Ah… the iPhone. Some love it, some hate it, but I think most can agree that it has greatly changed the mobile landscape. The original iPhone 3G was the first phone that I ever bought that required a data plan on my cell phone contract. I’ve since upgraded to the iPhone 3GS for the extra speed and RAM, and in general, I’ve really enjoyed using the phone. The sad truth, however, is that the iPhone would suck if it weren’t for jailbreaking.
Jailbreaking, has become the de-facto term for describing the process of hacking your iPhone to release it from the often ridiculous restrictions that Apple imposes on it. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m definitely not a “hacker inch and I certainly don’t have the skills to do the hacking myself. Luckily, there are incredibly intelligent people out there who do have said skills, and they make it easy for laymen such as myself to jailbreak their phone in a (relatively) user-friendly way. When people ask what the point of jailbreaking is, it’s almost a hard question to answer. Not because there aren’t benefits (there are many), but because there is not a single “killer inch feature to point at. Instead, jailbreaking address all the nuances and details that Apple seems to have neglected. Jailbreaking is more about tweaks, rather than providing new mind-blowing features (though some of them are pretty significant) and the sum of these tweaks make the iPhone not suck.
Apple keeps the iPhone locked down to ensure a great user experience, and for the most part, they achieve this. However, this lockdown also means that they are forced to omit some really useful features, generally because they haven’t yet figured out how to implement them in a user friendly way. So, here I’m going to compile a list of the major things that are provided to me through jailbreaking — everything listed below is not otherwise available on the iPhone (with the semi-exception of tethering, more on that below.)
Multitasking Pro Switcher
Despite that fact that this is an oft cited deal-breaker for would-be iPhone owners, I actually rarely have a need for it beyond what Apple has already implemented (mail and music run in the background.) However, when I do want it, I’m pissed off that it isn’t there. Luckily I can fix this by jailbreaking and installing one of several multitasking packages that enable the functionality. I personally use Pro Switcher which gives me a Palm WebOS-like card view of my running applications. I can click on one to pull it forward, or toss it off the screen to close it. If you’ve been following the news, you’ll know that Apple is finally figuring out how to implement multi-tasking, in a way that they see as user-friendly enough (according to Apple), with the upcoming iPhone OS 4.0 software. Sort of sad that Apple overlooked this feature until now and I’ve been able to multitask for quite some time, thanks to jailbreaking.
Ah… the iPhone. Some love it, some hate it, but I think most can agree that it has greatly changed the mobile landscape. The original iPhone 3G was the first phone that I ever bought that required a data plan on my cell phone contract. I’ve since upgraded to the iPhone 3GS for the extra speed and RAM, and in general, I’ve really enjoyed using the phone. The sad truth, however, is that the iPhone would suck if it weren’t for jailbreaking.
Jailbreaking, has become the de-facto term for describing the process of hacking your iPhone to release it from the often ridiculous restrictions that Apple imposes on it. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m definitely not a “hacker” and I certainly don’t have the skills to do the hacking myself. Luckily, there are incredibly intelligent people out there who do have said skills, and they make it easy for laymen such as myself to jailbreak their phone in a (relatively) user-friendly way. When people ask what the point of jailbreaking is, it’s almost a hard question to answer. Not because there aren’t benefits (there are many), but because there is not a single “killer” feature to point at. Instead, jailbreaking address all the nuances and details that Apple seems to have neglected. Jailbreaking is more about tweaks, rather than providing new mind-blowing features (though some of them are pretty significant) and the sum of these tweaks make the iPhone not suck.
Apple keeps the iPhone locked down to ensure a great user experience, and for the most part, they achieve this. However, this lockdown also means that they are forced to omit some really useful features, generally because they haven’t yet figured out how to implement them in a user friendly way. So, here I’m going to compile a list of the major things that are provided to me through jailbreaking — everything listed below is not otherwise available on the iPhone (with the semi-exception of tethering, more on that below.)
Multitasking – Pro Switcher
Despite that fact that this is an oft cited deal-breaker for would-be iPhone owners, I actually rarely have a need for it beyond what Apple has already implemented (mail and music run in the background.) However, when I do want it, I’m pissed off that it isn’t there. Luckily I can fix this by jailbreaking and installing one of several multitasking packages that enable the functionality. I personally use Pro Switcher which gives me a Palm WebOS-like card view of my running applications. I can click on one to pull it forward, or toss it off the screen to close it. If you’ve been following the news, you’ll know that Apple is finally figuring out how to implement multi-tasking, in a way that they see as user-friendly enough (according to Apple), with the upcoming iPhone OS 4.0 software. Sort of sad that Apple overlooked this feature until now and I’ve been able to multitask for quite some time, thanks to jailbreaking.
By now you’ve likely seen my ‘iBook’ project. As I mentioned, I documented the process and now I’m here to post the guide in case anyone else is interested in making their very own. There is definitely more than one way to make a book safe, and if you have more appropriate tools, feel free to improvise. The methods I selected we’re based on low cost and simplicity and will at least give you a good idea of the process. Let’s get started.
Project cost: aprox. $10
Project time: this project can be completed in a single day, but you’ll definitely want to set aside a large chunk of time for page cutting (might want to grab your headphones for some music!)
Required materials:
A fitting book
Precision knife (Xacto, packaging knife, etc.)
Rubber cement
Scotch tape
Pencil
Patience (quite a bit of it)
Tips for book selection:
Local bookstores are likely to have very inexpensive used books. The one I used was $2. I bought three books of varying sizes to be sure I got the fit I wanted. I used one book as a practice first before doing the final one (lots of cutting!). I took my iPad to the store to size up several books. Things you want to look for in the book depth, be sure that there are enough pages in the book that your iPad will fit all the way in. This is probably the toughest part of the selection process because it can be hard to judge. You may wish to measure how high your iPad stands off of a flat surface before going to the book store, then find a book with page width that is equally or slightly deeper than the measured value. Be sure that the book has enough padding around your iPad. That is, make sure that when you cut out the shape, the resulting thickness of the pages is enough to support your iPad and withstand a fairly intensive cutting process. You don’t want to try cut the shape out with, say, 0.2 inch of padding, you’ll likely rip some pages during the process. There is about 0.75 inch of padding in my final iBook.
Steps
Remove the cover of the book (if it has one) and center the iPad face-down inside the cover. Use the pencil to trace an outline, you should hold the pencil perpendicular to the paper so that the side of the pencil pushes against the side of the iPad as you trace. The distance from the side of the pencil/iPad to the tip leaves a good buffer in your outline and subsequent cut to ensure a good fit. If you cut it a little too big you can always add spacers to increase the tightness, but if you cut it too small, you’ll have a hard time figuring out how to recut all of the pages…. (Note that the volume rocker and hold switch will be on the opposite site when the iPad is face-up in the finished product, cutting around them specifically would be too tedious, this is what the buffer is for.)
You want your first several cuts to follow the rounded shape of the iPad’s corners. I’d recommend cutting the rounded corners for 10-20 pages. After that you’ll be cutting square corners (much easier!), but the top pages will give it a round corner look, which will give a more custom-fit appearance. Use your knife to begin cutting on your outline. I pressed very firmly with my knife to cut through several pages at once, then pulled them out until I needed to cut again (early enough that I could still see previous cut marks and knew where to cut). Finding the right number of pages to cut through and pull out before making more cuts its probably the most challenging part of this project. Just make your cuts carefully and eventually you’ll get into a rhythm. Don’t forget to square your corners after the first 10 or 20 pages and continue to cut them that way. Square corners are much easier to cut than the rounded ones. I used a paper clip to keep part of the cut pages closest to the binding out of my way while I continued to cut. They don’t like to fold back with the rest of the page because most of their support has been cut out!
While cutting, do occasional test fits to ensure that the cuts are coming out properly. If you aren’t through too many pages, put the iPad in face-down to get the best idea of how it will fit (the rounded back makes this deceiving when it is face-up and you don’t yet have a lot of depth.) Finding that you are having fitting problems would be much better in the first 30 pages then after 200 cuts! As long as you were careful with your outline (and added an appropriate buffer) and keep the cuts consistent, you shouldn’t have an issue. One thing to look out for. The more pages you cut and fold back, the further the subsequent pages will be pulled toward the binding (slowly misaligning the top cut from each one underneath). If you don’t correct for this, your page cuts will have a distinct diagonal shape on the left and right. You can adjust for this by slowly moving your cuts to the right to keep them in the same relative position as the first cut (be sure to do this on the left and right sides of the cut.)
Once you’ve cut deep enough to fully fit the iPad, you are going to use your tape to hold the pages in their closed-book positions. The first thing you want to do is to hold the cover of the book at a 90 degree angle (or prop it against something) while you use scotch take to make small wraps around the pages. In the picture above, I colored on the tape with sharpie so it could be easily seen. I picked up the whole of the pages and slid a piece of scotch under them to begin, then set them down and wrapped it around the outside to the top (do this for each piece of tape applied.) I folded the tape back on itself at the end to make a non-sticky tab that I could use to grip to remove the tape easily.
When you are satisfied with the way the pages are being held, flip open the back cover and apply rubber cement to the back of the very last page (yes, over top of the tape). Once it is covered all the way around, close the back cover, flip the book over, and open the front cover. Begin applying rubber cement quite liberally around the inside surface of the page cuts. Close the cover and rest some weights on top of the book for at least an hour while it dries. When you return, remove the tape (it’s glued in the bottom cover, you can cut it, or it’ll rip pretty easily.)
Once the back cover and inside has been glued, flip the book face-down and slide a piece of paper or two between the block of pages and the front cover of the book to protect the cover and create a shelf for the rubber cement to rest on while you glue around the outside of the page block. Don’t worry about getting glue against the back cover as its already glued down to the pages!
Once you’ve got it all glued up you should rest some weight (other books work well) on top of it to keep everything firmly pressed down as the adhesive dries. After a few hours of drying you can remove the weights and open up the front cover to allow the inside adhesive to air out and dry. Depending on how tightly your fit turned out, you may choose to add the bookmark/tab piece to assist in removing it from the case.
I was in the mood for a nice DIY project, so I picked up about $10 worth of materials (including the book) and decided to create myself an iPad case with a twist.
There were a few reasons I decided to make this:
Didn’t want to drop $40 for Apple’s iPad case
iPad back scratches easily, I hate to rest it naked on the table
I feel like a pretentious bastard using the iPad in public because everyone knows what it is, but few people have one — this helps me disguise it while in use
On a similar note, the iPad feels particularly vulnerable as a hot gadget, I feel much better leaving it sitting around while camouflaged than by itself
Have a look at the case, and if you’d like to make your own, I’ve documented the process and will put some instructions up a bit later. I’m sure there are more efficient approaches, but my way didn’t require any sort of workshop or power tools. The thing that looks like a bookmark from the outside is a strip of canvas secured with duct tape to help lift the iPad up when you want to get it out of the case (the fit is quite snug).
I’m pretty happy with the results. The great irony here is that I don’t read a lot of books! For anyone interested, the book I used was Stand-Up Comedians on Television. Sorry for cutting up your book Larry Gelbart!
Some improvements that I might make at a later time:
Access to headphone/volume buttons/hold button while the iPad is in the case
Moleskine style elastic band to keep the book held closed
I went to a local book thrift store and looked for books with removable covers that looked relatively boring underneath, as to not attract attention. I also kind of dig that old-school material that they used to cover books in, so I looked for that as well. I took the iPad with me to size up some books and I look particularly for one that would offer enough padding around the iPad for be strong and durable, but not too much that it greatly increased the size of the iPad. As long as the book fits inside my backpack then it’s fine, as that’s where I carry the iPad when it comes with me anyway. I came out of the book store with three books of varying sizes so I could make sure that I got one that fit just right. I used one that I determined to be too thin to be my test book, so I did this whole process on that book first so I could fix any oversights or errors in the process for the final version that is shown here.
Count me as one of the people who said “It’ll never happen inch when first hearing about Opera submitting it’s Opera Mini browser, designed for the iPhone, to the Apple App Store. Despite the fact that I really wanted Opera Mini to make it through, it just seemed like there was no way, based on Apple’s previous behavior, that this browser would make it though. There are “alternative inch browsers in the App Store, however they are really just reskined versions of Safari. Opera Mini, on the other hand, is using it’s own framework and I believe it’s own rendering engine, which is why it is particularly amazing that it’s been approved for release into the App Store. Additionally, it features Opera’s ‘Turbo’ technology to speed up page loading times by compressing the data on Opera’s servers before sending it to your phone. This feature significantly improves load times when using slower connections such as 3G or especially EDGE, rather than WiFi.
While I’d love to give you some usage impressions, Opera Mini is not working for me for some strange reason. I haven’t heard this yet reported elsewhere so I’m assuming it is an isolated case, but for the record, Opera Mini is not working on my iPhone 3GS or my iPad as of this writing it hangs on the launch page and never gets passed it. If you don’t have an iPhone yourself, or are having the same issue as me, the least I can offer you is this video of how Opera Mini works on the iPhone:
As for it not running for me… that’s ok because MobileCrunch has you covered and has already run speed tests comparing Opera Mini to Safari, and with this cursory glance, it would appear that Opera Mini is indeed faster. Now if I could just get it working…
While every major site may have raced to get their iPad review out before the end of launch day, we’re taking things slow here and spending a reasonable amount of time using the device before passing any judgment. With that said, our full review is still brewing; for now I’d like to drop some info on the slate after using it for about a week.
I’ll give you three chances to guess what is surprising me most about the iPad. Is it the build quality? Perhaps the battery life? Maybe the keyboard? If you guessed any of the above, you’d be wrong. What is surprising me most about the iPad so far is how little I’ve been using it compared to how I expected to use it.
I’ve owned and thoroughly used the iPhone for quite some time now. I’ve gotten used to the experience, and the fact that it is phone sized means that I have it on me all the time and it really integrates with my life as a useful tool. The promise of something larger and more powerful seemed great. Given the amount of use my iPhone gets I figured that, given its size, the iPad would provide a faster, more immersive, and more useful experience. While this is true on some levels, I’m finding that the iPad only fits perfectly into a few usage scenarios. It is highly target toward casual users who would prefer to sit on a couch and interact more intimately with their content rather then pulling up a chair to their computer desk and navigate around with a mouse.
A lot of people are still asking “where does the iPad fit into my life? inch I believe this question will be answered once we start to see actual iPad apps instead of simply giant iPhone apps. I’m not trying to say that iPad apps don’t already exist in fact I think there were about 1000 at launch but the problem is that the majority of these applications (the free ones anyway) are simply iPhone apps that have been scaled up, and maybe beautified a bit, for the iPad. But beyond this, they don’t have any additional functionality. I haven’t yet been compelled to purchase any apps for the iPad so far, so the story may be different for some of the premium apps out there.
When the App Store first came out on the iPhone, we saw something very similar. The first iPhone applications were very basic, generally consisting of lists and columns to navigate through content. In time developers really learned how to make compelling and efficient interfaces, and now we’ve got applications which are regarded as some of the most powerful of any mobile platform. Similarly, it’s going to take some time before developers figure out how to really take advantage of the iPad’s large, high res screen, and improved hardware. Eventually developers will hit their stride and we’ll see lots of innovative and useful iPad applications; but for the time being, most of what is available now is merely iPhone applications that have been sized up to the screen.
I’m sure that many developers were rushed to get their iPad apps out the door for launch. The incentive of being counted among the first few thousand apps (rather than among some 150,000 like on the iPhone) definitely drove developers to code quick and use interface concept that are familiar and have been proven on the iPhone. I’m hoping that in the future, some iPad apps don’t get held back by their iPhone counterparts merely because developers want to keep feature parity between the two. If we’re lucky, most developers will recognize that the iPad is a more powerful and more capable device than the iPhone, and treat us to apps that really take advantage of the hardware, instead of being held back by the old ways of the iPhone.
Ah… the iPhone. Some love it, some hate it, but I think most can agree that it has greatly changed the mobile landscape. The original iPhone 3G was the first phone that I ever bought that required a data plan on my cell phone contract. I’ve since upgraded to the iPhone 3GS for the extra speed and RAM, and in general, I’ve really enjoyed using the phone. The sad truth, however, is that the iPhone would suck if it weren’t for jailbreaking.
Despite that fact that this is an oft cited deal-breaker for would-be iPhone owners, I actually rarely have a need for it beyond what Apple has already implemented (mail and music run in the background.) However, when I do want it, I’m pissed off that it isn’t there. Luckily I can fix this by jailbreaking and installing one of several multitasking packages that enable the functionality. I personally use Pro Switcher which gives me a Palm WebOS-like card view of my running applications. I can click on one to pull it forward, or toss it off the screen to close it. If you’ve been following the news, you’ll know that Apple is finally figuring out how to implement multi-tasking, in a way that they see as user-friendly enough (according to Apple), with the upcoming iPhone OS 4.0 software. Sort of sad that Apple overlooked this feature until now and I’ve been able to multitask for quite some time, thanks to jailbreaking.
