This theme is called Stickers and is available on Cydia. I like it so much that I installed it on my iPhone. The only downside is that there are very few custom icons for it. Looks great though. What do you think?
Sébastien Page
Sebastien is the Founder and Editor in Chief of iDB. Once a BlackBerry user, Sebastien instantly fell in love with the iPhone when it was first announced in 2007. Shortly after, he decided to start sharing his knowledge of the iPhone and its nascent ecosystem, which led to the creation of this blog. Sebastien currently owns 14 iPhones, 4 iPads, a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, a MacBook Air, 2 Apple Watches, 3 Apple TVs, countless HomePods and AirTags as well as a few pairs of AirPods.AT&T Announces New Data Plans & Tethering for iPhone
Better late than never! AT&T finally announced an official tethering plan for its wireless customers, including iPhone customers. The long-awaited new tethering option comes with the variable pricing plans AT&T CEO had pre-announced a few months ago. These new data plans will replace the "unlimited data plan" that current iPhone owners in the US are on.
All these new plans will be available on June 7. Does this date ring a bell? Yes, it's the opening day of the WWDC where Steve Jobs will announce the new iPhone.
You will now have the choice between 2 data plans. Tethering will be an additional option. Here is the details about each plan.
DataPlus
This is the basic entry plan. It provides 200 MB of data for $15/month. According to AT&T, 65% of their customers will fall under this plan.
If you choose to go with DataPlus and you go over your 200 MB, you will be charged another $15 for another 200 MB of data. Sounds pretty fair to me.
DataPro
The name says it all. This plan is for the data hungry users. It comes with 2 GB of data for $25/month. According to AT&T, only 2% of their customers will fall into this category.
Should you go over your 2 GB, you will be charged an extra $10 for another GB of data. Again, that is very fair.
Tethering
Tethering on your iPhone will come at a hefty price of $20/month, on top of your DataPro plan. What does this mean? It means that in order to get tethering on your iPhone, you will have to sign up for the $25 2 GB DataPro plan plus pay an additional $20 to "activate" the tethering option.
Signing up for tethering doesn't entitle you to more data usage. Every byte of data used under tethering will be directly taken from you DataPro plan.
Tethering will be available when iPhone OS 4 comes out.
I don't think that's a very fair deal and I'll most likely stick to MyWi for my tethering needs.
What happens to your old unlimited data plan?
The good news for those of you who use more data than these plans can offer is that you can keep your unlimited data plan. But if you want to use the official tethering option, you'll have to give it up for the DataPro plan.
I don't use much data so I know I'll be switching to the DataPlus plan and save myself $15/month.
What about iPad data plans?
According to AT&T, "for new iPad customers, the $25 per month 2 GB plan will replace the existing $29.99 unlimited plan. iPad customers will continue to pre-pay for their wireless data plan and no contract is required. Existing iPad customers who have the $29.99 per month unlimited plan can keep that plan or switch to the new $25 per month plan with 2 GB of data."
Free wifi at 20,000 AT&T hotspots
AT&T wireless customers will still get access to their network of over 20,000 wifi hotspots. That means that as long as you're paying a data plan, you can get free unlimited access to any AT&T wifi hotspots in the US (good deal for you if you live close to one of these hotspots and get signal in your home).
Monitoring and managing data usage
Since there won't be unlimited plans anymore (except for those who choose to stay on them), you will now have to closely monitor your data usage.
AT&T will help you by sending you text message and email alerts. You will get an alert after you reach 65%, 90%, and 100% of the treshold.
Additionally, you can download the free AT&T myWireless application from the App Store that allows you to keep an eye on your voice and data usage.
Conclusion
All in all, I think it is a great move from AT&T. Sure there will be the few usual customers that get pissed at the pricing plan changes but the majority of AT&T customers should find these new plans to their liking as most of us will get to save a few bucks each month.
As for tethering though, I think AT&T should have offered a little extra to those who choose to activate the option. With an additional $20/month for tethering, I would have hoped to be offered an extra 2 GB of data. As I said above though, that doesn't bother me too much as I'll stick to the "unofficial" tethering with MyWi.
What do you think?
Now that I gave you the details of the new data pricing plans, I would like to hear your thoughts about them. Are you one of those customers that will save money each month? Or are you one of the very very few that will have to pay more?
I look forward to reading what you think.
Mover+ Transfers Videos, Photos, Contacts and More Between iPhones Over The Air
Last week I told you about myPhoneDesktop, an application that can send images, URLs, phone numbers and text wirelessly to your iPhone from a desktop computer. Today I want to briefly introduce a somewhat similar app called Mover+.
Mover+ is an application that lets you transfer videos, photos, contacts, web bookmarks and text clippings from an iPhone to another, or from an iPhone to an iPad, all this over the air.
If for example you shoot a video at a dinner party with friends, instead of showing the video on the tiny iPhone screen, you can just move it to your iPad for everyone to watch it on a larger screen.
In order for this to work, you have to have Mover+ installed and running on both devices. Put what you want to send on the Mover table, connect via wifi or Bluetooth, and flick it offscreen where you want it to go!
You can download Mover+ from the App Store for $1.99.
Really Cool iPad Magic
Check out this video of a Japanese dude doing some cool magic tricks with his iPad. The trick is not too hard. He's playing a video and his show it timed to the second on this video. It still is a nice and entertaining show.
Netflix App Hacked to Work on iPhone
Until now you could only play the Netflix application on the iPad but a smart MMI reader figured out a way to port the app to the iPhone.
Here are the instructions on how to set up Netflix on the iPhone:
Get the Netflix app from iTunes Locate and rename the .ipa file to .zip and extract it Go into the .app file, located at /appname/Payload/appname.app, (show package contents) and open the info.plist Edit all references of OS version to show iphone OS 3.1.3 (or your respective version). Save and closeNow, just copied over SSH (with permissions repair and a respring) this will show up on the phone. With Netflix though, it required the mediaplayer frameworks from the iPad.
SSH, get the mediaplayer frameworks folder from an iPad, located at /System/Library/Frameworks/MediaPlayer.framework Copy that to the same location on an iPhone (don't forget to back up the original from your iPhone just in case). Change permissions to 755 recursive for directories, and then go inside the folder and change the individual file permissions to 644. (Or just recursive 755 to all files/folders on the MediaPlayer.framework folder)Now the mediaplayer frameworks are in place, all that's left is a manual install of the app.
SSH, go to /private/var/stash/Applications Copy the appname.app file there and change permissions. (I used 777 recursive for simplicity's sake, but I'm sure the normal 775 would work). Launch and have fun.These instructions were copied from MMI and slightly altered for reading purposes.
This great hack has some downsides. Apparently Netflix on the iPhone will drain your battery, crash repetitively and will be very slow on 3G, which is not very surprising. Maybe these reasons are why Netflix hasn't released an official iPhone app yet.
I'm currently in France and I can't get Netflix to work here but I'd love to hear your feedback if you try it on. [via MMI]
SmokeScreen to Play Flash Videos on Your iPhone and iPad
Flash. That's something most iPhone users have been forced to give up. Fortunately there is still a handful of renegade coders that won't let Steve Jobs and his gang dictate what you can or cannot view on your iPhone.
Chris Smoak is one of these guys. Because he is aware that no matter what Apple thinks, Flash is still a huge part of the Internet, he developed Smokescreen, a workaround that will allow you to play Flash content on your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
Here is how SmokeScreen works: "It runs entirely in the browser, reads in SWF binaries, unzips them (in native JS), extracts images and embedded audio and turns them in to base64 encoded data:uris, then stitches the vector graphics back together as animated SVG."
SmokeScreen is just at its beginnings. Since Smokescreen is written in JavaScript, it is slower than the Flash plugin and is limited in speed by the performance of the browser. Still, it's a nice beginning that gives us hope to see Flash one day running on iPhone OS. [via Engadget]
ProSwitcher HD for iPad to be Released Soon
ProSwitcher, one of the best jailbreak apps that brought multitasking to the iPhone is about to be updated for the iPad. Ryan Petrich, the developer of ProSwitcher sent a tweet a few hours ago announcing the future release of the application.
For those of you who aren't familiar with ProSwitcher yet, it 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.
I'm a big fan of Ryan Petrich's work in general, and specially of ProSwitcher which I consider a must-have application. I'm definitely looking forward the iPad release. So far, there is no estimated time of arrival but I doubt it will take too long.
iPhone News You Missed This Week
This is a wrapup of all the articles that were published on the blog this past week.
Android on iPhone 3G now available Spirit jailbreak ported to Linux Browser Changer open links in 3rd party browsers aDownloader download manager for iPhone myPhoneDesktop sends images, URLs, phone numbers and text wirelessly to your iPhone Apple surpasses Microsoft in market cap SNES (HD) Super Nintendo emulator for iPad iPhone 3GS OS 4 beta 4 jailbroken iBye: an easy alternative to backup your iPhone data Using a PIN barely protects your iPhone data 10 year old kid fixes cracked iPhone screen for $22 Publish your books in Apple iBookStore 05.12.01 baseband unlock for iPhone coming soon Bing to replace Google in iPhone OS 4 Wi-Fi Sync updated for Windows and iPadWi-Fi Sync Updated for Windows and iPad
A couple of weeks ago, I told you about Wi-Fi Sync, a jailbreak app that allows you to sync your iPhone over wifi. At the time, Wi-Fi sync was only available on Mac OS X.
An update is now available for Wi-Fi Sync that brings support for Windows users, and also for the iPad.
You can get Wi-Fi Sync from Cydia for $9.99. You will also need to install the free software on your computer.
This is Big: Bing to Replace Google in iPhone OS 4
This is some seriously big news. TechCrunch reported yesterday that according to their sources, Bing might replace Google as the default search engine in the upcoming iPhone OS 4.
To most people, this news won't mean much and some of you might even think it's not a big deal. But it is. It is a huge deal because it's just one more fight between Apple and Google in the great battle to take over the mobile market.
Back in December I wrote an article (one of the first on the topic, mind you) titled "Apple Vs Google: the war is on" in which I was kinda predicting that things were going to turn bad between the 2 giants. Then a bit later, rumors started going around that Apple and Microsoft might actually join forces to fight the oh-so-evil Google.
Today it seems that these rumors are resurfacing, and as anti-Google advocate, I'm hoping these rumors come true.
Google is rumored to be paying $100M/year to Apple for being the default search engine. My guess is that Microsoft offered at least the same amount. At any rates, I don't think Apple is in it for the money here ; after all, $100M is peanuts for Apple.
They're just realizing that the iPhone is powered by too many Google services (maps, YouTube, search), and if they want to fight Google on the mobile market, they have to fight them everywhere, which means getting rid of as many Google services.
While a Microsoft/Apple partnership would have sounded completely crazy a few years ago, it seems to make more and more sense today. Microsoft is not going to win the mobile battle (heck, they're already losing it) and they know it. They also know they have to partner with someone strong in the mobile market if they want to be relevant in search. Good move from Microsoft if indeed this rumor is true.
In the meanwhile, Apple surpasses Microsoft as the largest tech company in the world. It's crazy to see how quickly things can move.
What do you think?
05.12.01 Baseband Unlock for iPhone Coming Soon
Some good news for those of you who accidentally upgraded their iPhone to OS 3.1.3 with baseband 05.12.01. According to MuscleNerd, there will be an iPhone unlock for baseband 05.12.01 when iPhone OS 4 comes out later this June.
MuscleNerd revealed this information when someone asked him about it on Twitter.
In his reply, MuscleNerd confirmed there will be an unlock for the iPhone 3GS but he also gave us a piece of advice that is too often disregarded.
It is indeed not widely understood enough that one should not update his iPhone right away when Apple pushes a new OS update. If you want to be able to jailbreak or unlock future iPhone OSs, then keep in mind not to update right away. Wait for a while until the Dev Team gives us a go or instructions to update safely while preserving the baseband.
Publish Your Book in Apple’s iBookStore
Apple has implemented a way for accomplished writers as well as wannabes to distribute their content on the iBookStore. I'm sure JD Salinger would despise this but it's still a good way for anyone to get in front of a massive audience.
This service allows you to submit your books but also to set up your account to collect your remuneration from books sales.
I guess the hardest part here is not to get your book in the iBookStore, it's to get it written...
You can check all the requirements here.