Filed under: iPod Family, Hacks, How-tos, iPhone, iPhone 101
iPhone 101: You've got iPhone or iPod touch jailbreak! What next?
You've run the TIFF exploit jailbreak and your iPhone or iPod touch now has Installer.app on your main page. So now what? Here are some tips and ideas for you. Add Community Sources. Most third party applications are found under Community Sources in Installer.app. Until you add this feature, you won't see most of the dozens and dozens of available applications from repositories like SMXY and Conceited Software.
Try out some great apps. My personal favorites include my own Voice Notes recorder (for iPhone only), Apollo IM instant messaging client, and Mobile Colloquy for irc. There are productivity apps, games, and utilities, all available for your mobile device.
Add direct file access. Install the BSD subsystem and (in Community Sources) Open SSH (both from NerveGas). Once you've installed ssh, you can use any sftp client to transfer files onto and off of your unit. On the Mac, you can also install MacFuse and sshfs to gain Finder access to your units. Remember that the new iPhone and iPod touch 1.1.1 password is "alpine", not "dottie". Many GUI sftp clients may not see the entire directory tree. In this case, you may want to enable afc2.
Know when things go wrong. The latest Installer.app has been hammered by new users. If you get a "package" error when trying to install, just do a re-install. You may need to uninstall first, depending on the progress when things failed. If you touch an app icon and it launches, pauses and quits, make sure you've installed the BSD subsystem. Failing to install BSD is the number one reason most app launches fail.
Know about restoring. If you ever change your mind about a jailbreak, just restore your iPhone or iPod touch using iTunes. Assuming you haven't unlocked, your iPhone or touch will be identical to one shipped from a factory.
When things slow down A number of people have reported system slow-downs after jailbreaking. Unfortunately, a roughly equal number have reported the same problem without jailbreaking. If this happens to you, just restore your iPhone or touch and re-jailbreak.
OMG, OMG, OMG restore failed This isn't that uncommon. Try restoring again once or twice. If iTunes fails to see the iPod or iPhone, google for iphuc dfu mode.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Oli said 11:11AM on 10-29-2007
I have a problem with installer after using Independence.
I dragged installer.app from the extracted
exe file onto my phone into the system part.
It installed and popped up and worked fine as it updated its sources before
saying it needed to be updated which I did.
Then it stopped working - it wouldn't refresh it would download and it was
useless.
So I removed it and put it back in the user part and this time it thought
it was already still installed and when I tried to update it - it said it
didn't have permission.
Also my springboard no lonfer restarts when using Independence and when I added more than 16 apps using Independence I didn't get a scrolling screen and the 17th app just wasn't there! maybe its a problem with Independence and not installer?
Anyone?
Thanks.
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DistortedLoop said 12:16PM on 10-29-2007
Oh oh! Two iphone hacking posts in a row! The haters are gonna come out and force and talk about how much TUAW sucks now. LOL.
Erica, great work.
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Ricky said 10:51AM on 10-29-2007
are we absolutely sure that the iPod Touch won't be a brick with next firmware updates?
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Ramesh said 10:52AM on 10-29-2007
Hi Erica, VoiceNotes is my favorite app too, but when I installed it on my 1.1.1 iPhone, it just quits whenever I start it up. Am I doing something wrong? I installed version 0.21 using Installer.App. Thanks!
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Travis Richardson said 11:19AM on 10-29-2007
But how do i get the add button on my iCal?
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Mark said 11:57AM on 10-29-2007
I'm having the same problem with VoiceNotes. It starts, then immediately dumps me back to the home screen.
I'm having the same issue with several other apps installed using Installer.app, though installer and Summerboard both seem fine.
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Bob S. said 11:58AM on 10-29-2007
Is there one central location I can go to that has a list of apps? If I see enough interesting stuff, I can rationalize buying an iPod Touch, but all I know right now is that there's an IM client (which I don't care about) and an IRC client (which is nice but not enough by itself to make me think I need an iPod Touch). And I think there's an NES emulator. So that's maybe three of "dozens and dozens" of apps.
blog.psmxy.org just has brief notes on app updates, but I sure can't find anything there that says "Hey, here are these apps, and here's what they do." Conceited Software is much better, but doesn't mention the iPod Touch, just the iPhone, and apparently some programs don't work with the iPod Touch. If this installer app is getting an up-to-date list, there has to be one maintained by and readable by people, right?
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Travis Richardson said 12:20PM on 10-29-2007
Im having trouble uninstalling the widgets app on my touch. installer doesn't give me the option to uninstall it. any ideas?
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Bob S. said 12:20PM on 10-29-2007
Where can I see one nice list of apps? Where there are notes about which work on the iPod Touch and descriptions for each app? That SMXY site is like reading comments in source code, and all it has is a list of app names that have been updated, no descriptions. (If there's a link to a list like that, it's well-disguised.) Conceited Software's site is a little better, but still talks about the iPhone only, not the iPod Touch, that I could see, and it's still pretty terse. If that installer app's getting a nice centralized list, there must be a version readable by people too?
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Mark said 12:22PM on 10-29-2007
Bob,
Install the "Community Sources" in Installer.app and you'll see a lot more applications -- from games to productivity.
I'm especially happy with the eBook reader, which is very nicely done. Now we just need to get more books on the list.
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Bob S. said 12:26PM on 10-29-2007
Whoops. Sorry about the double post. The original didn't show up here for quite a while. Feel free to delete one or the other (and this one), o mighty maintainers.
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Bob S. said 12:40PM on 10-29-2007
Mark, thanks, but I'm asking from the perspective of someone who currently doesn't own either an iPhone or an iPod Touch but might buy one (in my case, an iPod Touch, as I just upgraded my Sidekick) if third-party apps would make them worthwhile.
Back in the PSP homebrew days, a lot of sites maintained up-to-date lists of homebrew releases on their sites that weren't just machine-readable but people-readable too, and I'm just hoping someone's doing that for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Thanks for any pointers to their sites.
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Mark said 12:46PM on 10-29-2007
Here's a sampler from the list on installer:
IM Clients
IRC Clients
BSD Tools
DNS Tools
Terminal emulator
Several experiments with "location based" info
File Sharing
Text Editor
Python runtime environment
Ruby runtime environment
Games
-----
15 (sliding puzzle)
Minesweeper
Aquarium
Balls
NES Emulator
Text adventure engine (Zork, etc.)
Blackjack
Pong
Labyrinth
Zune2
"Toys"
several eBooks
several SummerBoard themes
several "demo apps" (mainly graphic tests)
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Bhill said 1:20PM on 10-29-2007
I used jailbreakme.com and explored for a little while. I decided that I really didn't care for third party apps so i estored my ipjonw. Now pics, video, and music will not sync with the phone as well as rwally slow typing and the key board backspace gers "stuck" and does not stop until everyhing has been deleted. Please help!
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Ramesh said 1:28PM on 10-29-2007
#5 Mark, I figured out why the app quits - you need to install BSD system tools for most apps to work. I did that and now VoiceNotes works like a charm!
One weird thing is that it lists (and plays) a recording that I did before the 1.1.1 upgrade. I thought the upgrade cleans up the iPhone disk? That was interesting. It looks like Erica figured a way for these recordings to be backed up/restored by iTunes somehow?
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james said 1:41PM on 10-29-2007
@ #14, you'll have to force your iphone into recovery mode. google it, and you'll be goodit may take a few tries, and play with it on and off the dock, but you'll eventually get it.
i'm having a general problem, and it may just be me. i am finding that a lot of my iphone apps are crashing seconds after i turn them on. any thoughts? i have 1.1.1 and used the newest web-based version of jailbreak. but even voice recorder and isplit won't open. some will however, and i have a dangerous nostalgia brewing as i play zork...
does anybody have any tips or sites you could direct me to?
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Bob S. said 1:49PM on 10-29-2007
In case (once again) my earlier post doesn't show up or takes a mysteriously long time, thanks very much for that generous list, Mark. From the looks of things, your list overlaps the one at http://iphone.exploit.org/pxl/ , so I think that's what I'm looking for -- a reasonably up-to-date list of what's available. (It doesn't break out iPhone and iPod Touch, apparently, but I'd gather anything that isn't specifically phone-related is available to the iPod Touch.) It looks promising, so I've got some thinking and budgeting to do. :)
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james said 1:50PM on 10-29-2007
Ramesh... you answered my question. thanks!
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Sam Weiss said 4:39PM on 10-29-2007
Ohhh I'm so glad getting iPhone posts again! ...After days of "Lepoard this", and "Lepoard that". lol
I've had a question since the new installer came out... how the heck can I see the free space on my system "partition"?? It looked like there was a lot less free space after the 1.1.1 update, and after installing a bunch of stuff I started getting "drive full" messages
I finally wound up removing Apollo IM to free up some space, but I'm afraid to install much more, because I have no idea how much space I have??
Sam
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Alistair Holt said 5:06PM on 10-29-2007
Will jailbreaking via jailbreakme.com brick my iPod Touch?
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