Justin’s blog

No, I did not find the cell phone belonging to [insert name of random female celebrity here].

I DID manage to screw up my iPhone. AGAIN. For the second time this week.

This time, as opposed to by some random force (my final theory on last time is that Apple is disabling jailbroken phones somehow, considering I wasn’t the only person to report the same problem on the same day), this was caused by my own stupidity.

First, a bit of history for you. Back in 2006, before the iPhone was released, Apple had two teams working on the iPhone. One had the real hardware, running on a fake system software, and the other had the real software, running on fake hardware. This way, the whole thing couldn’t leak at once before it was announced. Only Steve Jobs and 8-10 other people had ever seen both at once. At some time last year, someone came across one of the hardware prototypes. Sporting an extremely ugly UI, it also had an app called SkankPhone.

For nostalgic value, I decided I was going to copy it from the leaked prototype firmware and attempt to run it on my 3GS, running 3.1.2. I copied in the app and frameworks as directed by a forum post, and surely enough the SkankPhone icon reared its ugly head on my SpringBoard.

Anyway, I tried running it. A screen came up for a split second showing the full version of the picture on the icon. Then it disappeared. Then, I tried possibly the worst idea imaginable. I went into Terminal and tried running the thing as root. What do I get for my troubles? A message simply stating “Killed.”

Later on, I reboot for something. It skips my passcode entirely and sends me to my SpringBoard, only none of my icons launch when tapped. I had to lock it and unlock it again, and then enter my passcode, to make them functional. Needless to say, this is a huge security flaw, so it’s restore time.

Fortunately, even though I feel really stupid now for screwing up my phone twice in a week, at least I have a backup from two days ago this time, as opposed to two months ago. I spend the next two hours getting everything back to normal. If you know me in real life, don’t get any ideas. My phone always requires its (very long, alphanumeric with special characters) passcode when it should once again.

Now for theories on what happened. To be fair, there were two other things I did that could’ve been the actual cause. For one thing, I copied in the frameworks supposedly necessary for SkankPhone.app to run. For another, I installed some extended preferences thing that’s enabled through WinterBoard, and then proceeded to modify it. I’m still suspecting the times I tried running SkankPhone.app though. I can’t remember all the details of what it does, but I believe it also functioned as a prototype SpringBoard of sorts, very well meaning it could’ve overwritten necessary settings files used by SpringBoard with prototype versions that don’t cooperate well with 3.1.2. Regardless of what caused it, I’ve learned something today [End South Park reference]. Copying in prototype apps and frameworks, and WinterBoard extensions that “extend” your preferences app, are all dangerous and stupid ideas.

Considering I have all my stuff exactly back to normal (getting it this way has become almost routine for me ), this incident won’t affect the review series I was planning on writing (the v7 release post will also include a review of one of my favorite apps).

Speaking of v7, sadly, some of my plans didn’t work out, but I will spill the beans on something. It does involve changes to my blog, and the result is stunning, to say the least. I have a fully-working copy of my blog in its v7 form, minus this post and the last one. 8 days and I won’t have to have a separate copy of my blog just for me to stare at all day.

I’d hate to bury my last post already, but I’ve more or less decided what JDC v7’s going to be like, and I have every bit of it working already in some place or another.

I’m not giving out any details yet, but I can and will say that it has two major differences from the current (broken) v6, and one minor fix to something that’s been bothering people for quite awhile now.

Oh, and another cryptic hint at what it’ll be like, to add to the mix. I had to make sure I was posting this in the right place.

In case you didn’t read the title/don’t know when Pi Day is, I’ll say it again. Justin Daigle (.com) v7 will be released on Pi Day 2010 (March 14).

No, Pi Day isn’t at all relevant to v7, I just traditionally do major changes to my site on holidays.

I’m not entirely sure I’m done throwing v7 together yet, so it may be an even bigger change than it is now.

Then again, I suppose it’s a fairly safe bet that most of the changes will be adding stuff, since my site is no longer the scattered mess it used to be. It’s basically my personal blog and file storage.

For those who keep up with me on Twitter (http://twitter.com/jrdaigle1000), you would know that last night around 9PM, my iPhone just randomly quit working. I attempted rebooting it several times, but accomplished nothing. I finally had to restore, and apply a backup from about a month and a half ago. It took me about three hours total to restore, apply the backup, sync all my stuff, jailbreak, and apply all my customizations. Strangely enough, some of my cracked apps actually remembered all their settings, making it somewhat less painful.

Am I writing this to discourage people from jailbreaking?

Absolutely not.

If you read the rest of the post, you’d notice that I said that I jailbroke almost instantly after restoring (also, thanks to Link Tamake for warning me not to use the 3.1.3 update). The customization/system tools/cracked apps/tethering makes it 100% worthwhile. I still find it strange that this happened to me only hours after someone else reported the exact same problem though. A new virus? Some people say no, but I still find it quite suspicious.

If anything, besides the loss of three hours, I benefited from this. I was originally on 3.1, but I took advantage of this to restore to 3.1.2, which fixes the annoying bug that disrupts service, requiring a reboot to fix (For the record, this bug plagued me quite a bit). Also, for some odd reason, redsn0w didn’t like my 3.1 IPSW, making me unable to enable verbose boot. It recognized my 3.1.2 IPSW, however, so I now have a nice, shiny verbose boot going. This is probably the geekiest thing ever said, but there is something truly magical about that text informing you of how the boot process is going flying across the screen.

For those who don’t know (if you’re not a member of JJ, GS, or TWC), today is my 17th birthday!

I got my intermediate driver’s license yesterday, but now that I’m 17, I’m eligible to get my full license (tomorrow; they’re closed today for Mardi Gras).

So far for my birthday I’ve gotten some cash here and there… and that’s basically it.

And once again, for those who don’t know, I’ve started using Twitter again.

For real this time. As in, I’m making a habit of it.

http://twitter.com/jrdaigle1000

Oh, and thanks to those who actually remembered my birthday without my having to mention it. Much appreciated.

As I’ve said, nearly the exact same process is used for this as for changing the iPhone OS version, since OSX and iPhone OS are based on the same core, but I’m writing this with more desktop OSX-specific steps and screenshots.

I suppose the question would arise, “Why would one want to do this?” On Leopard, it is incredibly useful in situations where one may wish to install software that claims to require an update that you don’t want to install. I’ll be demonstrating on Snow Leopard, but the procedure is the same on both. In my demonstration, I will be changing the version number from 10.6.2 to 10.7.0. This has no practical use, but will suffice for demonstration purposes.

Before:

Requirements:

1. Mac OS X

2. A basic knowledge of Terminal

Steps:

1. Open Terminal.

2. Type sudo nano -w /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist

Does the file path look familiar from my last tutorial?

3. Press Enter. You will be prompted for your password. Type it in. You won’t see it on your screen. Press Enter again.

4. Use the arrow keys to navigate to the end of the 10.6.2 under ProductUserVisibleVersion and erase the version number. Enter in a version number of your choice.

5. Repeat for the version number displayed under ProductVersion.

6. Press X (Control-X) to exit. It will ask you if you wish to “save modified buffer.” Press y. It will then ask for a file name to write. Press Enter to accept the default.

7. Exit Terminal.

After:

Needless to say, to reverse this process, just follow the steps again, changing the version number back to the original system version.

For those who haven’t noticed, my IM server went down for about a month, then came back up again a day or two ago.

For those who have noticed, but had no idea what was going on, I had to reboot my home server and was simply too lazy to restart the IM server.

Sorry for the inconvenience. I’ll try to be more diligent in keeping the IM server running in the future.

Okay, this may not be the first tutorial on this. I think I’ve seen others, but I’m quite sure they involve a different method/are in obscure places like blog comments.

Not to mention, this is something I originally learned to do in desktop OSX, to get Safari 4 installed in 10.5.5. A tutorial for changing the desktop OSX system version would work unmodified on iPhone OS. It’s the exact same file that requires modification.

Anyway, now to get to the point.

If you have a jailbroken iPhone, you’ll know how much of a pain it is to install iPhone OS updates, considering they ruin your jailbreak, creating a potential hours of work. Meaning minor updates are generally best to avoid. For example, my iPhone 3GS still has iPhone OS 3.1 on it, which it came with when I got it in December. But, I went to download a game called “FallDown!” and was greeted by this message.

Considering I’m not going to upgrade just to install the one app that’s ever presented me with this error, I thought, “If I can bypass software that requires minor updates on OSX, why can’t I on iPhone OS using the same method?”

Let’s get started, shall we?

Prerequisites:

1. A jailbroken iPhone/iPod Touch (otherwise, just install the update, it’s no trouble at all for you).

2. A file browser. I’ll be using iFile, as I have in all my past tutorials.

Steps:

1. Open iFile (or another file browser of your choice).

2. Browse to /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist and back it up.

3.  Open it, and select Edit.

4. Go to the line that says “Product Version” and look under it. Change the version number from whatever it is (in my case 3.1) to whatever you want it to be. I’ve changed it to stuff like 4.0 before to fool people into thinking I have it (this did cause problems, mainly with AppSync, which expected 3.x, so every time I did anything in Cydia, AppSync uninstalled itself). But for now, I’ve changed it to 3.1.2 so I could install FallDown!

5. Select Save to save the file.

It actually doesn’t seem to require a restart or even a respring, so…

6. Install apps that claim to have compatibility problems.

And notice it’s working!

Compatibility problems… or not.

Please do note: Some apps probably do have actual compatibility problems. Heck, this one may. I only played it for ten seconds, then got the idea to write this tutorial and had to do it before I forgot.

Another simple thing I haven’t been able to find tutorials on.

Ah well, if you want something done right, do it yourself.

Fortunately, as with iPhone OS’s desktop counterpart, just about anything is easily changed.

This can probably be done in Winterboard, but if it can’t/the theme you’re using doesn’t do it, here’s how to change the default album artwork on an iPhone or iPod Touch (assuming it would work on the Touch, my sister has my old one now).

This was tested on my iPhone 3GS running iPhone OS 3.1.

Prerequisites:

1. A jailbroken device.

2. iFile.

3. VSFTPd, correctly installed and configured.

4. An FTP client on your desktop computer.

5. The common sense to backup your files first. Seriously. I’m not joking. If you screw something up, I’m not responsible.

6. A 320×320 PNG image.

Now, why would you want to do this?

If you’re like me and have a huge (in my case, well over 20GB and 10000 songs) music collection, almost all of it obtained from various sources around the internet, almost none of it will have album artwork. So instead of staring at the bland music note icon, give yourself something else to stare at (I take no credit for the graphic used in this demonstration; I didn’t make it and I can’t remember who did).

1. Using iFile, navigate to /Applications/MobileMusicPlayer.app/

2. Rename noartplaceholder.png to something else. DO NOT delete it.

3. Rename the 320×320 PNG image on your desktop computer to noartplaceholder.png

4. Using an FTP client, upload the image to /Applications/MobileMusicPlayer.app/ on your device.

5, Reboot or respring your device.

Obviously, to restore the original image, delete the modified one and name the original one that you backed up back to noartplaceholder.png

Before:

After:

In theory, any graphical element of iPhone OS (or the desktop version of OSX) can be replaced by this method. Due to this, this is probably the last tutorial I’ll write on replacing graphics in either. Or perhaps not. If I find something truly notable, I’ll gladly write up a new one.

Things have been quiet around here lately.

Inspired by this topic on GS, I decided to conduct a study of five major browsers on OSX Snow Leopard (10.6.2, on my hackintosh’d Inspiron 1525 ) to determine their RAM usage in comparison to each other.

http://www.geeksmack.net/forums/topic/4006-mozilla-36-and-memory-use/

Before I post the results, some people claim that RAM usage is proportional to the amount of RAM in the PC. My laptop happens to have 3GB RAM (not much, but my desktop has a rather above average 8GB, so it isn’t a big deal).

I had the same three tabs open inside each of them, joejoe.org, geeksmack.net, and twcforums.info.

GS was open to a different page in Safari, since I was using it to post the reply, but besides that, everything was more or less the same.

The images are rather large, so I’m not embedding them. Click the links.

http://justindaigle.com/files/scr/Skitch-20100123-001458.png

Also, notice I had to install IE for Mac to test this.

Why would anyone still be using this?

http://justindaigle.com/files/scr/GeekSmack_Community-20100123-001847.png

If you look at the first image, memory usage in all five browsers exceeds that of iTunes, which was playing music at the time, and Finder (at first look, Chrome doesn’t, but you have to count it’s helper processes, which are the actual tabs, as well).

By memory usage, the browsers, in order, from most to least:

Safari (226.8MB)

Opera (121.2MB)

Chrome (115.8MB)

Firefox (80.9MB)

Internet Explorer (75.7MB)

My conclusion:

Shame on Apple for making their own Safari the most bloated browser on OSX.

Seems the infamously bloated on Windows Firefox is the least bloated modern browser on OSX.

Yes, IE actually has the least memory usage, but look at the CPU usage. It’s eating up nearly half my processor.

This is because IE is an old PowerPC browser, discontinued ages ago, and emulated by Rosetta.

My suggestion if you’re low on RAM would be to make the switch to Firefox. Since I have 3GB, it’s not so much an issue for me and I’ll stick with Safari or perhaps switch to Chrome.

Also, I find it funny that web browsers, supposedly the lightweight primary application of netbooks, ate up more memory than any other process I had running.

I may do a similar comparison on Windows sometime soon, using the same tabs and the same browsers.

The Water Cooler opened at 12:01AM this morning.

http://twcforums.info

Having received the skin only hours before the scheduled opening date, I was worried that TWC may not make it and would have to have its release delayed.

Anyway, I invite you to join, post, and contribute.

Now, if only WinHook, which has been sitting around doing nothing for the last four months or so, would get an approximate release date.

My current guess is never.