photo credit: n. panelo

I’ve been getting a lot of traffic that last few days on my previous blog post about storing your TSS on Cydia so this post serves to provide updated info as of Saturday February 6th, 2010.

If you didn’t store your 3.1.2 firmware file before last Wednesday, Apple has closed the doors so you can’t roll back to 3.1.2. Not the end of the world but certainly a nice thing to have!

For example, on my 3GS,
I have both my 3.1 and 3.1.2 files stored on Saurik’s Cydia servers:

I was a bit lazy on my 2G so I didn’t store 3.1.2.

This isn’t a big deal as long as you go from one jailbroke version the next. Make sure when you’re creating your .IPSW files that you are VERY CAREFUL to restore the correct one!

This where people make the mistake restore the “vanilla” one versus the jailbroke one. I always name my custom restores in ALL CAPS like:

CUSTOM-iphone3gs-312.ipsw

That way if I’ve had a few on the show while jailbreaking, there’s little chance of me making a mistake.

I will not be upgrading to 3.1.3 and will wait for the iPhone Dev Team to release the next jailbreak.

I jailbroke my 1st Generation 2G, two 3G iPhones for a client and my 3GS up to version 3.1.2 via the iPhone Dev Team’s Pwnage Tool.

Yes I was drinking.

Yes I had fun!

Pytey of the iPhone Dev Team graciously Tweeted about the video and I’ve seen 2,000 visitors today. Thanks!

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Click here to view the embedded video.

AskAdria Ustream logo for my live, weekly technology show!  You can watch it each Monday at 5:30pm CST

Windows XP will be supported until 2012 2014.  It’s going to be the business mainstay for the next 5 years irregardless of Vista and Windows 7.

iPhones were built to be jailbroke.  This allows you to run additional software that you wouldn’t find at the App store.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation thinks Apple lost some marbles and that this is no different then when people modify their cars.

ThinkGeek makes awesome tech t-shirts for women!  In addition to geek stuff, they have jewlery

WordPress is the most popular blogging platform in the world!  Major newspapers including the New York Times use it to run their blogs.  WordPress also can run your website

Eventbrite is the best way to register for conferences and webinars!  It makes the promotion and sales for your events easy.  Post your event and get paid.

Ubuntu is an operating system.  It’s a specific flavor of Linux.  It’s become one of the most user friendly and popular Linux distros in the last 4 years.

Tux is the the mascot for Linux.  Yay penguins!

Moo makes awesome business cards.  I get lots of compliments on my business cards so I keep reordering from Moo!

Firefox is a web browser for the world and is made by Mozilla.  It now makes up over 25% of the browser market as more people get sick and tired of using crappy Internet Explorer.

Timebridge makes meetings happen.  It streamlines the process by allowing you to send multiple times to everyone you’re meeting with.  They all click on the best times and Timebridge adds the confirmed time to your calendar.

Google is the most popular search engine in the world and they took the time to take photos of the planet Earth and share it via Google Earth.  Sweet!

Dell is a great hardware platform if you’re going to stick with Windows.  It’s a solid choice for business desktops, servers and home systems.  You can net a sweet deal on a refurbished Dell for $300 with a 3 year warranty for your business.  I picked up my 23″ Samsung monitor from Dell because they had the best price.

Apple makes great laptops.  I have seen these macbooks last for years, find them to be made of high quality parts and most importantly, have excellent power management vs many pc based noteboooks which I won’t name.  I will be getting a 13″ Macbook pro in the next few weeks (fingers crossed) and will rejoin the computer world as a cross platform IT person.

Lijit is a custom search plugin for your blog or website.  It crawls your site and provides visitors with a Google-like results page.  Lijit will also list content from folks on your blogroll.  Pretty cool stuff plus @tarable and @micah work there!

Flickr is a social networking site based on images.  It has huge Google juice so if you care about SEO for your website, find a way to incorporate Flickr.  I have their pro account which allows me to upload a lot of images.

Netflix is a superior alternative to renting movies from your local video store because there are no late fees, you can queue up movies, no shipping charges, a much larger selection and they launched “Watch Instantly” in 2007 so you can watch movies on your computer.  I’ve been using Netflix since 2003.

I didn’t mention two companies as I’m waiting for their logo banners but I’ll mention them here:

Zendesk is a web based helpdesk ticketing system which centralizes IT support requests and will save you time and money.  It’s scalable so you can be a single consultant or helpdesk with 200+ support folks.  I started using it last year, Twitter copied me this year as did MSNBC (probably because I was on The Rachel Maddow Show) and Viddler.

Harvest and is one of THE BEST solutions I’ve used for easy time tracking and invoicing that is cross platform.  They support Quickbooks export, you can Tweet your time and they talk to Zendesk so I can bill right from my tickets.  Did I mention they recently added the ability to collect payment via Paypal and create reoccurring invoices?

Want to make sure you always have the freedom to install any software and use T-mobile on your iPhone?

Photo credit:
hughelectronic / Electronic Frontier Federation

In preparation for Apple’s next cat and mouse response to users jailbreaking their phones, the iPhone Dev Team urged jailbreak users a few months ago to capture their iBEC and iBSS files which would ensure people could have a sort of “key” that would ensure they could continue jailbreaking.  The process to capture the files was not straight forward and a lot of people had trouble.  It’s sort of like trying to catch a fish with your bare hands.

@saurik, iPhone Dev Team member and creator of the Cydia iPhone repository, explains in a recent “must read” post:

• The importance of jailbreaking as a statement of free choice
• How to redirect your iTunes application to his server via your host file
• How to how to downgrade so you can backup jailbreak files via Cydia

I had already downloaded my 3.0 iBEC iBSS files to my computer for my iPhones and didn’t see a need to try out this feature until today when someone on Twitter mentioned it.

Excerpt from Saurik’s post:

Instead, what you really want, is to store the entire personalized firmware set required by iTunes to do a restore (or, more
realistically: a full set of SHSH blobs). At this point you should be able to use iTunes to do a “normal” restore of the device.

This functionality was offered, very near to the end of the window, by Cydia: one needed only to agree to have the process done, and your ECID was used on Cydia’s server to generate and store a full set of SHSH blobs using Apple’s signature process.
In doing this, over 50,000 3G[S] devices got their ECID SHSHs “on file”, and are now prepared to continue to restore to iPhoneOS 3.0 indefinitely.

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Welcome Screen at Cydia Prompting You to Store Your ECID iBSS iBEC File “Key”

So the first screenshot in this blog post welcomes Cydia users to upload their files for future jailbreak happiness:

In order to ensure your future ability to restore this device to iPhone OS 3.1, it is highly recommended that you allow Cydia to keep up-to-date signature hashes for this device on the Cydia signature cache server.  Doing this will ensure that, once a 3.1 jailbreak is released, you will always be able to continue to maintain this device.

Pending Request

After I clicked, “Make my life easier, thanks!”, I got a notice at the top that said:

This device has a pending TSS request.  The TSS queue is deep: check tomorrow.

File Stored

Of course, if you tell me to check back tomorrow, I’m going to hit “Reload”.  Lo and behold, my files have been successfully stored!

This device has a 3.1 ECID SHSH on file.

My Specs

This is a screenshot from my iPhone 3G S.  I’m running iPhone OS 3.0 on it (7A341) and noticed when I connected to Cydia with my 2G iPhone running the jailbroke iPhone OS 3.1, I did not see the same prompt to save my files…curious.

Recommendations for Jailbreak Updates

Folks, I know everyone wants to try the latest and greatest BUT it’s very important that if you want to keep your iPhone free from the greedy grips of Apple, your best bet is to subscribe to the iPhone Dev Team blog and never, ever, EVER use the Apple firmware upgrade offered in iTunes.

Tiny Hacker In Us All

I’m new the the jailbreaking scene as I got my first iPhone in April but not new to custom firmware updates.  I was mezmerized by the Lifehacker post Adam Pash did in 2006, Hack Attack: Turn your $60 router into a $600 router because I understood that the power of the device was often constrained by the software.  I began finding “hacks” for my Razr V3 at the HowardForums like custom forwarding and then tweaking my Dell Axim via the XDA developers forum for additional power management.

From the Lifehacker example, we can look at what Linksys (Cisco) did in response to the “hacking”; they put out a specific router that had more memory and even named it to indicate, “Hey!  I’m a hackable piece of hardware!  Buy me!”.  To this day, I am still having my IT clients purchase the Linksys WRT54GL and “hacking” it before I install it for them!

Would you be willing to give all your passwords away to get it?


That’s what you risk by downloading iPhone firmware from unknown sources.

Just a reminder it’s never a good idea to download applications and games from P2P filesharing websites because they are often put out there to “lure” people into downloading them so they can actually collect your personal information.

I don’t see any reason why hackers would not do the same with iPhone firmware. They could easily insert a keystroke recorder and tiny FTP server that would upload your passwords from the iPhone.

MobileStudio is an iPhone application that boasts a built in FTP server

or just get MobileSpy which can record AND TRANSMIT the following information from your iPhone without you knowing:

• Incoming and Outgoing phone calls are logged and timestamped
• Your GPS location is reported every 30 minutes
• Every website URL you enter is captured
• All your SMS messages are captured

MobileSpy makes it sound very easy to remotely monitor someone’s iPhone

After the software is setup on your phone it will record an array of phone activities and then silently upload the data to your private Mobile Spy account using the Internet. When you want to view results, simply login to the Online Control Panel from any computer and enter your username and password to proceed.

This is the same reason why you don’t want to download “Free Microsoft Office” from a P2P file sharing site.  The .iso or .zip file you download may contain additional applications you don’t know about.  The iPhone Dev team warns about this too:

Please do not put links to custom IPSWs in your comments, because the software in them is copyrighted by Apple.  The Dev Team motto has always been “patch, don’t pirate!”.

and

We do not check these links or archives and we accept no responsibility with regard to the validity of the files, or with other content these links provide or with the content that is on the linked site.

So if you’re waiting to jailbreak your iPhone to OS 3.1, I suggest you find a friend with a Mac and have them burn a copy of their .ipsw file vs downloading one you find on Rapidshare or Megaupload.

Imagine waking up to find all your social media accounts with horrible things on them, your gmail account inaccessible and your bank account cleaned out.

Photo credit: by extraverage™

Friday night I upgraded my first generation iPhone from 3.0 to 3.1 and recorded it on Ustream.  If you’re thinking of jailbreaking for the first time or upgrading like I did, this post will walk you through the steps.

Background on Jailbreaking

iPhones are wildly popular smartphones made by Apple.  Time magazine named the iPhone, “Invention of the Year” in 2007.  As a phone, the primary phone carrier is AT&T.  This isn’t true in other countries and as popularity of the device grew, people wanted to use other providers…

The first jailbreak to an iPhone occurred less than 2 weeks after the iPhone launched because someone wanted custom ringtones.  After that, it was open season on the iPhone.  The iPhone Dev Team emerged as the primary freedom fighters and brought jailbreaking to the masses with their GUI based jailbreak tool, Pwnage.  Apple quickly “patched” their software to prevent the security hole.  A race between patching and jailbreaking is still going on today…

As of today (9/19/2009), if you want to do a fresh jailbreak or upgrade, you need to go to version 3.1 as Apple has blocked restores below 3.1.  It can only be done on 1st generation (2G) and the 3G on a Mac via PwnageTool but a new version that works for the 3G S and on Windows using the redsn0w tool from iPhone Dev Team will be available soon.

Now Corvida of Shegeeks.net had a good point today on the phone.  If you can acquire the .ipsw file from an already jailbroken iPhone, you can restore it to yours and merrily be on your with with OS 3.1 running on your phone.  The iPhone Dev team discourages this and would prefer people to not upload the .ipsw files (which are usually 300+ mb) to various files haring sites like Rapidshare and megaupload as their motto is, “patch, don’t pirate!”

Update 1: Please do not put links to custom IPSWs in your comments, because the software in them is copyrighted by Apple.  The Dev Team motto has always been “patch, don’t pirate!”.  And you’ll just make things harder for your friendly moderators angiepangie and Confucious

Ready to get started?

Your Tools

iPhone 2G or 3G – For this jailbreak tutorial, you will need a first generation (2G) or second generation (3G) iPhone.

iTunes – I did this upgrade with iTunes version 8.2.1.6

Jailbreak Software – This is the software you will run that will take you through the jailbreaking process.  For today’s jailbreak, I’m using PwnageTool 3.1 for the Mac.  You can download it from the iPhone Dev Team blog.  This will be a .dmg file  (About 20mb)

Firmware – This is the Apple firmware you will be using to create your very own jailbroken version that you will restore through iTunes.  You can download it via the link in iPhone Dev Team’s site on PoorLad maintained by @webrob.  This is an .ipsw file (About 300mb)

Boot Loader – If you are jailbreaking for the first time, you will need two bootloader files.  My iPhone is already jailbroken so I didn’t need these but if you do, Google and you will find them.

The Steps

I followed the tutorial over at iClarified to:

Prepare your jailbreak file
Launch the PwnageTool
Click “OK” on the notice
Select “Expert” mode and click “Next”
Select my iPhone from the 3 choices and click “Next”
Wait for PwnageTool to find the unmodified .ipsw file and click “Next”
You will be presented with 6 options before you build your custom .ipsw.

Here’s what I went with:

General

• Already checked - Activate the phone
• Already checked - Enable baseband update
• Increased root partition to 635mb

and click “Next”

Bootneuter settings

• Already checked – Neuter bootloader
• Already checked – Unlock baseband
• Auto delete BootNeuter .app

and click “Next”

Cydia settings
I didn’t add any items (packages) here as I plan to add my Cydia items later.  Cydia is like the open source version of the App store.

Custom logo settings
I left these at the default of being checked.  Stylizing my iPhone is not that big a deal to me.  I use the iPhone to be more productive and get real time information when I’m out and about attending conferences, parties and events.

Build your jailbreak file
You will be asked to save your shiny new .ipsw file so pick a good spot.  I saved mine to the desktop.  This is the file you will restore via iTunes to complete the jailbreak.

Time to build so click “Build” and click “Next”

Now this will take a while…

If you were jailbreaking for the first time, this is where you would replace the boot loader files…

You will be prompted to enter your administrative password

You will be asked if the iPhone has been jailbroke before.   This is because you don’t have to put the iphone into DFU mode if it’s already been jailbroke thus why i didn’t download the bootloader files.  They would be “injected” at this step and you would get the oh so fun task to holding down the power button and home key in some twisted thumb dance which reminds me of the game “Twister”.

Let the Jailbreak begin!
Now it’s time to get this jailbreak on your iPhone!

Connect your iPhone to your Mac
Make sure it is detected by iTunes
Click on the iPhone icon on the left in your iTunes application to select your iPhone

Hold down your “Alt/Option” key and then click restore.  This is similar on a PC where you would hold down “shift”.  Doing this will cause iTunes to pop up a file window, asking you point to a restore file.

Select your shiny new .ipsw you saved a few steps ago and hit “Choose”
This process will take a while….
Your iPhone will restart
You can check your iPhone software version by going to Settings > General > About

You are all done!

Notes

You should NEVER need to pay for jailbreaking software.  The iPhone Dev Team does not charge for it, does not accept donation and does not place advertising on their website.

While waiting for the jailbreak build, I read an excerpt about Bill Joy, founder of BSD, Sun Microsystems, the VI editor and Java from the book, “Outliers: The Story of Success”

I do a yoga pose near the end and talk about how yoga can help keep back pain at bay.

Thanks to Corvida for inspiring me to do my first jailbreak on a Mac!

Why I Jailbreak My iPhone

I jailbreak because I want the freedom to choose what goes on my smartphone.  I credit my mom attending Woodstock as the fuel that drives my desire to jailbreak.

I also want to keep T-mobile as my cellular provider.  In order to be able to insert my T-mobile sim card and make phone calls, the iPhone needs to be “unlocked”.  In order to unlock an iPhone, it need to be jailbroke.

T-mobile has been an amazing cell phone company.  I’ve tried Verizon, Nextel and had a few months using Sprint via an IT contract.  All of those companies sucked in terms of customer service, plans and phone technology.

Resources

iPhone Dev Team

iPhone Firmware files at iCommunity Poorlad

iClarified Tutorial on jailbreaking to OS 3.1 using PwnageTool on Mac for 2G/3G iPhone

I was going to upgrade my Jailbroke 3G S from 3.0 to 3.0.1 but had a problem when I selected the .ipsw file. iTunes gave me that error,

This device isn’t eligible for the requested build

I found several reports on forums and in the comments section indicating other people were trying to jailbreak or upgrade and were having the same problem.

Stay tuned at the iPhone Dev Team’s blog for their status on jailbreaking the 3.1 iPhone OS. They are the creators of QuickPwn, Yellowsn0w, Redsn0w, PwnageTool and Ultrasn0w. As of today 9/15/2009, the iPhone Dev Team is still working to jailbreak 3.1.

It looks like this change was done last week after apple announced and released 3.1. Pretty sneak Apple!