually useful. Better yet, when paired with backgrounder app, Circuitous will actually background existing apps.  (More on this in #2).  Needless to say, Apple’s task switcher does not background existing apps. All apps built for 4.0 always partially stay running. Not so great for memory conservation or overall performance.

2) Multitasking. Everyone thinks that multitasking is now here and things will be different. “Finally” right? Well, not exactly. Unfortunately, there are only certain things that can be multitasked and most apps dont really multitask, unless you are one of the stock apple apps, then they continue to run until you are out of memory. That’s right. Every single one of apple’s apps stays running when you close it. Clock, Camera, Calendar, Stocks etc. So you load up stocks for a seconds to check something. Close it out and guess what? It’s still running.  To you purists out there (like me), this makes you having to open the task switcher every couple seconds and delete the extra running tasks. But you cant even tell what’s running and what’s recent. To make matters even worse, you have to hold an icon for a second to even get the delete button up. GAH! Unlike Circuitous, which shows all icons with the delete button immediately…. Finally, using backgrounder with Circuitous on a 3.0 provides a much better solution. You can background most apps and switch between them easily with a double tap home. 3.0 definitely for the win here.

Note: I am also solving the problem of: all Apple apps staying running when you dont want them to and plan to work with Backgrounder dev to solve the backgrounding issue so that we do have true multitasking in the task switcher.

3) Backgrounds. Excited to have backgrounds? Well of course we had this already with Winterboard or BossPaper.  The difference? Apple background gives you just one wallpaper from your photos. On 3.0, I have a rotating slide show via BossPaper and it takes up no more resources than apple’s static image.  Win to 3.0 here. (Note: BossPaper will be ready on iOS release for 4.0 release for jailbreakers).

4) Folders. Ok the Apple implementation of folders is about 10 times cooler than mine via Categories. Although, Apple’s has a severe limitation. You can only put 12 apps per folder. Categories, while a pain in the ass to use compared to Apple’s, allows you to put up to 500 apps in a folder. Imagine having 240 games installed. With Apple’s folders, that clutter is then cleaned up to “only” 20 folders. 20 folders! Plus, all the folders basically have the same looking icon. If you add ashikase’s categoriessb to categories, it loads instantly and keeps springboard’s feel nicely. Personally, I miss categories even when using Apple’s folders. Something will need to be done here.

Note: I cannot guarantee Categories will be available on iOS4 release. Categoriessb, I do not think is ready yet either. I hope to get Categories ready shortly after though.

5) Mail. Ok the mail app features sound pretty nice. I really enjoy the thread tracking feature. The consolidated inbox is nice also since I have 4 email accounts. However, the mail app has been extremely unstable. Not only that, it suddenly stopped working. It refused to connect to the mail server – all 4 accounts couldnt connect to any of their servers. My password was also deleted out of settings on all 4 accounts. While this was happening, safari was still working so the network was fine. Just the mail app couldnt connect. Reboots didnt solve it. I had to use “settings, general, reset” and reset all settings. Then I had to reconfigure all my mail accounts, passwords, passwords to wifi, springboard icons, etc. Was loads of fun.

6) Memory footprint: About every 2 days now, iOS4 has a couple runaway daemon processes (system services) that start leaking memory like a sieve.  Looking into it, one day, configd was using 50mb memory. Restarting the service fixed it for a while and it was back to its normal 1.5mb. (A reboot would be necessary for most users). The next day, Commcenter freaked out and was using 40mb memory. Later that day, APSD service was leaking more than 40mb memory. It’s a nightmare.

7) For you jailbreakers out there, most extensions that you like had to be rewritten to work on iOS4. Most of these are not yet ready.

The device not jailbroken does not compare to any 3.0 jailbroken. I suggest holding off a couple more weeks and waiting for a solid jailbreak before even trying iOS4.

ScreenDimmer has been updated and does now support the iOS 4.0 :). Also improvements have been mate to offer a great experience with backgrounding (both native and Backgrounder). if you don’t know about ScreenDimmer: ScreenDimmer can help you to save battery life by automatically dimming your device’s screen after a pre-defined time; or if you [...]

__ The perfect cellular data toggle for OS 3.2 (iPad) and 4.0! by Yllier Enable/Disable cellular data! This toggle uses the same functionality iOS uses in its Preferences.app! this is no dirty hack. When cellular data is disabled the 3G/E-symbol in the status bar is removed so you are always aware what the current status [...]

SwirlySpace is very pleased to announce SwirlyScreen 2.0. SwirlyScreen 2.0 is a multi-feature lock-screen Cydget for your iPhone giving you a load of features such as: collects and shows all alert messages, such as missed calls, SMS, MMS, calendar events, Facebook messages etc. current weather and forecast analogue clock including a stop-watch random camera roll [...]

I have created an all-in-one-place jailbreak table for everyone. You can simply pick your device and firmware in the chart and at a glance, you can see if your device can be jailbroken and by which tools. Clicking the links in the box then sends you to the updated guides for that device as well as the downloads for your OS to accomplish the task. Hope it is helpful to everyone.

Check it out here.

After the popular BTstack Keyboard and Mouse, yet another BTstack-based application has seen the light: BTstack GPS allows to connect an external Bluetooth GPS receiver to your iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad and use it with all your GPS-enabled applications, no matter if you want to drive, sail, or even fly. Are you interested in [...]