Among the laundry list of complaints some users have made about the iPhone, one is that you can’t use the iPhone as a modem for your laptop. While it’s convenient to have this always-on connection to the Internet, sometimes you want to take advantage of it with a big screen and a full, real keyboard. I know it’s one of the things I miss about my old Motorola E815.
But, with a little elbow grease and hackery, it is possible to share the iPhone’s net connection with your laptop, a process called “tethering.” The folks over at Lifehacker have put together a tutorial showing you how to accomplish this feat of derring-do. It’s worth noting, however, that it’ll require you to jailbreak your phone, so if you’re not comfortable doing that, well, this probably isn’t for you.
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Written by Dan Moren on November 29th, 2007 with no comments.
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So, after all the hoo-hah over the 1.1.1 update undoing SIM unlocks and third-party applications that we’d all enjoyed on the 1.0.2 firmware, does it mean the hackers have just given up? Of course not: these guys aren’t about to just roll over and die; to them, it just means a new puzzle to solve. They’ve been hard at work on scads of new tools for dealing with the 1.1.1 firmware.
For those still looking to unlock their phones and risk the wrath of any forthcoming iPhone updates, you have options such as the commercial iPhoneSimFree package or, if you, like me, are more of the frugal variety, you can try out the iPhone Dev Team’s AnySIM 1.1. Remember that if you do this, you should probably wait before upgrading to whatever iPhone update comes down the pipe, lest you end up with a bricky brick.
But enough about unlocking. What if you just can’t wait until the official SDK arrives in February and all the attendant apps begin to trickle out? Well, for you, such a deal: Nullriver has come up with a new version of their AppTapp installer that works with the 1.1.1 firmware. Unfortunately, it’s not quite as easy to install as the previous versions; you’ll need to jailbreak your phone, downgrade to 1.0.2, and then re-upgrade. On the bright side, that process has progressed quite a bit since we first linked to it a couple weeks back. Now, you can grab the graphical jailbreak app iNdependence, which also lets you manage custom ringtones, install SSH, activate your phone, and a whole lot more.
No, we’re not in the glory days of 1.0.2 anymore, but at least there’s still hope for the hack-loving among us. Had a chance to play with any of these apps? Chime in below.
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Written by Dan Moren on October 22nd, 2007 with no comments.
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You’ve done things the Apple way, eschewing hacks and products like iToner to put ringtones on your most advanced mobile phone evar. Finding a CD of your favorite artist that actually has tracks you can turn into ringtones, you’ve paid the $0.99 premium on all of them and you’re ready to sync them over to your phone. Only after all is said and done, you fire up your iPhone to find just eight ringtones. What gives?
While this may not be a typical user experience (shelling out for more than eight ringtones? The mind boggles!), it’s certainly one of those things that takes a sledgehammer to the idea that Apple’s method is simple. There is, however, a solution from Apple itself: you’ll need to uncheck the “Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected” option, and change it so that iTunes only syncs selected ringtones. Then, sync your ringtones for all you’re worth (namely > $7.92).
Still, this is kind of like Apple punishing you for actually jumping through their myriad hoops. I’d expect the next version of iTunes to bring a fix. Then again, maybe Apple’s spending too much time locking out other methods of getting ringtones on your iPhone. Zing.
[via Daring Fireball]
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Written by Dan Moren on October 9th, 2007 with no comments.
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We previously reported that the recent iPhone update (1.1.1) not only bricks unlocked phones and wipes out third-party software, but also disables custom ringtones–even those installed using iToner, which had previously survived such updates.
However, it turns out that the update doesn’t completely break custom ringtones. Apparently, iToner-installed ringtones remain on the phone after the update; it’s just that the phone no longer displays them in the Ringtones list. In fact, if you set a custom ringtone before applying the update, the iPhone keeps that custom ringtone after the update–it appears as the chosen ringtone on the Sounds screen, and it still works (when someone calls, the custom ringtone plays). Unfortunately, the first time you view the Ringtones screen after the update, you lose that custom ringtone.
In other words, if you really want a custom ringtone, but you also want the latest iPhone software, here’s how to get both: choose a custom ringtone, install the iPhone update, and then don’t ever access the Ringtones screen (at least not until Ambrosia figures out how to get iToner working again.) Of course, this means you should choose a custom ringtone you can live with for a while; maybe a long while…
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Written by Dan Frakes on September 29th, 2007 with no comments.
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Watching video on the iPhone is a joy: the screen is vibrant and crisp. But if there’s one major problem with video on the iPhone, it’s the lack of storage space. Even an 8GB iPhone can only hold a few movies at a time, especially if you also want to store music and photos.
The folks at Embraceware have pointed out one way that you can work around this problem. If you happen to have a lot of movies stored on your home Mac, you can enable Web Sharing on it and then watch your videos on the iPhone by accessing them via Safari (as long as said movies are in an iPhone-compatible video format). They give you a step-by-step set of instructions for doing just this.
Supposedly this method works pretty smoothly on a local network, but if you want to access those videos from anywhere, you’ll have to do a little more tweaking on your network setup (port forwarding and firewalling, for example). Also, you’ll probably find pretty quickly that performance isn’t as good, especially for long, high-quality video files.
Given this a try? Let us know how it’s worked for you.
[via Digg]
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Written by Dan Moren on September 24th, 2007 with no comments.
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