Sunday, January 20, 2008

Tune your iTouch

ipodtouch

The iTouch as it is after you buy it doesn´t worth the money it cost, but after some work tunning it, this nice device begins to blossom. But keep something in mind, without wifi connection to internet your iTouch won´t evolve.


iTouch Firmware

Currently keep your iTouch firmware on 1.1.1. Although the 1.1.2 is been already jailbreaked, it takes more time to hack it and it does not offer any real improvement. Everything can change with the new 1.1.3 version where the promised cut&paste seems to be implemented. But nowadays I recommend to keep the 1.1.1 firmware. If you have updated your iTouch to a higher version just use iTunes 7.5 to downgrade your firmware. You can check your firmware version on iTunes, selecting the iTouch, then the summary tab, on top of the window you will see a label, software version, that's it.

Downgrade your firmware if required

  • Download firmware 1.1.1
  • Backup all your data in the iTouch. Copy the content of the iTouch hard disk
  • Select your iTouch on iTunes
  • On the Summury tab, Shift+Click on Restore, you will get a file browser where you can select the the 1.1.1 firmware file
  • iTunes will guide you through the process, and that's it

jailbreakme.com

Now that you have your 1.1.1 firmware, connect your iTouch to the internet through a wifi connections. Then use Safari to reach jailbreakme.com. There select option to jailbreak your device. This web takes advantage of a Tiff buffer overflow bug or something like that, and they force Safari to load a tiff image that enables them to apply the jailbreak and install the installer application.

With the installer application already on your iTouch, now your tunning process starts, this application connects to several repositories of free and very useful applications for your iphone. I definitely recommend this installations:

  • BSD Subsystem: The core for most of the applications
  • OpenSSH: Allows to secure copy things from/to your iTouch
  • Term-vt100: The console
  • Python: The scripting language
  • BossTool: The partition for software in the iTouch 1.1.1 has 300MB and it's almost full. This tool will move your Applications to the data partition and will create the proper symlinks to keep everything working

  • Touch Calendar Fix: Enables calendar app to add calendar entries.
  • Erica's utilities: All of them, I think there are 3 sets, useful command for your Term.
  • Customize: Enables configuring all your desktop icons and the bottom tool bar ones
  • Categories: Enables you remove icons from the desktop and added to category groups
  • Lockbox: Great app to keep your secrets and passwords secured
  • MobileFinder: The file browser
  • MobileTextEdit: The text editor
  • PocketMoney: The application to keep track of your money
  • SysInfo: Just a mini task administrator
  • Jiggy Runtime and Jiggy: A javascript development environment. Makes easier to create simple applications for your iTouch
  • PDFViewer: It's still under development but for short pdfs will work properly

Interesting links to check for applications reviews









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