A lot of iPhone dev types have known about the SBMobileScreenshotr preference for a very long time. What we didn't know was how to make it do anything. The software programming site RipDev solved the mystery.
After setting the preference
in /var/mobile/Library/Preferences/com.apple.springboard.plist, just restart Springboard and use the following super-secret key combination: Hold down the Home key and toggle the mute switch. Your screen flashes white, a screen shot appears on your camera roll. How did they figure this out? Given the relative unlikelihood of coming across this key combination by chance, I'm guessing they might have had some human direction. Or maybe they're just really really good at disassembling code.
If you'd rather not edit your property lists directly, add http://repository.ripdev.com as an Installer repository and install Apple Screenshot Enabler. Warning: trying to remove the mod via Installer.app caused my phone to reboot. It just would not uninstall properly.
We love reading articles like this. Folks who use old gadgets for novel purposes make our geeky little hearts dance. Take as evidence the DIY iPod video projector and the iPod nano slide viewer.
Today we came across a post from jeffkobi at Instructables describing how he turned a 5.25" floppy drive into an amplifier. After building a prototype with a Tupperware container, Jeff (can we call you Jeff?) put the guts of a Sonic Impact 5066 T-amp into the drive case (it fit quite nicely, actually), attached a volume knob and in/out ports, connected his iPod and was in business. A retro-amp that looks cool on any desk.
Forget those silly video out ports on your iPod's dock. For some serious video fun, build your own video projector.
Instructables member tanntraad built a clever little projection box for his iPod with a mirror and a lens from an old slides projector (remember those?). When the iPod is placed on a screen-sized hole on the top of the box (brightness turned all the way up), its video is bounced off of the mirror, through the lens and onto a the wall. The result is a very cool iPod-powered home theater.
Ecamm's Mac-side hacking Caption Crunch tools work fine with the iPhone and iPod touch running 1.1.3. You can use these tools to set and reset custom time and carrier strings on your devices. I gave Caption Crunch a try and my iPod touch now shows a "hi" message instead of the time. Ecamm wrote about these tools on their weblog a few weeks back. It's nice to know that even with the 1.1.3 jailbreak lock-out that some user customization hacks still work.
Here's a nifty idea to add a little organization to your Finder sidebar. Since it does not natively support separators, one fellow decided to hack up a solution by creating some fake applications whose icons are transparent and whose names consist of line characters. You can then drag and drop these on the sidebar to give the desired effect.
It's a small thing, but a nice one for keeping your Finder sidebar visually tidy. The package also contains a nifty little AppleScript application that will launch the Terminal at the location of a folder dropped on it.
So while I was gone off, enjoying the wild wonders of Arizona, seems like a big kerfuffle tumulted, disturbed, and then resolved. Mike Rose just dropped me an IM, asking whether the whole "Mikey" thing meant that the iPhone was especially susceptible to malicious influences. Was this the canary in the coal mine? Are bad things coming down the road iPhone-wise?
In my opinion? Not so much. This bad patch showed more that users could be quick to respond and capable of handling flackitude than that the iPhone was a particularly vulnerable platform. Less harm was done by Mikey the 11 year old than by the whole recent QuickBooks debacle.
It's a given when one computes that bad things happen. Some harm is intentional, some not. What we saw at play here, and is especially obvious in retrospect, was a quick community response. The strong network of Apple/iPhone enthusiasts got the message out and acted with precision and decisiveness. Well done, guys.
Remember I wrote about that bunch of undocumented SpringBoard prefs? Ecamm has grabbed the bull by the horns (or possibly by the implanted iPod dock) and produced "Caption Crunch", a simple utility that adds a custom message to your iPhone using the fake time preferences.
Caption Crunch works by modding the com.apple.springboard.plist file that gets stored on your personal computer in the backup files and actually talks to your iPhone and convinces it to upload a new copy of the prefs file. The iPhone will perform a "pseudo restore" and may reboot. I tested on an iPod touch and it worked great.
Cool stuff indeed--but even cooler that Ecamm seems to have taken Mac/iPhone communication up to a new level. No Jailbreak necessary.
Turns out it's not super hard to do-- inside the Dock app folder, there's just three .png files that serve as "Dock indicators," so all you have to do is change those (definitely back up what's there, however), and you should be in business. The Dock now scales those indicators based on size, so there's three files to replace-- at your own risk, natch-- and you're all set.
Here's an awesome project from over at 123Macmini-- James Colby hollowed out a Classic Mac, and stuck a ripped apart mini in there along with a new LCD, took Finder out of the interface and sent it straight to Front Row, and bingo-- a Classic mini jukebox. And I especially like that the Classic was named Morris and the (10 minute old) mini was named Frank, so together, they're Frankenmorris. Cute.
It's a tight fit to get all that stuff in there and working, but it's even more amazing that he was able to get everything out of there-- as he said, he had to cut the front off of the CRT. The front also looks nice considering he made a few cuts there, to let the floppy take in a DVD, and another hold for the IR receiver.
But the end product looks great. One more reason why the mini, despite recent rumors, should stay right where it is.
This morning, we were having a lot of trouble getting third-party iPhone apps to show up properly and run on the home screen. Despite the fact that Apple has added extra protections to SpringBoard and created a list of approved identifiers, iPhone hacker asap18 has managed to port several applications to the iPhone and gotten them to appear properly on the home screen. For now, only 15 icons can be added this way--the last spot appears to be reserved for iTunes. The apps have been tested and are working fine.
He has also tracked down an option for International capabilities in SpringBoard, which may lead to foreign language Application support. This will be needed in countries like Germany and France, where the iPhone will shortly debut.
This is a developing story, and we'll be keeping an eye on it but remember this success is only in regards to running apps on the 1.1.1 firmware. Unlocked iPhones still run the danger of being bricked when upgraded to the 1.1.1 firmware, so if you have an unlocked iPhone do not upgrade to the latest firmware.
While iPhone hacking remains a sport for the brave, the utility infrastructure to give Grandma iPhone User the same tweaking power as the most l33t denizen of #iphone is coming along nicely, thanks. Now at version 3, iFuntastic provides a GUI for almost any iPhone modification task you might reasonably want to do to your ($500, possibly instantly out-of-warranty) iPhone.
New features in this version include: PowerPC support, so G4 and G5 users may join in the fun; a 'permanent jailbreak' tool called Unshackling; multiple, editable home screen layouts with custom wallpaper; and simplified/improved ringtone installation. You can download iFuntastic (needless to say, use at your own risk) from iPhoneAlley or Macenstein and go to town. via iPhoneAlley -- thanks Aron
Reader John Tokash wrote in with this tip that shows how to open more than 8 windows at once in iPhone Safari. Here's how it works: After opening 8 windows, quit Safari. To do this, press and hold Home for 4-8 seconds until Safari quits and you return to your home screen. Next, tap on Weather, wait for the screen to load and tap on the Y! icon at the bottom left. This opens a new screen in Safari. Repeat the quit-Weather-Y! sequence as desired. Downside? The dot navigation at the bottom of the Safari screen no longer works but you can still scroll through all open windows.
Poor Apple TV - the iPhone has been outshining the handy little media hub, and Jobs arguably might not have helped matters by calling it a hobby (though, personally, that makes me optimistic for its future). Fortunately, last100 has compiled a very, very thorough list of Apple TV resources that spans reviews from various industry sites, dedicated books, blogs and wikis, how-to tutorials for converting video, podcasts and, of course, the burgeoning hacking industry that has surfaced. If you're looking for a useful springboard into the world of the Apple TV, this is by far the most comprehensive resource I've seen yet.
Brian sent us (thanks!) what is probably the very first Keynote '08 hack. He found that there's a new stroke option in the program called Picture Frames, which are various types of framing graphics to put around a slide. The standard choice screen lets you choose from 12, but Brian opened up the Keynote files, and found that there were actually 72-- apparently Apple included Frames for its own Themes, but didn't allow the user to use them separately.
Fortunately, all it takes to show the extra frames is their names in an xml (actually a .plist) file inside the Keynote .app folder, so Brian cracked it open, and added all the names. Turns out, also, that no matter how much you stretch it, the Picture Frames choose can only show 50 at a time, so Brian even created a customized .plist file that shows his 50 favorites-- all you have to do is download it from him, put it inside your Keynote .app file, restart Keynote, and you've got access to almost all the Picture Frames that Apple does.
It's pretty clear why Apple didn't want people playing around with custom frames too much (opening a Keynote file with a custom frame requires that you have it installed, apparently, so sending a Keynote file to your friend without the custom frame could lead to trouble), but who knows why they didn't at least give you the option of using all the frames everyone has. Thanks to Brian's superfast hack, now you can.
Update: Just to make it clear, it's fine to use these hidden frames, since everyone has them installed. The problem with sharing frames comes when you send someone a slide with a frame you created-- they don't have that frame installed, and so they won't see it.
When you want to add ringtones, change wallpaper, or run third-party applications on your iPhone, you need to perform a task called "jailbreaking". What this does is to open up your iPhone's file system so it can be accessed from your computer. There are a number of tools available to jailbreak.
If you're on an Intel Mac, you just won the lottery. The easiest software to use, by far, is iFuntastic. It walks you through the entire process with helpful prompts and pictures and is very simple to use. The iFuntastic crew promise PPC support in upcoming releases. If you are a PPC user and don't have the desire to download, compile and install complicated hacker tools you might be best served by just waiting for the next iFuntastic release.
Also keep in mind that you don't have to jailbreak on your own computer. You can borrow a friend's computer for 15 minutes to use iFuntastic. That's handy if you're a Windows users or on a G4 or G5.
A much more complicated alternative to iFuntastic is the iPhone Utility Client, with its amusing acronym iPHUC. You will have to google for the link as the website in question has requested no direct links. If you have access to developer tools, iPHUC will allow you to jailbreak on your G4 or G5. I warn you that the process is ugly and involves extreme hackery. If you want a slightly easier way to use iPHUC, the latest version of the iActivator tool performs iPHUC-compatible jailbreaks. Best of all, it's a Universal Binary.
For Windows users, there's the original fully-leaded jailbreak utility. The complicated bit is that it requires that you have a copy of the original 1.0.0 firmware present. To get that, you will have needed to have restored your iPhone at least once during it's 1.0.0 release.
The bottom line is that if you don't own an Intel Macintosh, the path to jailbreaking is difficult and complicated. You'll need to google a lot and, I recommend, rely on social networking. The best place to get started with jailbreak is over at irc.osx86.hu, in the #iphone channel. Be polite. And remember, anyone helping you out is doing so of their own goodwill.
We love reading articles like this. Folks who use old gadgets for novel purposes make our geeky little hearts dance. Take as evidence the 
Here's a nifty idea to add a little organization to your Finder sidebar. Since it does not natively support separators, one fellow decided to 
Here's an awesome project from over at 123Macmini-- James Colby hollowed out a Classic Mac, and stuck a ripped apart mini in there along with a new LCD, took Finder out of the interface and sent it straight to Front Row, and bingo-- 
Poor Apple TV - the iPhone has been outshining the handy little media hub, and Jobs arguably might not have helped matters by 
Brian sent us (thanks!) what is probably 
