The subject of this post pretty much sums it up in a nutshell. So here are the details. First a little background. I come from a very varied cell-phone history. I was a big Sidekick users but got a bit tired of it because of the closed architecture and the fact that I couldn’t make things “the way I wanted them.” So after a few generations of Sidekicks, I made the leap to Windows Mobile 5 (and then a cooked version of WM6) using the Tmobile MDA. It was a good device. I was pretty quick to “unlock” it, allowing me to put on any type of ROM that I wanted (e.g., from other carriers). I could overclock the thing, tweak the registry, add/remove programs, and pretty much work on it like one would on a PC. Eventually (and, as my wife said, “extremely coincidentally”) my MDA took a nose dive and the antenna stopped receiving signals…it just so happened that this occurred right around the launch of the iPhone.
So, after much begging and pleading (I learn well from my kids), I got a 4 gig iPhone. It was great that it just worked and worked well…much the way the Sidekick just sort of worked (but not quite a well as a 1st Generation as the iPhone does). Anyway, after a few weeks of watching the evolution of the application install process (SSHing applications in through the terminal and performing a huge amount of tasks to a now clean, self-contained installer), I decided to take the plunge. It’s funny how history repeats itself and I just really wanted to get in there and change my iPhone beyond what it was. It isn’t really “hacking” the iPhone, it is more like “enhancing” or “upgrading” it.
I used the aforementioned installer and it worked like a charm. I fired it up and followed the prompts on my mac. The rom downloaded, the phone was “jailbroken” (meaning unlocked) and the installer was put on my iPhone. It was very easy (a bit scary, reminding me of when I was flashing my Windows Mobile device with a “cooked” ROM, hoping that I wouldn’t “brick” my phone).
Then I started installing applications. As this article describes, there are lots of different types of apps that you can install (e.g., Dev tools, Games, Utilities, etc.). I kept installing, trying and removing applications. The interface of the installer application itself is really great. You have a list of all the available to install files (Install), the files that need to be updated (Update), the files that you have installed that you can remove (Uninstall) and the various repositories of applications that exist (Sources). Every time you launch the Installer application, it checks the repositories for updates/changes (I was notified that the installer app itself needed to be updated). There are very brief descriptions of each application (you can usually click a “more info” button that takes to your the website of the app). Also, after you return to the main iPhone dash, you will be “logged out” so that the dash can be refreshed. Sometimes it is also helpful to do a Soft Reset (holding Home button and Power button until the iPhone shuts down and restarts by itself).
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