Archive for the ‘Application Development’ Category
- February 9, 2012 12:54 pm
The process in which Android manufacturers update their hardware is pretty maddening. It goes something like this: New Android update is released by Google –> wait 2-8 months –> release to customers. So when Motorola’s Senior Vice President of Motorola’s Enterprise Business unit, Christy Wyatt, sat down to answer a few questions with PC World regarding Android’s upgrade process, one would think we’d get some juicier details on the inner workings of Moto’s system for Android upgrades and a valid reason for why updates take so long. Humorously, the response Wyatt gave to PC World is the same thing we’ve said time and time again — there are too many useless (our emphasis) variations in hardware that ultimately mean more time is needed to developer for each different model.
Another gem: customization (by Motorola) is also cited as a reason for update slowdowns. Our response is the same as it was to the “too much hardware” comment — get rid of it. The empty UI skins that manufacturers slap on top of Android add zero value. Let us stress that skins and manufacturer apps are two different things. The former is a waste of everyone’s time while the latter are generally pretty lackluster too, though do offer up some added functionality here and there.
Further casting doubt on the legitimacy of Wyatt’s response is the fact that individual Android developers whom have far less time, money, or living bodies to devout to updating hardware manage to get it down far faster. Why a company as large as Moto (or HTC, Samsung and LG) can’t have this stuff handled in a more timely manner is a conundrum that might have even stumped Einstein himself.
Motorola is calling out the very things they do as problems getting in the way of speedier Android updates yet they continually shoot themselves in the foot. How do these people get hired?
It’s been a crazy weekend. The A5 owners across the World were finally granted access to the sweet action of a jailbroken iDevice on 5.0+. We’ve been waiting since October to bask in the glorious aroma of this amazing liquor called Absinthe. The Dev Teams involved with the latest addition to the ever lasting cat-and-mouse game with Apple has touted a whopping 1 million installs across iPhone 4S’s, iPad 2s as well as the iPad 2s that were previously jailbroken on a 4.x level. The A5 version of the latest exploits was released this past Friday morning and since them people have been crashing repos and servers trying to join in on the fun.
We come by these exact numbers by the way of Cydia. The first time you launch Cydia, the iDevice queries Saurik’s server for the list of available SHSH Blobs. And since this past Friday, here are the numbers of new attempts to see the SHSH Blobs:
- 491,325 new iPhone4,1 devices
- 308,967 new iPad2 devices
- 152,940 previously jailbroken (at 4.x) iPad2 devices
Along with these crazy numbers, Absinthe was silently updated to version 0.3 to include Linux support, as well as fix some potention bugs for win32. If you haven’t jailbroken your iPad 2 or iPhone 4S running 5.0 – 5.0.1, please run over to greenpois0n.com and give it a shot.
We told you about the OSX release of Absinthe yesterday and you Windows users can finally set the phone you spent a ton of money on free from the confines of Apples prison. I used the OSX version yesterday and am loving it. October was the last time I was able to really enjoy my phone. I am so thankful for all the hard work that has gone into the 5.0 jailbreak.
The UI that the Chronic Dev Team uses for both the Mac and Windows version is very slick and easy. Not much for the end user to have to do. Simply download, open the app, plug your phone in, and then hit jailbreak. The rest takes place on your phone with a simple app launch. The other option you will have as a Windows user is the command line interface manual jailbreak that the iPhone Dev Team released. The latest 0.4.3 version adds the Windows support. For those that don’t want to hassle with a jailbreak that much should stay away from this option and just use the UI the Chronic Dev Team gave you. We’ll hopefully see redsn0w released soon with the included exploit.
The supported firmware versions will be:
iPhone4s: 5.0 (9A334), 5.0.1 (9A405) and the “other” 5.0.1 (9A406)
iPad2: 5.0.1 (9A405)
Head on over to greenpois0n.com and pick up your copy, or just download it from here.
- January 20, 2012 12:10 pm
Oh happy day!!!! The A5 untether has officially been released at greenpoison.com! So far, only the Mac OSX version is available, with Windows soon to follow. The Absinthe tool was developed by the Chronic Dev Team after so much hard work. A fun little fact, this jailbreak reuses both exploits from Corona + 5 others!
Obviously the GP site is getting flooded with people attempting to free their iPhone 4S’s and iPad 2s, so be patient. As soon as we can get access to the links, we’ll direct-link to them. We’ll update as soon as the Windows version is live. For Windows, see update 3.
Stay tuned for the CLI tool and redsn0w updates from the iPhone Dev Team.
Happy jailbreaking you OSX users! Head on over to greenpoison.com to pick up your free copy today 
**If you happen to stumble upon any bugs, first, alert the devs responsible so they are aware of said bugs. Then, come back here and share it in the comments with the rest of us.
A big thank you to @pod2g, @planetbeing, @saurik, @pimskeks, @p0sixninja, @MuscleNerd and @xvolks. Without you guys we’d be locked away in Apple’s walled prison forever
Update
Download links:
Update 2
Getting an “Error establishing connection error” on the last part of the jailbreak? We did too. There’s a quick and simple fix. Go go Network > Settings > VPN and nudge the slider to “On”. After we did that our phone rebooted and replaced the Absinthe icon with the a blank icon. Tap it and the phone will respring. After that, you may have to restart your phone to get the actual Cydia icon to display correctly. (via: iDownloadblog)
Update 3
According to @p0sixninja, the Windows version of Absinthe and A5 jailbreak goodness will be launched “as soon as nikias gets home and rolls up the build”. (via: @p0sixninja.
Update 4
The iPhone Dev Team’s CLI tool has been released. This is basically used to debug specific issues.
You can see more info here: Read Me
Download the OSX version here: Command-Line Interface
- January 20, 2012 10:51 am
pod2g, as well as the iPhone Dev Team have both updated their blogs with teasers into the release of the untether jailbreak for the iPhone 4S and the iPad 2. pod2g tells us that we’d be able to “free our iPhone in some hours,” while MuscleNerd says the tool is nearly ready for general release. The combined efforts of pod2g, the iPhone Dev Team and the Chronic Dev Team are paying off. The devs have been tweeting over the past few weeks about the countless hours put into testing the exploits that are going into the tool to make sure we are given a stable release.
The tool is named Absinthe and was developed by the Chronic Dev Team and will be used to install the untether onto A5 devices. The iPhone Dev Team have also created a Command Line tool that will not only manually install the jailbreak for users, but also help diagnose any issues and problems that may arise. This tool will mark the first time that hackers will use the backup and restore functions in iTunes to install software. Because of this, there may be issues that will come up that they couldn’t prepare for. So not only do we have a tool to install the jailbreak, but we also have a tool that will help diagnose and repair any problems after the installation.
Once all bugs have been worked out, the iPhone Dev Team will incorporate the exploit into the redsn0w GUI. With CLI tool and redsn0w tools from the iPhone Dev Team, and the new GUI from the Chronic Dev Team, this should create a nice coverage for all types of computer configurations. The supported firmware the tools will cover are: iPhone4S: 5.0 (9A334), 5.0.1 (9A405) and the “other” 5.0.1 (9A406) as well as the iPad2: 5.0.1 (9A405). And a helpful note, for those that depend on a carrier unlock, you’ll want to stay at 5.0. If you’ve already updated to 5.0.1, I would recommend downgrading the BaseBand by going back to the earlier version of 5.0.1 since Apple is still signing that.
We don’t have the exact release date, but once testing shows all bugs being fixed we should have a general release. As always, we recommend backing up all of your data before attempting the install. We’ll update as soon as we see a release!
- January 18, 2012 10:52 am
As you have probably realized, we are desperately waiting for the A5 jailbreak for iOS 5.0.1 here at the GS headquarters. Everyone here rocks the iPhone 4S, and all 15 of our company iPad 2s are sitting without a jailbreak. I haven’t gone this long without Cydia on my phone since before I had an iPhone. Since October we’ve been begging to see something. Luckily pod2g has been digging through code and working his arse off to yield us a pretty jailbreak.
We’ve been following his work on the A4 release that took place at the end of 2011, and we’ve been sitting on the edge of our seats waiting for the little A5 jailbreak morsel that happens to fall off of his internet table. Over the past 2 weeks or so, we’ve been seeing a lot on the iPhone 4S, but haven’t seen 1 picture showing Cydia running on the iPad 2. Well, today pod2g gave us a sexy little snapshot showing Apple’s second tablet running iOS 5.0.1 with Cydia blasted across it! All the hard work put in by pod2g and the rest of his ‘Dream Team’ have paid off. We not just sit and wait for the app to distribute to the masses is finished being written. Thankfully we’ll be kept in the loop as the progress continues.
Hopefully we’ll have something here soon! We’ll let you know as soon as we hear it. And hop on over to pod2g’s blog for constant updates!
Western Digital didn’t have a huge presence at this year’s CES, but they made a big impact on us here at Gadgetsteria. A blogger meet-up was scheduled last night and after a long trek through the Caesar’s Palace, we finally made it to the event. As we drank our beverages we were given a sneak peak at their new line of drives featuring Apple’s highly utilized Thunderbolt technology. A handful of companies had Thunderbolt hard drives announced and demoed over the week, and as we have seen all of them running we were really impressed by what WD had to offer. These were unannounced prior to CES, as was most of the stuff we saw that night.
We’ll touch on that a bit inside, but what we are really excited about is the update to Western Digital’s WD2go mobile app. We got a demo of the new UI in action across iOS, and after being told no about the pictures and only given permission to do a write up, we were finally granted access to a full suite of shots and an in-depth look into the 2.0 update.
Hop on in for a full gallery and the highlights of everything we saw at the event…
Last week we told you about the Dream Team pod2g assembled. Here we are, almost a week later and we see some outstanding progress. pod2g ran into the Sandbox issues that were preventing him from releasing the untether jailbreak for A5 devices (iPhone 4S and iPad 2). @planetbeing tweeted that they were out of the sandbox yesterday as pod2g updated his blog.
With this major breakthrough, there should be no issues moving forward with the release of the untether jailbreak. We have been following all the work that pod2g has been putting in over the past couple months. With only A4 devices being lucky enough to wear the untether, it doesn’t mean he hasn’t been hard at work on one for the A5 filled devices. A matter of days is all we’ll probably have left to wait. No precise ETA is available, of course, but it’s been accomplished and we should be rocking an untether very, very soon.
Infamous iOS hacker @pod2g, the dude currently hammering away at the A5 untether, has as he calls it, created the ultimate jailbreak “Dream Team”. @planetbeing (iPhone Linux), @MuscleNerd (iPhone Dev-Team) and @p0sixninja (Chronic Dev Team) have all enlisted to help pod2g get over the hurdle(s) he’s come across and to finally get a working A5 untether up and running and pushed out to the masses.
With so much talent focusing on a single goal, the walls should begin falling much sooner rather than later.
Turning out more complex than X-Gold 618.
