Month: January 2010

Create Your Own Custom Theme With iPhone Theme Simulator

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated May 11, 2018

If you don't like our iPhone Download Blog theme, then you might be able to create your own custom iPhone theme with iPhone Theme Simulator.

iPhone Theme Simulator is a new tool that lets anyone easily create and test WinterBoard themes for iPhone and iPod Touch right from your PC.

This neat little software easily lets you customize most parts of the UI, including the lockscreen, springboard, wifi and carrier logos, apps icons, and much more.

What's great about iPhone Theme Simulator is that it allows you to test your theme directly from your PC, without having to load it on your iPhone and respringing it. It's definitely a great tool for anyone interested in iPhone theme design.

If you have tried iPhone Theme Simulator, I'd like to hear your comments on it.

Read More

Jailbreak iPhone 3.1.2 with RedSn0w 0.9

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 31, 2010

This guide and tutorial will show you how to jailbreak your iPhone 2G, 3G or 3GS running OS 3.1.2 using RedSn0w 0.9.

If you are new to the whole jailbreaking thing, I really suggest you read this information about RedSn0w 0.9. It will tell you everything you need to know about RedSn0w before starting.

I know that some of you won't bother reading the more info link about RedSn0w 0.9 so here is probably the most important information about this jailbreak:

If you have a late-model iPhone 3GS, or if you have an iPod touch 2G whose serial number begins with “MC”, you can use redsn0w to jailbreak but you are currently restricted to “tethered” rebooting. That means you need to connect your device to a computer to complete the boot after a reset. Also, these devices cannot have custom logos.

redsn0w will ask you whether or not you fit in this category when used with the iPhone 3GS or iPod touch 2G. If you have a late-model device and don't give redsn0w the correct answer, you will likely need to do a system restore to recover from the mistake.

To do a tethered boot after your late-model device resets for some reason, either run redsn0w again and select “Just boot tethered right now”, or run blackra1n.

This RedSn0w tutorial was written for Windows but I assume the steps are identical for a Mac.

Step 1: Download RedSn0w 0.9 for Mac or PC as well as the correct 3.1.2 firmware for your iPhone from here. To make things easy, save those 2 files on your desktop.

Step 2: Make sure you have the latest version of iTunes installed on your computer, then restore your iPhone to the latest firmware 3.1.2. Restoring is the preferred way to go about it as simply updating could cause issues later on.

Step 3: Launch RedSn0w and browse for the 3.1.2 firmware you downloaded to your computer in Step 1.

Step 4: RedSn0w will automatically check if you chose the right firmware (IPSW). It will then patch the file.

Step 5: For iPhone 2G only (other please skip to step 6)! You will then be offered several options. If you have an iPhone 2G and you want to unlock, now select "Install Cydia" and "Unlock". You will have to download the bootloaders 3.9 and 4.6 from here. If you just want to jailbreak, disregard this and go to step 6.

Step 6: You will now have the option to "Install Cydia" as well as "Custom boot logo" and "Custom recovery logo". For the purpose of this tutorial, I suggest you only choose "Install Cydia".

Step 7: Make sure your iPhone is plugged to your computer. RedSn0w will now dictate you a few steps to have your iPhone enter DFU mode. Follow the onscreen instructions very carefully.

Step 8: Your iPhone will reboot when successfully jailbroken.

Congratulations! You just jailbroke your iPhone using RedSn0w 0.9. If you want to unlock your iPhone 3G or 3GS, simply install UltraSn0w from Cydia.

Any question or concern, please feel free to ask in the comment section below. Happy jailbreak :)

UPDATE: People have encountered quite a bit of problems when running RedSn0w o.9 beta 3 with an iPhone 3GS. Thankfully MuscleNerd has been updating RedSn0w and the 3GS issues should now be gone.  You can download the latest RedSn0w from our iPhone downloads page.

Read More

RedSn0w 0.9 iPhone Jailbreak Released

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 9, 2012

Just a few hours ago, MuscleNerd tweeted about the release of the long-awaited RedSn0w jailbreak for iPhone 3.1.2. This version of RedSn0w is actually a beta version (redsn0w 0.9beta3) but it seems very stable from what I hear.

RedSn0w is a safer alternative to BlackRa1n to jailbreak and unlock your iPhone running OS 3.1.2.

Since it's still a beta version, it hasn't been posted on the Dev Team blog yet but more info about RedSn0w 0.9 beta 3 can be found here. If you're too lazy to read the full article, here is a rundown of the most important points:

RedSn0w 0.9 will jailbreak all iPhones and iPod Touch (except iPod Touch 3G) It will jailbreak iPhone OS 3.1.2 It will only unlock the iPhone 2G (install UltraSn0w from Cydia for iPhone 3G and 3GS) RedSn0w will modify your current filesystem, so your existing baseband, data and applications should remain intact If you have a late-model iPhone 3GS or an iPod touch 2G whose serial number begins with “MC”, you can use redsn0w to jailbreak but you are currently restricted to “tethered” rebooting

For full details about RedSn0w 0.9 beta 3, please read the Dev Team's article about it.

I just wrote a tutorial on how to use RedSn0w to jailbreak iPhone OS 3.1.2. Make sure to check it out if you're not sure how to use RedSn0w. In the meanwhile, you may download RedSn0w 0.9 beta 3 for Windows and Mac from our download page.

Read More

How to Use Multiple Exchange Accounts on Your iPhone

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated October 10, 2018

If you have a Microsoft Exchange account set up on your iPhone, you know how useful it is. MS Exchange has become more popular on the iPhone lately since Google implemented Google Sync for iPhone, which allows you to sync your email, contacts and calendars over the air. Exchange is also very popular among enterprise users.

One downside of Microsoft Exchange for iPhone is that you cannot have multiple Exchange accounts on one iPhone. This just changed thanks to some smart users of the ModMyi forum and an iPhone dev.

I was in the process of writing a long tutorial on how to set up multiple Exchange accounts on your iPhone when I found out thanks to JAiB that there is now an application in Cydia that does the hard work for you. If you want to add an exchange account the hard way, then read these instructions on LifeHacker. If you want to go the easy way, read on...

There is now a simple way to add a second Exchange account to your iPhone. It's an app available in Cydia called AddExchange. Launch Cydia, look for AddExchange and install it.

After installing AddExchange, you launch the app from its springboard icon. From there, you simply tap a “+” button, and that’s it! AddExchange creates a new Exchange account behind the scenes, and names it SRV2. All you have to do at this point is open up its settings and change the defaults to whatever your second Exchange server uses. For me, I just changed it to use Google’s sync settings.

Looks simple enough. The downside? You have to be jailbroken but I guess if you're reading this blog, that shouldn't be much of an issue for you...

If you've tried AddExchange, I would love to hear your thoughts about it. Does it perform as well as it is supposed to? Have you found any caveat yet?

Read More

Get This iPhone Theme Now!

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated February 22, 2017

If you're a fan of this blog, then you owe it to yourself to download and install this WinterBoard theme designed by iTito, and specifically branded for the iPhone Download blog.

This is a beautiful Darkblue Theme which includes more then 70+ icons, Lockscreen, Landscape SMS Theme, Dock and status bar.

You can download the theme, or go to Cydia and search for "Darkblue iPhone Theme".

I want to thank iTito for his great work on this custom theme for the blog.

Do you like it?

Read More

Add Unlimited Icons to Your iPhone Dock With InfiniDock

Sébastien Page ∙ January 18, 2010

Forget about the 5-icon dock tweak... InfiniDock is a new application available in Cydia that lets you add an unlimited amount of apps in your dock and make them easily scrollable, just like you scroll through your pages of apps on your springboard.

InfiniDock was developped by Chpwn and just like the ProSwitcher app, I think this is a simple but powerful tweak that Apple will most likely look at and implement in iPhone OS 4.0.

I'm glad to see that there are some developers out there like Chpwn. New releases in Cydia have been pretty boring lately. There sure are a bunch of themes and wallpapers, but not so many useful apps.

I first heard about InfiniDock about a week ago but I didn't give it a try until I read some of the comments made by a few of you on my post about how many apps you have in your iPhone dock.

If you haven't tried it yet, launch Cydia and look for InfiniDock. You can download it from Cydia for $0.99. Well worth the money if you want my opinion.

Have you tried it yet? What do you think?

Read More

Everything You Missed About the iPhone This Week

Sébastien Page ∙ January 17, 2010

Today is Sunday and Sundays on iDB are recap days!

This is a summary of the articles that were posted on the blog this past few days. If you like any of them, please feel free to leave a comment and/or retweet it on Twitter.

28 features we want to see in the new iPhone Cost of ownership: iPhone 3GS vs Pre vs Droid vs Nexus One 10 jailbreak apps for iPhone to boost your productivity iPhone to Me: UPDATE ME!!! What apps do you have on your iPhone dock? Small iPhone devs make big money
Read More

Small iPhone Developer Makes Big Money

Sébastien Page ∙ January 16, 2010

Reuters has a simple article on their site about how Tapulous, the developer of Tap Tap Revenge is selling apps for over 1 million dollars each month.

What I don't like about this article is how they make it sound like developing apps for the App Store is the new El Dorado.

iPhone app developer Tapulous says its sales have approached $1 million a month, providing fresh evidence of the growing success of start-ups designing programs for Apple Inc's mobile device.

Unfortunately, it's not that easy to make big bucks from the App Store. For every App Store millionaire, there are hundreds if not thousands of developers that miserably fail. Most don't fail because of the quality of their apps. They fail because of the strong competition.

When you see these articles about how much money can be made by developing iPhone apps, please take them with a grain of salt...

Read More

What Apps Do You Have On Your iPhone Dock?

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 23, 2016

Tell me what you have on your dock and I'll tell you who you are...

The apps you have on your dock can tell a lot about your iPhone usage. As you can see, my dock is pretty standard. I have the mail app, Tweetie 2, Byline and Safari. These are the apps I use the most.

You'll notice that my phone.app is not even there. That's because I rarely make calls. I've come to realize that what I like the most about my iPhone, it's the " i ", not so much the "phone".

What apps do you have in your dock? Why did you choose these?

Read More

iPhone to Me: Update Me, Goddam It!

Sébastien Page ∙ January 14, 2010

It seems that having an iPhone still running on OS 3.0 is getting more and more complicated. I've managed to avoid updating to the latest firmware for several reasons but it's now catching up with me.

There are several applications I wanted to install from the App Store but it didn't allow me to because it required at least firmware 3.1.

I haven't updated since 3.0 because I didn't want to lose my jailbreak/unlock. I realize that I could just use a custom cooked 3.1.2 firmware or even use BlackRa1n but I won't for 3 reasons.

I don't want to use BlackRa1n. It reportedly sucks. Many were successful with it, but it seems even more people were having issues. I don't want to use a cooked firmware right now because I am currently traveling around the world with a small netbook and I really don't have the time for that. I believe iPhone OS 3.1.3 will be available in a month or so and I might just wait for the Dev Team to come up with a jailbreak/unlock for it and update at this time.

I tried installing FWchanger again to fake my firmware version but it doesn't work very well, and it even messed up a few things on my iPhone. I guess I'll have to live without these apps I wanted to install...

What firmware are you on?

Read More

10 Jailbreak Apps for iPhone to Boost Your Productivity

Sébastien Page ∙ January 13, 2010

You thought your iPhone could do just about anything? Think again! I handpicked 10 applications for jailbroken iPhones that will boost your productivity and unleash the real potential of the iPhone. You won't find these applications in the App Store. You'll have to jailbreak your iPhone in order to install any these apps.

If you don't have these apps on your iPhone, you're missing out on 10 must-have features.

Xpandr

Xpandr is a shortcut expander for the iPhone / iPod touch. It allows you to define an unlimited number of shortcuts to save time and make your life easier. It works in every application, even on App Store applications. More about Xpandr.

ProSwitcher

ProSwitcher is a multitasking app for the iPhone that kinda replicates the Palm Pre “cards” feature by adding a very nice UI to Backrounder, the jailbreak app that allows you to run apps in the background. More about ProSwitcher.

AttachmentSaver

AttachmentSaver gives you the ability to download attachments of all types, whether supported by the Mail.app or not, and save them into a folder on your iPhone disk. More about AttachmentSaver.

Find in Page

Find In Page is an application that will help you find any text on any web page in Safari. Now every time you visit a page in Safari and you’re looking for a specific word, simply open your bookmarks and tap “Find In Page”. More about Find in Page.

mQuickDo

Originally, mQuickDo lets you set up gestures to perform predefined actions (ie. slide left to right to close an opened application; or slide right to left to shut off the phone, etc…). The real power and most exciting feature about mQuickDo is the App Switcher. As its name suggests, the app switcher allows you to quickly switch between apps. More about mQuickDo.

QuickScroll

QuickScroll is an application available in Cydia that lets you scroll through documents and web pages very quickly. Once you have installed QuickScroll, simply tap 3 times anywhere on the page and a dialog will show up. Drag the scroller (see on the right of the image above) up and down to quickly go wherever you want on the page. More about QuickScroll.

GriP - Growl for iPhone

GriP tries to strike a balance between being unobstructive while still being able to give out clear information. With GriP, messages are (by default) shown as small floating windows in a corner, which will automatically disappear if you ignore it. In this way, you can still continue your process without missing anything. More about GriP.

Orbit

Orbit brings you an instant way to switch between pages on your home screen. Based on the “iPhone Expose” concept, this modification gives you an icon that, when tapped, animates your home page into Orbit. More about Orbit.

Action Menu

Action Menu is one of those mods that once you try it, you simply can’t live without it anymore. Action Menu takes a stab at enhancing the copy/paste function of your iPhone by adding a bunch of add-ons to it. More about Action Menu.

MultiIconMover

This app is very simple yet very practical. It allows you to select multiple icons to move them to a different page on your springboard. So instead of moving your icons one at a time, you can select many of them and move them all at once wherever you want. More about MultiIconMover.

I wouldn't be surprised if Apple implemented some of these applications' features in the next iPhone OS.

Read More