When restoring (UN-jailbreaking) doesn’t restore everything
As much as I loved having a jailbroken iPhone, I decided to UN-jailbreak my phone in anticipation of the new 3.0 software update. I also had been experiencing some increasingly frequent crashes to the springboard, as well as what I perceived to be a general slowness to the phone, and figured maybe a factory restore would set things right.
In order to undo the Jailbreak, I figured all I needed to do was hit the “restore” button in iTunes, and then restore the iPhone from a previous backup. However, once the iPhone had completed its cycle, I noticed three odd things:
Apparently three of my customization options held through a restore: Erica Sadun’s Make It Mine (which let’s you change the carrier name from AT&T or what have you), and my numeric Wi-Fi strength and numeric battery level indicators ( I think I used Big Boss Prefs for those, although it was so long ago I don’t remember).
I’m not sure how those hacks went about making their changes to the iPhone’s OS, but for some reason I assumed a full restore would overwrite those changes. Probably somewhere in their documentation they said “Remember to undo us BEFORE your unjailbreak”, but I of course never read such things, as I assume many of you don’t either, so I figured I would just post this as an FYI for anyone else who will be un-jailbreaking. It will be interesting to see if any of these preferences hold through the 3.0 update next week (actually I believe Apple is enabling a numeric battery on their own. So maybe I will have two…) 
The “Mighty Dead” mouse
Apple hasn’t updated the Mighty Mouse in quite some time, but those of you dying for a refresh can make your own out of things you probably have in your own home! All you need is and old (still functioning) USB mouse, and an old (NOT functioning) real one!
That’s right, assuming you are a fan of taxidermy, Instructables.com has a tutorial on how you can turn that dead mouse you have lying around on the basement into a real life working computer mouse, and it looks great with an Apple laptop, don’tcha think?
This would be great for kids – They love stuffed animals.
Above: Here’s all you need… not shown, an extremely strong stomach. [Warning: Images get a little grosser....] Read more
Sonic the Hedgehog for iPhone isn’t a game, it’s a Genesis emulator
Sega’s recently released Sonic the Hedgehog for iPhone has received well-deserved accolades for bringing an amazing faithful port of the 1991 Sega Genesis classic to the iPhone platform, yet at the same time, it has also received almost as much criticism for its slow frame rates and performance issues. Well, the guys over at AllTechRelated may have discovered the reason. Apparently, Sonic isn’t so much a port to the iPhone as a Genesis emulator running Sonic on the iPhone.
It turns out if you open up the Sonic app folder on a jailbroken iPhone (as I’ve done below), you can replace the file named “rom.bin” with another Genesis ROM file you may own, and it will play. In their tests not all ROMs worked, (so far, they’ve had success with Sonic 1 and 2, Afterburner 2, and Ecco the Dolphin).
Above: Replace this file with a bin ROM of your own, and you’re good to go.
The obvious catch here is that only the D-Pad and A button are supported, so only certain games will play well even if they launch. I have tested out Sonic 2, and as you can see from the shots below (featuring Sonic’s friend Tails) the hack does indeed work. (I only tested that ROM because I still own the original Sonic 2 cartridge, and the underlying feeling in the ROM community is that you shouldn’t run emulated games you did not buy at some point).
I actually noticed the ROM for Sonic 2 plays smoother than the “official” Sega Sonic for the iPhone. For some, perhaps the knowledge that Sonic can in fact run many Genesis titles may help justify the $5.99 price tag on the laggy app. Of course, if you have a jailbroken iPhone, there’s already a free Genesis emulator out there.
As someone who plans to UNjailbreak my iPhone when the version 3 OS comes out, here’s hoping Sega decides to do right and fix the performance on Sonic, but in the meantime, running Sonic 2 ain’t a bad consolation prize.
[via AllTechRelated]
Fieldrunners invade Central Park!
Filed under: Apple Fanboyism, Awesomeness, Games, Hacks, design, iPhone
Everyone knows one of the best parts of Jailbreaking your iPhone is that you can customize the look and feel of your iPhone, but did you know with a little digging you can also customize your apps as well? (And cheat to high heaven? Check out my cash stash).
Fieldrunners is still my all-time favorite iPhone app, however with no real updates in the past few months, I decided it was time for a facelift. I did a little poking around in the Fieldrunners app today, and decided to do a quick test. A few minutes of sloppy Photoshop work, and I have my very own Central Park NY “Grasslands” map!
Oh no! The Fieldrunners are marching on Center Drive!
The cool thing is you can pretty much make any map you’d like. Here we see the Fieldrnners attacking my desktop.
The orange robot must NOT get to my Mac Chick folder!
MacBook hacked to add “right-click” in Windows
I’m always amazed at how much extra space seems to be inside the black and white MacBooks, given Apple’s obsession with slimming things down. First someone was able to add a second LCD screen behind the MacBook’s main one, and now InsanelyMac forum member jboy21 has crammed a usb mouse inside his black MacBook to add right click functionality.
“Basically ive taken a standard logitech usb mouse, hacked it down to its very bare essentials, inserted inside the case along with a usb hub.
Ive tapped into the usb connection between the motherboard and bluetooth module, attached the hub and rerouted the cable for the bluetooth module to the hub.
Ive placed a small piece of metal (which is attached and insulated on the L-bracket) underneath the right mouse button to make the contact.
All the boards are located in a spare ram module slot, ive already got the maximum amount of ram on one stick so i didnt need it anyway.”
An impressive feat of engineering. Of course, this hack would have been totally unnecessary if he hadn’t first ruined his Mac by installing Windows on it…
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