ReadyState4

Excuse another iPhone posts, I have some juicy programmerly entries coming up I just have a few friends that are interested in this and want to save them some time.

The 2.0.1 firmware which came out just a few days ago was just the thing I was waiting for - it fixed the craziness and slowness that was going on with (all?) my iphone (hour long backups anyone?) as well as the slow texting and “apple screen of death”. It came, in fact, just when I decided to jailbreak my iPhone for the second time.

The first time I did it was back before 2.0 firmware and it was the high life. I had SSH, VNC clients, silly games, and an Apache web server running from my phone. I gave all that up for the light saber app and international keyboard support. But now I have the best of both worlds again, and the five hours it cost me can be yours in less than one following my quick guide.

At first jailbreaking your iPhone was really hard. You had to do all kinds of things in terminal and cross reference about three or four tutorials that all weren’t quite right. Then it got really easy - just go to a web site using your phone’s browser and BAM, your iPhone got to pass go and collect two hundred dollars. Now it’s somewhere in the middle. Freedom is in the form of a downloadable app called Pwnage (Mac only but there should be a Windows equivalent by now). Basically, jailbreaking your phone under the 2.0 firmware involves rewriting the latest firmware update and making a custom “altered” one for you to restore with - don’t worry it’s a lot easier than it sounds and as far as I can tell, it’s impossible to brick your phone, it would have happened to me from all the things I’ve tried. So here’s what to do:

1. Backup your iPhone and restore it to factory condition (you can restore your backed-up files later.)
2. Visit this link and download Pwnage to your desktop (don’t run it or unzip it): http://blog.iphone-dev.org/post/45276976/good-morning
3. IMPORTANT: Do not use some app to unzip the file. It creates weird permission issues and it looks like 80% who tried this including myself wasted a lot of time reformatting their phones several times. Instead, open up Terminal, change directories to your desktop, and unzip the file with this command: tar -jxvf PwnageTool_2.0.2.tbz
4. For some reason, iTunes keeps backups of all your firmware updates - this seems incredibly wasteful to me since they’re about 250mb a piece. Inside of /Users/USERNAME/Library/iTunes/Mobile Backups is where they’re located.

   Go ahead and move the 2.0.1 update (iPhone1,2_2.0.1_5B108_Restore.ipsw) to your desktop.

   (If you’re having trouble finding this folder just type open /Users/USERNAME/Library/iTunes/Mobile\ Backups, where USERNAME is the current logged in user. If you don’t know who the current logged in user is type whoami in Terminal.

5. Ok, now run Pwnage in Expert mode (simple mode is awesome but it only auto-detects and tries to use the 2.0 firmware, not 2.01.) Browse for your latest software update file (IPSW) on your desktop. Here you have a bunch of options. Just do this:

   Click General, then the next button, and unclick Activate the phone. Hit the Back button.

   OPTIONAL: Click custom logos, next, and uncheck them if you don’t want them. Hit the back button.

   Click the Build button and the next button. In about 5-10 minutes you should have your new IPSW file. Here it should ask you to do some magically things with your iphone, including putting it into recovery mode. It’s SLIGHTLY tricky but you just have to get the timing right to get into recovery mode. Last time I remember, it’s 10 seconds on home and sleep buttons followed by 5 seconds on home button. Just follow the pictures (don’t look at the words, they throw you off.)

6. Switch back to iTunes. It’ll say it detects your phone in revovery mode. Option click the restore button - it will allow you to pick a file. Pick the custom one from your desktop. In a few minutes you’re done!

   You should see 2 new icons on your springboard. The old familiar Installer, where you can install apps with. And the new installer called Cyndia. Try to open up Cyndia - if it crashes, that means there were some permission issues when you initially unzipped pwnage. Try again.

7. Optionally, restore from your backup in step 1. Now install apps to your hearts content!

Do note that right now a lot of 1.0 jailbreak apps haven’t been ported to the new 2.0 framework yet. Still there is a lot of cool stuff including having an interactive terminal, the ability to SSH/SFTP into your phone and SSH out to other machines, Ruby, Perl, Python, and Java support, Lighttpd web sever, an NES emulator, MxTube (let’s you download full res Youtube vids to your phone), lots of abilities to customize themes, logos, ringtones on your phone, SVN, CVS, IRC clients, Lynx, and the list goes on.

If you have any trouble with the above and you have my phone number feel free to call me, else just leave a comment.

My brother Mark, his girlfriend Jen, and their iPhones.

I got into a conversation about the differences I notice between the old iPhone and the new iPhone 3g. Here’s my quick list (ordered by what I appreciate the most):

1. The headphone jack: is flush now instead of recessed so you can use any headphones you like (I’d upgrade just for this INCREDIBLE feature, probably the greatest thing about the new iPhone - I mean what will the great minds at Apple think of next?)
2. The sound: on the speakers is louder and less distorted. I can actually watch a TV show or movie on my iPhone in a quiet room and hear it clearly. I still prefer my headphones (Etymotic Er-4 p’s) but it’s nice to have the option. I think the overall sound quality on calls is better, too.
3. The GPS: rocks. Not as fast or efficient as a regular GPS device but locating myself with Maps is a lot faster and more accurate, plus it tracks me as I’m moving around with a cool “sonar” animation (compared to the old system where you just had to hit the “find me” button to relocate yourself.) This is extremely useful when using Maps with driving as I don’t always know if I’m started out in the right direction.
4. 3g: mucho faster. I hear you can’t get it in a lot of areas but in NYC it seems to be working great. It makes using the internet bearable on the iPhone. Connecting to a wireless point still blows it away but again, it brings using the internet on the go a recreational thing, instead of just a I-really-need-this-information-right-now-and-this-is-my-only-option thing.
5. Lots of small physical enhancements: Apple is really good at this. They’ve probably improved fifty things physically on the iPhone that you’ll never notice. One that I noticed right away is that the headphone jack “grips” your headphone plug, locking it in place. You can actually (lightly) swing your iPhone around by the headphones (I don’t recommend this.) This helps dramatically as dozens of times I’d be walking down the street, listening to my old iPhone in my jean pocket, only to get eventually unplugged. This never happens anymore.
6. The Apps: fun and fast (compared to their web app counterparts). Even though you can use the new app system on your old version 1 iPhones, location based apps like Yelp really shine with the GPS.

The iPhone continues to be a game-changer and this recent update was more evolutionary than revolutionary but it was certainly needed. There’s a lot more new stuff I really dig, like international keyboard support and a (sorta) native AIM and Twitter clients but this stuff is also available with the new firmware update on the old iPhones as well, and I wanted to keep this entry focused on the differences.

The problem

I had to find out the language codes of all supported languages in TinyMCE (this page), but unfortunately, they were only listed in the actual download link for each file. A quick sprinkle of jQuery code in my Firebug console would have returned me a list easily but this page didn’t have it - which lead me to consider making a bookmarklet to add jQuery on any page.

The solution:

My wonderful coworker Bryan told me immediately about a simple bookmarklet that does the above called jQuerify. Looking through it, I saw a few potential issues with this script and also decided I wanted something a little more personal, so I came up with my own version:

$jQuerify

Notable differences:

• Moved the jQuery shortcut $ to $j. I always do this on any site I work on because I find $ is used by so many other libraries and scripts that I want to minimize conflicts. Using $j also for sure tells me I’m using jQuery.
• If $ isn’t being used it becomes a shortcut to document.getElementById. I think it’s what people naturally expect $ to do, and in my daily coding I like using $('id'); better than $j('#id')[0]; when all I want to do is return an element.
• Added an initial check for jQuery to prevent running the script unnecessary.

The full source looks like this:

(function(){
    if(!window.jQuery){
        var s=document.createElement('script');
        s.src='http://jquery.com/src/jquery-latest.js';
        document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(s);
 
        var z=setInterval(function(){
            if(window.jQuery){
                $j = jQuery.noConflict();
                alert('jQuery loaded!');
                window.clearInterval(z);
            }
        },100);
    }
    if(!window.$){
	window.$=function(x){return document.getElementById(x);};
    }
})();

$jQuerify <-- Try me out, drag me to your tool bar.

Happy endings

Now I can just hop back over to the TinyMCE Language Pack Download page, run my bookmarklet, type the following in Firebug:

$j('#examplecontent form:first table tbody tr').each(function(c,i){
    var country = $j(this).find('td:eq(2) label').html();
    var code= $j(this).find('td:eq(1) a').attr('href').match(/(?:code=)(..)/)[1];
    console.log(c,country,'=',code);
});

And the list is returned:

0 Arabic = ar
1 Bokmål, Norwegian; Norwegian Bokmål = nb
2 Bosnian = bs
3 Bulgarian = bg
4 Catalan; Valencian = ca
5 Chamorro = ch
6 Chinese = zh
7 Croatian = hr
8 Czech = cs
9 Danish = da
10 Dutch; Flemish = nl
11 English = en
12 Estonian = et
13 Finnish = fi
14 French = fr
15 German = de
16 Greek, Modern (1453-) = el
17 Hebrew = he
18 Hungarian = hu
19 Interlingua (International Auxiliary Language Association) = ia
20 Italian = it
21 Japanese = ja
22 Korean = ko
23 Latvian = lv
24 Lithuanian = lt
25 Macedonian = mk
26 Malay = ms
27 Northern Sami = se
28 Norwegian Nynorsk; Nynorsk, Norwegian = nn
29 Persian = fa
30 Polish = pl
31 Portuguese = pt
32 Romanian = ro
33 Russian = ru
34 Sardinian = sc
35 Serbian = sr
36 Sichuan Yi = ii
37 Sinhala; Sinhalese = si
38 Slovak = sk
39 Slovenian = sl
40 Spanish; Castilian = es
41 Swedish = sv
42 Tatar = tt
43 Turkish = tr
44 Twi = tw
45 Ukrainian = uk
46 Vietnamese = vi

Lifehacker has a great post on tips and tricks for Firefox 3. Favorites include deleting mistyped URL’s in the new URL suggestion window and auto-complete entries (I hate when my mistakes get saved!), making web applications like gmail launch instead of default desktop apps, enabling spell-checking in single line input fields (as apposed to just textareas), and lastly, for Mac FF3 users with the default Safari skin, adding favicons back in your bookmark toolbar.

Firefox 3’s new ability to register web apps to link protocols is most interesting. As a web developer you’ll be able to create your own protocols for your web app via JavaScript using a method added to the navigator object called registerProtocolHandler . For example, registering the mailto protocol to your gmail looks like this:

javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler(”mailto”,”https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s”,”GMail”)

This has some really exciting potential for web apps!

If you haven’t gathered so far, I think the jQuery JavaScript library is the dog’s bollocks. Its small, efficient, and has improved my life as a developer almost as much as Firebug. jQuery gets flack occasionally for containing complex or cryptic code full of ternary operators and multiple variable declarations in a single statement (eg. a=b=1), which I mostly see as concise and efficient coding however, there’s one thing about the jQuery library that I can’t stand. It’s something every developer should do and if you’re not doing it then you’re a jerk and that, ladies and gentlemen, is omitting your curly brackets.

Look at this code snippet from the jQuery library to see what I mean:

for ( ; i < length; i++ )
	// Only deal with non-null/undefined values
	if ( (options = arguments[ i ]) != null )
		// Extend the base object
		for ( var name in options ) {
			var src = target[ name ], copy = options[ name ];
 
			// Prevent never-ending loop
			if ( target === copy )
				continue;
 
			// Recurse if we're merging object values
			if ( deep && copy && typeof copy == "object" && !copy.nodeType )
				target[ name ] = jQuery.extend( deep,
					// Never move original objects, clone them
					src || ( copy.length != null ? [ ] : { } )
				, copy );
 
			// Don't bring in undefined values
			else if ( copy !== undefined )
				target[ name ] = copy;
 
		}
 
// Return the modified object
return target;

Coding in this way leads is extremely error-prone especially for open-souce projects where many others are modifying your code. Please stop it.

Love,

A dedicated user