Apple cripples iBooks for jailbreakers – Updated

**** Updated 1/15/12 **** Most of you are coming into this post with the latest 5.0.1 jailbreak because it broke your iBooks app just like the 4.2.1 jailbreak in 2011. Thankfully, there’s a fix for you too. Just today, @saurik put out an update to Corona in Cydia. Version 1.0-4 is the latest edition of Corona and it’s supposed to fix your iBooks issues. Try that and you should be good to go. I just recently updated my iPhone to 4.2.1 thanks to the greenpois0n jailbreak. Yes, I jailbreak… and I’m proud of it. There are many benefits to jailbreaking your iPhone like SBSettings, Activator, Infinifolders, etc. The real reason I jailbreak: because I can. I wouldn’t consider myself a rebel but I do like having the opportunity to install whatever I’d like onto my iPhone. Jailbreaking has received negative feedback from Apple since it gained popularity in 2007. They claim it voids the device’s warranty but anyone can easily restore the device to factory state via iTunes. Up until this point, the game has always been cat and mouse. Hackers exploit code, Apple fixes said code. Today marks a new realization for me as a jailbreaker: Apple deliberately crippled [...]

Jailbreak your iOS device with greenpois0n

Sure, jailbreaks have been around for a long time now, but there hasn’t been a good, untethered jailbreak for the current iOS software until Chronic Dev released their updated greenpois0n tool last week. This Jailbreak even works with the newly released 4.2.6 Verizon iPhones. We’ve had the opportunity to put it through the paces and we liked it. Please remember, this is for jailbreaking only. Chronic Dev suggests using TinyUmbrella to preserve your baseband before you update but we’re not covering that process today. Even still, the current version of greenposi0n does not “hacktivate” the device; you’ll need to run redsn0w after greenpois0n if you’re trying to unlock your device. There still isn’t a good unlocking solution for 4.2.1 modem firmware 03.10.01. We’ll probably have to wait until 4.3 comes out… or maybe longer before we see a current, unlockable baseband. There are still plenty of reasons to jailbreak even if you’re not interested in unlocking your device. We’ll cover those in another post later. This jailbreak is only compatible with devices that can multi-task but here’s a list: iPhone 3GS iPhone 4 iPhone 4 Verizon iPad 1st Generation iPod touch 2nd Generation iPod touch 3rd Generation iPod touch 4th Generation So, [...]

Enable Verizon iPhone Personal Hotspot

One of my friends asked me a couple questions about their new Verizon iPhone this morning… and I couldn’t answer the last one easily. They were excited to get everything going but they couldn’t figure out how to enable the Personal Hotspot feature of their new phone. Everything I saw online showed it on the homescreen of the Settings application, but you have to enable it first. Settings -> General -> Network From there, it’s pretty self-explanatory but neither of us knew the right place to look. After thinking about it for a bit, I headed straight for the phone’s network settings, but it’s really not something that your average iPhone user would figure out. That’s why we’re blasting out this helpful how-to. Let us know if you have any other questions about your new Verizon iPhone and we’ll see what we can do to help.

Verizon iPhone 4 cannot be unlocked

This post will put all of the rumors to rest: you will not see an unlock for the Verizon iPhone. We’re sorry to be the bearer of bad news but the complication involved with the Verizon iPhone unlock is two-fold: it’s completely illegal, and every unlock would require carrier-specific adjustments to succeed. If you were to follow @MuscleNerd and @pytey on Twitter, you too would have come across this information. The conversation started with MuscleNerd tweeting this: An “unlock” of next week’s iPhoneVZW is more than just custom code exec… it involves per-carrier CDMA adjustments. Pytey chimed in right away to explain that this is outright illegal: A non-sanctioned iP4VZ ‘unlock’ would require an ESN/MEID from a donor phone with service. This technique is a US federal crime. That’s not awesome. We don’t assume that everyone will understand that, s0 let us break it down for you. We can unlock AT&T iPhones because they are GSM — they use a SIM card to talk to the carrier. The AT&T SIM card can be removed and replaced with a T-Mobile (or an international carrier’s) SIM card. The current unlock only changes how the phone can communicate with the SIM card… it [...]

iPhone 4 breaks Verizon launch record

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone… The iPhone 4 broke all previous Verizon device-launch records within the first two hours of its pre-sale. What does this mean? Every device that has debuted on Verizon was overcome by the iPhone 4 sales in the first two hours. Furthermore, no one cares about Android or Blackberry. Well, maybe someone cares but it’s not necessarily Verizon customers. A new survey from uSamp (link to PDF) states that a whopping 50 percent of current Verizon customers plan to switch away from their Android or Blackberry phones for the iPhone 4. This is only a random survey of 700 Verizon customers but that’s still great news for Apple. Keeping those numbers in mind, we’re hoping you already pre-ordered your iPhone 4. The pre-orders sold out within the first 17 hours of the sale that was limited to existing Verizon customers. That doesn’t count the number of people who are willing to cancel their AT&T contracts (26 percent of iPhone 4 users) for the Verizon iPhone 4. Ultimately, we expect that the Verizon iPhone 4 will be more difficult to get than Super Bowl tickets for the next few weeks. Hopefully, Apple’s manufacturing will keep [...]

iPhone 4 metal backcase review

About a month ago, TUAW.com did a piece on a brushed metal backcase for the iPhone 4. We loved the look of it and decided to grab one for ourselves so we could put it to the test. It looks like there’s been such an overwhelming demand for metal backcases (plates, whatever you want to call them) that the company responsible is shipping multiple options. We purchased the beveled gunmetal backcase if you’re interested in this one. Otherwise there’s plenty of options to choose from on their website. We’re not here to advertise for them, so let’s get to the point. Ever since we found out that the iPhone 4 had a glass backcase we wanted a different solution. We were happy to see this pop up… it means we can take our iPhone out of the case and just put it back into the bumper. We didn’t feel that the bumper offered enough protection and a group of no-good iPhone repair guys decided to drop test it, furthering our feelings about the case. With glass on both sides of the phone, you double your chances of breaking it and spending good money to get it fixed. There’s not much [...]

The HTML5 plot thickens… Apple bans Flash

Apple has decided to stop shipping Flash pre-installed on their devices beginning with the newly released MacBook Air. No one was really sure what to expect when news broke that the MacBook Air didn’t come with Flash out of the box. There were a lot of cool things to ship along with the MacBook Air: the higher resolution displays, the USB restore drive, the solid state memory… but those pale in comparison to the potential political statement they’re making by removing Flash. Was it an oversight? Was it deliberate? Apple answered that question with an official statement from spokesman Bill Evans: We’re happy to continue to support Flash on the Mac, and the best way for users to always have the most up to date and secure version is to download it directly from Adobe. Following those words, Bill went on to say that they would leave the software out of all future Macs citing the necessity for the user to install the software and keep it up-to-date. Apple claims it will be easier for their customers to do it themselves. Really? That’s not the Apple we’re familiar with. Apple’s main technological purpose is to take complicated devices and dumb [...]

Verizon iPhone 4 rumors persist

To be honest, we’re extremely tired of writing about the potential Verizon iPhone. Everyone knows that the iPhone 4 exclusivity contracts are either recently expired, will expire soon or invalidated by AT&T’s terrible representation of a great Apple product. We can’t pick one source for this article… it’s been discussed by countless sources since the 1st generation iPhone came out in 2007. Instead of getting your hopes up, we’ll give you all of the reasons the iPhone won’t be coming to Verizon any time soon (was that too confident?). Hardware If you’re reading this website, you probably know this: the iPhone 4 cannot work on Verizon. Unlocking your iPhone can only get you to T-Mobile here in the United States and maybe some smaller carriers that piggyback on the GSM networks. Let’s go further… current iPhone hardware uses GSM technology to reach your cell provider. GSM is a well-utilized standard across the world: Verizon is one of the few networks using CDMA. Hardware is the main reason a Verizon rollout would be difficult.

Library of Congress says Jailbreak/Unlock is legal

For once in my life, I like the government. The LoC has determined that jailbreaking or unlocking your mobile device is completely legal. There’s not much more to say than that. Ever since the first iPhone jailbreak appeared, legality was a question in everyone’s mind. You own the device, shouldn’t you be able to modify it in any way you see fit? The LoC thinks so. The biggest part of this ruling is the potential that Apple will need to extend their warranties to the unlocked/jailbroken community. If there is no longer a gray area, there’s no longer any reason that Apple should deny those users service. Obviously, there is a large debate coming that will hopefully allow us to use our phones as they were initially intended. Apple’s biggest fear is that we, the users, will completely mess up our phones with jailbreaking software. In the time I’ve known the Dev-Team, I’ve realized they’re out for the best. None of them would ever release software that deliberately bricked our devices. They’ve always taken their time in developing the best software and only released when they were comfortable deploying it to thousands of devices. There’s always risk… there’s risk in [...]

Apple calls out another phone for signal issues… again

During the iPhone 4 press conference last week, Steve Jobs showed us the first few videos of their new web series: “Hey, these phones suck too.” We got a peak at BlackBerry, Samsung and HTC all demonstrating the same signal issue as the iPhone. Since then, they’ve dedicated a whole page on their website to the accusation of other mobile companies. They followed the pilot episode by adding the Nokia N97 Mini: this appeared to be directly related to Nokia’s blog response. We came across episode three this morning which features the Motorola Droid X. Here at SocialApples, we think the term “fanboy” describes us perfectly, but we also had enough of this finger pointing bulls**t in high school. We thought Apple showed a lot of class this morning when the started automatically refunding iPhone 4 bumper purchases… but this kind of 8th-grade-he-did-it-she-did-it garbage really needs to end. Apple’s PR nightmare, which started with haters and video cameras, has been complicated by their ever-lasting desire to smear the world with videos of other smartphones having signal issues. How much is too much? Apple has opened the floodgates to PR backlash, slander lawsuits and so much more. What’s the point, I [...]