My iPhone Apps

Hello all,

I am going to list out all the iPhone apps/tweaks that I have. I own an iPhone 3GS, so take that in consideration for some of the more resource-intensive apps.

Before I go ahead and list off the apps I have on my phone, allow me to explain the type of iPhone user I am. First off, I jailbroke my phone. Yes, I did. The phone is just so much more useful when I can control every part of it. After I restored my phone once, I tried using it without Cydia and so on. I felt the phone was so useless (besides the smartphone + iPod aspects). That's not to say that the phone is a completely different beast when jailbroken such that everyone should do it. I guess part of it was that I was used to having it jailbroken, but it's also because there's inherent merit to jailbreaking your phone. Anyways. If you need further convincing, I suggest you do further reading.

I am pretty utilitarian, so I don't care for themes or soundboards. Get WinterBoard and Customize out of here. I used to do it, but I just got so bored of looking at the themes. It slows down the experience, much like "Six Icon Dock" and "Five Column/Row Springboard." I don't play a lot of games, but I have a few. I don't invest my time or money in the latest and greatest FPS or RPG or what have you, so this list isn't helpful to you if that's what you're looking for. I'm not into cracking apps from the App Store, so again, this is the wrong list. Also, I'll pay for an app if it's worth it or if I want to support the developer, but there isn't much I'm willing to pay for.

Now that that's been said, on with the show:

Essentials

• Cydia - I used to have Installer back when it was around, but when I heard Cydia was open source, I jumped ship immediately. I am nothing short of amazed at Jay Freeman's (saurik) work. Rock and Icy are probably fine. I'm really only interested in tweaks and nifty System packages.
• SBSettings - Does this even need any explanation? The combination of easily accessible toggles, power control, respringer, IP address viewer, icon hider, Mobile Substrate manager, memory-freer and more make it one of the most powerful tools available on the iPhone. You might hear someone say, "Oh, you only save 4 seconds from going into Settings->Wifi->Off. How busy can your life be?" Well, do the math and consider how many times you're going to turn off every feature (3G, EDGE, Wifi, Bluetooth, rotation, etc.) and multiply out the time over the expected life of your phone. 'nuff said.
• Five Icon Dock - I didn't like Six Icon Dock, and I don't care to pay for Infinidock. Five is a good number. I hold in my dock (in order from left to right) Messages, Phone, iPod, Safari and Mail. I use Mail and Messages the most, so that's why they're on the ends. I put iPod right above the Home button because that's usually what I'm accessing when I go to the Springboard.
• 20 Second Lock Screen - Some of you may be surprised at finding such a small tweak as an essential. I like this "app" mostly because of its use as a flashlight. I don't have a flashlight app because I have this thing. Plus, I find 5 seconds too short, even if it's not for flashlighting. I like to put pictures of me and my girlfriend on my lock screen, so I like to gaze at that for a while instead of having it re-lock after 5 seconds or instead of having something like Cydget/LockInfo/SmartScreen (other apps that you'll notice aren't on my list).
• CyDelete - Remember the days when you had to uninstall things after Cydia loaded, downloaded new packages and reloaded before you could access your packages? Remember those late nights when you felt like trying new apps and uninstalled them all over the course of the last 10 minutes of your night before you fell asleep in the process?
• GlovePod - I live in cold Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I need gloves. This tweak minimizes the whole "capacitive touchscreens are bad because you have to take off your gloves to use them" aspect.
• Notifier - I have push GMail enabled, so it's nice to know every now and again why my phone just buzzed. One of my very favourite apps.
• reMail - Companion to your Microsoft Exchange account. I use this with my GMail account because you can only search as far back as 50 emails when it's pushed to your phone. Even if you don't push GMail to your iPhone/iPod touch, get this anyway because it downloads all your emails (minus attachments) to your phone. My ~10,000 emails took up ~63MB. Just do it. It's free.
• OpenSSH - Turn that iPhone into a wireless USB drive! Manually edit all the sqlitedb codes you want! Recover your music if your laptop is stolen! (That last one actually happened to me.) Remember when Apple used to let us use our iPortableDevices as USB drives? Whatever happened to that? "Here's 64GB. Only use it for music, videos and photos."
• Automatic SSH - Avoid SSH connection timeouts with this package.
• PrivaCy - No brainer. Don't let those mobile ad companies spy on you. Only Google should be allowed to do that. Your free apps no longer phone home.
• QuickReply for SMS - Reply to your texts in whatever app you're using at the moment of arrival. Hard to say how much you'll like it until you use it. Consider it an extension of multitasking.
• Rotation Inhibitor - Seriously, how basic is this tweak? No more landscape mode when you check your email, texts or websites in bed. Wow. Another one of my faves.
• Rogers My Account - Keep track of your minutes, SMS/MMS, data usage, billing information. Great for those with limited minutes, data or messages. It actually saved me from going over my data limit one month; getting Google Maps to follow you when you drive on the highway is a bad idea on a limited data plan. 5 cents per kilobyte is very steep, Rogers.

Nice to have

• afc2add - Enables USB browsers like iPhoneBrowser when jailbreaking with Blackra1n. Do it.
• Backgrounder - I don't like to always wait for Cydia to load, so I background it in conjunction with...
• ProSwitcher - Palm Pre-style interface for multi-tasking. Take that, iPad.
• Dropbox - Nowhere near as powerful as the native Dropbox application for the desktop, it's nice to be able to access your files on the go. If you don't use Dropbox, you aren't cool.
• dTunes - I don't use it regularly; I merely use it to show iPhone and/or jailbreak haters what a jailbroken iPhone can do.
• BTstack - Get it just because it's cool. I have neither a Bluetooth mouse nor a Bluetooth keyboard, but I like having it anyway should the occasion arise. Another point for the jailbreak community.
• GV Mobile - Again, nice to have, but I don't use it. Google Voice hasn't come to Canada yet either, so doubly useless for me. Call me a wishful thinker.
• Landscape TV Out - I don't watch my iPhone-formatted videos on the 42" plasma. There's HDMI out on my HP dm3-1020CA, thank you very much. But still, look how cool! Apps on the TV!
• Lonely Planet's Mandarin Audio Phrasebook - I got it back when it was free. Such a great app. I can now tell the Chinese authorities that I've been raped.
• MakeItMine - I changed my carrier from "ROGERS" to "JARRIE," the Hollywood celebrity couple name for me and Carrie. Just because I can. Booya!
• MobileTerminal - Another "look at what my jailbroken iPhone can do" app. I SSH into the computers at school, open MATLAB and type in "why". Highly recommended! A++!
• MultiIconMover - For all the mornings you wanted to move more than one icon but couldn't.
• n64iphone free - "Hey, my phone can play 'Super Mario 64'. Can yours?"
• psx4iphone - "Hey, my phone can sort of play 'Final Fantasy VII'. Can yours?"
• Tempo - I'm a drummer. This is probably the best drumming app you can get. Paid app. I do wish I could listen to music while it ticked away, but that's a minor thing.
• TM Zero - Tower Madness Zero. Fun game. Tower defense with lots of levels and towers. The ads aren't even that annoying. I should probably buy it for how much I've played it. It's embarrassing how much I play this game.
• Veency - I only ever use this to type long texts on my laptop instead of with my thumbs. Another cool proof of concept too. Haven't figured out how to replace MobileMe's lost phone feature though.
• WeatherEye - The iPhone's native weather app was annoying. This one will suffice. A bit sluggish for all it's expected to do, but it does the job.
• YourTube - I just like this because copumpkin's the guy that helped Max Weas code MxTube. This is an example of me supporting developers. If I'm not mistaken, he's on the iPhone Dev Team as well.
• Youversion.com Bible - I like this Bible app. It's free, has lots of translations, but it also needs to connect to data to access most of those translations. I downloaded The Message as an offline translation, so it works for me.

That's the current state of my iPhone. I don't recommend all these apps to everyone, I just wanted to share what I use and why I use them. This list also isn't meant to convince anyone why they should get an iPhone over any other. "Get an iPhone because you can stop it from rotating, bro!" Any thing you get should be something that fits your needs, be they budget, accessibility, the accepted standard in your group of friends, etc.. Sharing is caring, so make of my list what you will. Hope this helps someone.

Player Haters

Greetings,

Now, if you know me well, you may know I hate tech player haters. You probably don't know me well, so I'll tell you: I hate player haters. Don't know what a player hater is? Not sure what type of player hater I hate (in case you're one of them)? I hate the type of player haters that hate on Apple just because it's popular. You may hear these player haters saying something like,

"I hate the iPod. I think they're so stupid. This Player from Obscure Company is less powerful and less feature-rich, but it's better because the iPod is popular."

This type of player hater has issues with "following the crowd," and they scapegoat popular things even though it has nothing to do with the player at all. Now, I'm not saying that the iPod is a perfect device. It certainly has hardware and software merits, but there are things I don't like about it and there are other devices just as good (or better). I'll talk about that some other time. A player hater may also be heard saying something like,

"Screw the Google Nexus One. Who cares? It's so expensive! You can get an iPhone 3GS for cheaper."

Well, actually, unsubsidized, the iPhone is a lot more expensive. Mind you, it's a couple months older, but the "cheaper" assessment is based on subsidized pricing and not outright payment. (I'm from Canada, so you'd have to buy it unlocked and unsubsidized if you wanted to use it on the future Wind Mobile network.)

Another nitpick is the comments against Wind Mobile that go to the tune of,

"How hard is it to switch frequencies? I can't bring my phone over, but how hard is it for them to just use the frequency of a Rogers phone so I don't have to buy a new one?"

Bro, the frequency is different because that's the spectrum that they bought. Ugh. (Maybe I should point these things out at the source so that it doesn't bother me or well up inside.) Either way, I'm going to keep maintaining this blog.

The point is that you can't discredit anything just on one point. I like how my Analog Electronics prof put it (I'm paraphrasing):

"In design, you have to consider a solution to the problem as a multi-dimensional optimization problem."

That means you have to consider all aspects before making a judgement. You have to find the best balance of all parameters before you can say, "Yes, this $999, solar-powered, LED-backlit pencil sharpener is right for me." Most importantly, you have to continually ask yourself, "Is this the right fit for me?" What good is a device if it doesn't fit you? I'm not gonna buy my grandparents a Twitterpeek.

Bah! That is all. Bottom line:

• Multi-dimensional optimization problem
• Is this the right fit for me?
• Stop player hating

Also, I hated English in school. I can't believe I'm doing it in my free time.

First Post

Hello Internet Surfer,

My name is Jon. I really like technology. I have an opinion. I don't really care if no one cares about that opinion, I just feel like I need to share it. I could probably comment on the various blogs I follow, but how many people would really be able to read my opinion? Seems oxymoronic, I know. I don't care if no one reads my opinion, but I want more people to read my opinion. I figure that people will eventually catch on if I continue to put my thoughts out there. I think I've found a comfy position relative technology where I don't just subscribe to everything put out by a particular group (like your average Mac-tard) and I'm not completely oblivious to its existence (like those living the Amish Paradise), but technology actually mostly enhances my life. I want to share that with people. I hope my blog posts add value to your life. I'm really clueless about this whole blogging thing, but I know that Google is kind to search terms. Maybe someone will stumble upon this humble blog. Anywho, enough jibber jabber. That's who I am, that's why I'm doing this, so let's do this.