Nov 29
De-wimpifying my iPhone
I love my iPhone, but its limitations set by Apple or by AT&T are pretty lame. The reason I fell in love with OS X was that it was not only beautiful and easy to use - but because there was also a Terminal and I felt empowered. That's what I want from my phone.
What did I do to de-wimpify my phone? Step one to freedom - Jailbreak the phone. Its pretty easy to do and what you'll be doing is effectively make new firmware that you'll update your phone with. Once you do, that you'll have Cydia or Rock.app (or both!). Use those to set up the following (to do this entire list will cost some cash, but I think it's invaluable):
- Intelliscreen - that gives me a lock screen that is actually useful! Calendar and weather right when i turn it on;
- My3G - from my writing days, it's obvious that I love my TV and the most annoying part of Slingplayer is that I can't use it over 3G. My3G fixes that (and allows for large downloads from App store or iTunes store as well) and I can access my TiVo from anywhere;
- MyWi - Turns on the ability to do tethering on your iPhone. I don't like doing tethering over WiFi to my phone (as some apps like PDANet will do), but MyWi will allow you to tether the "correct" way over the USB cable. Go make some cell tower cry;
- Orbit - It's "Mobile Exposé". I only have six pages of apps, but this is the way to more;
- Five Icon Dock - to get one more app down there. My fifth app is Orbit so I can use it from any screen;
- Backgrounder - Run applications in the background! I usually background Radioshift while I go check e-mail;
- Multifl0w - To see all the applications that you've just backgrounded; and
- MobileTerminal - see comment above on my love of the Terminal on OS X and now the same love on my iPhone. I've been known to run curl on my iPhone to debug my work.
I really wanted to include TVOut on the list -- it's supposed to let me use a TV cable on my iPhone and put any app on the TV. It unfortunately doesn't handle screen rotations, so trying to use my iPhone as a mobile Slingcatcher doesn't work so well unless you're willing to turn the TV on its side.
What have you done?
