Sn0w storm comming, Frosty reception for Sn0wbreeze 2.02

Well last Wednesday night I must have been one of the first to download the brand new Sn0wbreeze jailbreak. It was due for 2am but I had it on my PC the moment it came out about 1.10

But I didn't have it on my phone. My phone has worked very well since my screw up last week and as a result I've not been quite so desperate to screw it up again. Also I was away for the weekend so I didn't want to risk my phone not working. As a result I did not install the new jailbreak.

By the time I got home today the jailbreak has gone through another two incarnations. That means it wasn't right at the start. I've now downloaded the latest and am just trying it. I have my doubts but, I'm off tomorrow so if the worst happens I have a day to fix it.

I have an iPhone 3g. I'm attempting to break it with sn0wbreeze version 2.02. I've 'cooked' the ipsw and am now running a restore. I've already had one error and am now getting that sinking feeling again. This doesn't look hopeful. I followed the instructions at Redmond pie but I'm getting a 1604 error. I'm using Tiny umbrella to kick my device out of recovery as it seems to be locked at the moment.

Fortunately I don't appear to have done any damage but I've not upgraded either. I'm a bit surprised. I genuinely thought this would work. I'll try again but it looks like we may have to wait for greenpois0n after all.

Try 2. This time I made sure the phone was in recovery mode before selecting restore. This is achieved by holding the home and on/off buttons simultaneously till the screen goes blank (ignore the 'switch off message) then letting go of the on/off whilst continuing to hold the home button until iTunes says that it recognises a phone i recovery mode. I then held down shift and clicked the 'restore' button in itunes and browsed to desktop and the new ipsw. I'm watching itunes just now but it ain't doing much.

Oops. This time it really doesn't look good. iTunes has just kicked the phone out and it wont switch on or anything. I unplugged then plugged back in and it said it recognised a phone in recovery mode so I browsed to the ipsw again. Fingers crossed... Nope. I've had error 1601 and now error 21 after running something called iReb. The good news is that when I come out of recovery mode using Tiny Umbrella my phone is undamaged. Just not upgraded. This is not the end of the world. To date: I can't use PWNAGE because I don't have a mac. The old version of Redsn0w (my preferred option) doesn't work and the new version is Mac only at the moment. Sn0wbreeze looks like working (it creates a new ipsw file) but wont restore to 4.1 so I'm still jailbroken on 4.02 with the 4.1 bootrom. The phone works better than ever but doesn't seem keen to upgrade to 4.1. Looks like I'm still waiting for greenpois0n.

Watch this space...
T

That Syncing feeling. Downgrade from 4.1 iPhone 3G

If you read the previous post you'll realise that I have had a disastrous bash at jailbreaking iOS4.1 for my 3G using Redsn0w. What follows are my attempts to recover.

Plan C (put the sim into my HTC) might be my best option but I want to try something first. Plan D was to downgrade to 3.2 but I don't know how to do that so here's plan E

Plan E I should be able to restore my phone to iOS 4.02 which is where I was before I started this. Read all of this before you start. Follow the instructions here Downgrade from4.1. To confirm, to go into DFU mode hold the power and home buttons for ten seconds, ignore the 'slide to power off prompt' then let go of the power button whilst continuing to hold the home button till iTunes alerts you that it has detected a phone in recovery mode. Say 'OK' to that prompt and then follow the instructions from the link. If like me you have a 3g then you should be able to skip steps 3 and 7.

The step by step doesn't really prepare you for what happens when running tiny umbrella. Ignore a couple of false starts where your phone tells you to slide to use emergency only. TOUCH NOTHING. It will eventually say 'iPhone is activated'. iTunes will prompt you to run your last restore. Do this. It's the longest sync in history but I'm hoping it works. It does after all have around 50 apps, 500 songs and 70 pics to recover plus all contacts emails etc so be patient.

You now have an iPhone on iOS 4.02. You are going to need to run Redsn0w like in step five of the previous post. Hope it works better this time. Again browse to iOS4 final version even though you're restored to 4.02 and follow the instructions to let it do its thing.

I now need to add installous via cydia to restore my jailbroken apps (like tomtom). OH OH!!!! Clicked on Cydia. It said it was reorganizing and would shut down when finished. It did this but then , when the phone started up cydia was gone and my phone, notes and SMS icons were blank.

Running redsn0w again. Holy shit it looks even worse now. Loads of white icons. Cydia is there but it is also white. I'm going to try running it. Wish me luck.


Now we're getting somewhere. Cydia asked me to upgrade. I chose update all. It restarted and I now have icons.

I'm adding cydia.hackulo.us and apt.macosmovil.com repos via cydia. (Manage Sources)

I'm adding openSSH to packages (manage packages).This allows you to add things directly to your phone. I've saved my theme from before so adding it directly to the folder structure will save me hours once I have added winterboard from Cydia.

I'm adding SBSettings, SBSettings Toggle, My3G, Navigate from maps, Remove background, iblank and auto3g. There are others but remember that we do expect a 4.1 jailbreak soon so there's no point going nuts.

Then I had to go into the phone settings to change my folder icons and to remove the background shadow from the buttons.


OK so it has taken all day to go from start to finish and, thing is, the finish looks exactly like the start. You may think it was a complete waste of time. My wife does. I don't. I wouldn't recommend it though.

It's very early to tell but I think the phone may be a bit more responsive. It is possible that I've updated the phones base band and that that has made some sort of difference.

For the moment, I am now on base band 05.14.02. That's the base band for 4.1. What that means is that I can't presently unlock the phone but for me that's not an issue.

iTunes 10 freezes for about 30 seconds every time I go to sync. This may be some sort of conflict with having the 4.1 base band and the 4.02 operating system but it gets past it if you wait it out so no issue there. Syncing my phone now shows six steps rather than five as previous and I still sometimes get told that sync can't load provider data.

Guess I'll just wait for the official jailbreak now.

Update
Wouldn't you know it. Within 24 hours of my debacle someone finds a jailbreak solution although not the official one. Go to SpiritJB.ORG where you'll find that someone has made a jailbroken ipsw file for 4.1 for the 3g. So does that mean I'm now jailbroken on 4.1? No. Couldn't face the hassle so soon after Saturday plus, my phone is working really well at the moment. I can only assume it's got something to do with having the new baseband from 4.1 with the functionality of 4.02 and the redsnow jailbreak but the phone is working better than it ever has.

I'll wait a while and see what the official jailbreaks bring. Sn0wbreeze 2.0 from ih8sn0w is rumoured to come out this Wednesday and will break everything except the iphone 4. Greenpois0n is still the most talked about yet illusive of all the jailbreaks using pod2g's SHAtter exploit. Pod2g has left the chronic dev-team today but says the jailbreak will go ahead. Interestingly it was pod2g that I quoted last week as saying the jailbreak would come out on Saturday. It was also pod2g that found the jailbreak prior to the release of iOS4.1. I suspect he or she may have left after getting impatient with the delays of their colleagues who are testing the break and creating the software. To be fair though I wouldn't launch something half arsed. For all people are impatient that's nothing compared to how they'd be if a jailbreak broke their phones. That would play directly in to apples hands.

So that's you up to date.

Update 2

21/09/2010 Looks like a new version of Redsn0w has been released. Not only can it break 4.1 for the iphone 3g and ipod touch 2g but it's rumoured that it can do the beta version of 4.2. If you read my previous post you'll get decent instructions on using it though I'd check at Redmond Pie just to make sure because you now have to pint it at iOS4.1 instead of 4. The new Redsn0w is only available for Mac at the moment but I'd imagine it will be avilable for windows within the week. Sn0wbreeze is rumoured to hit tomorrow and I suspect greenpois0n will pull out all the stops to do the same before it becomes pointless. It's like a soap opera this. You could get hooked. My wee 3g is still going like lightening since Saturdays debacle. I'd almost (but not quite) recomend the pain I went through for the performance improvement.

Just incase any gurus on the iPhone ever see this page. Quick question. If I updated, jailbroke and then added all my custom apps and winterboard theme, could I then somehow save that as an ispw file? It's just that with my 3G working well right now I'm a bit shy of jailbreaking however, I know that each new release also brings new features. If I could create a custom ispw file unique to my phone then I could jailbreak with confidence knowing that I could always restore if things went wrong. Hmmmmm

More news as it comes.

T

Jailbroken 3g on IOS 4.1? To break or not to break?

What follows details exactly how I tried and failed to jailbreak and upgrade to iOS 4.1 on my 3g using Redsn0w. As you will see I had half an idea that it wouldn't work but felt that I had to try. Unlike other sites I also detail exactly how to undo everything and get back to where you started. Why didn't I just say 'Don't do it?'. I didn't listen when others said this to me so why should I expect you to?

Read everything BEFORE doing anything. Don't blame me if this doesn't work for you. I'm desperate so I'm having a go. If any of the stuff below means nothing to you or if your iPhone means everything to you stop reading now.

Ok here goes. Let's break my phone.....

You might say 'Why break a perfectly good phone?'. I would then say 'it's not a perfectly good phone'. The marraige of iPhone 3g and jailbreaking has been legendary and allowed this aging piece of kit to almost rival it's big brothers the 3GS and 4. When iOS4 came out though small cracks began to appear. A jailbroken 3g got all the bows and bells of iOS4 (Multitasking etc) but, jailbroken or not, started to have massive performance issues. If a phone call came through whilst safari was open the whole thing crashed and needed re-booted. Face Book only managed to open about 1/3 of the time and even SMS wasn't exactly solid. Location services could freeze everything up. It seems to me that the phone just didn't manage it's memory well enough. It would sacrifice everything into one task and then just close down.

These problems came to a head on a journey down south and I found myself in the position of depending on the phone and knowing that it was going to let me down. My old HTC wasn't as fancy as the iphone but it was 100% reliable. I love gadgets but, unlike a lot of geeks, I like my gadgets to solve a problem. If they don't do that then they are useless.

Apple became aware of the issue with reliability on the iPhone 3g. Had it just been jailbreakers they would have ignored it but the fact was that ordinary users were complaining that their phones were completely useless. As a result iOS 4.1 was introduced. There were a couple of new things with 4.1 (see previous posts) but the biggy for me was that it would resolve performance issues for the 3G. My only issue was that my phone is heavily customised and uses many jailbroken apps. I guess I want it all. A jailbroken iPhone that works my way as well as the performance that Apple designed it to produce. So I want to update to 4.1 and jailbreak it. 4.1 has been out for over a week now and, despite claiming to have jailbroken it prior to release, no official working jailbreak has been forthcoming.

Since the current version of Redsn0w reportedly has issues (breaks phone app, Cydia doesn’t work) jailbreaking iPhone 3G on iOS 4.1 (final version) I am going to first try something call the Pwnage tool. This will be plan A. My only issues with trying to break the phone this way are, I've never tried it before and I think it maybe only works for Mac. Whatever, I'll give it a try and then, if it doesn't work, I'll try Redsn0w (Plan B) as I felt that the instructions for installing were wrong on some of the other sites that I read and that may be why they've had issues. Finally plan C involves putting the sim in my HTC and waiting for the SHAtter exploit to come out on greenpois0n. I have to do something. If iOS 4.1 doesn't deliver the performance improvement required then I give up on the iPhone. If it does deliver the improvement then I may not upgrade to 4.2 in November or beyond as I would be quite happy with what I presently have provided it works properly. I have even considered reverting to 3.2 as it seemed to be optomised for the 3g. Maybe that's plan D. The instructions for upgrading using Pwnage were found here: jailbreak-iphone-3g-ios-4.1-pwnagetool-guide. I have used Redmond Pie several times in the past and they have proved very reliable.

Plan A Download iOS 4.1 PwnageTool Bundle for iPhone 3G
Ok so plan A is a complete non starter for those of us working on windows. There is a way to emulate a mac on windows but life is too short.

Plan B This is the plan that I thought might work from the start but I put off trying till I waited for confirmation. When the confirmation came it came with all sorts of user issues related to the the phone app not working, the wifi not working and Cydia not working. So you could end up with an iPhone that basically doesn't work at any level. I'm hoping that if the worst happens then at least the phone can just be restored to iOS 4.1 with no jailbreak but I can't swear to this being possible. Now I've already mentioned on here that I've seen instructions on doing this that I don't like. I've wondered if this may be why people have had problems.

First: I'm downloading something called Tinyumbrella. Tiny Umbrella. This saves something called shsh blobs. I'm sure you could google this and get an explanation of what they are. I however have no idea. What I do know is that if you completely screw up then, provided you have run this software and allowed it to save some files, you can downgrade back to an older working version of iOS. Trust me. Do this.

Second: Here in the UK several mobile phone providers supply iPhones so we're not as hung up on unlocking (changing carrier). This is not the story in most countries however. If you want to jailbreak 4.1 and unlock the phone once it's done then follow these instructions BEFORE you do anything: Upgrade to iOS4.1 without upgrading baseband


Third: I'm opening Cydia on my phone, checking that it has updated and shows the stored shsh blobs on there as well. You also need to have a final version of iOS 4 saved on your PC(THIS IS NOT A TYPO. I DID SAY iOS4 and not 4.1 which is probably what you expected). You can get a copy here:iOS 4 Download

Forth: Take a deep breath and be brave....Connect your phone and allow it to sync (I'm a bit worried about this because I've been getting the following error since I upgraded to iTunes 10). Stay connected to iTunes and upgrade to iOS4.1. I'm just checking one last time that greenpois0n hasn't suddenly become available.

Cross everything that this works because this is a sort of point of no return. At least my 3G should respond better but it could be the end of my jailbreak days. Keep reading....Fifth: The instructions that I am going to follow are the ones published here:jailbreak-iphone-4.1-ios-iphone-3g-ipod-touch-guide.
I am going to follow this guide from STEP 3 as it was written before iOS4.1 was officially released. Keep everything crossed still. When this is over you'll know for certain wheteher it worked or whether I just made my phone useless.

Exciting......

If you screw up the bit about holding the power button for three seconds, then the power and home for about twenty and then the home button for about thirty don't panic just start again. You haven't done any harm. (At least not yet)

DO NOT TOUCH YOU'R PHONE WHILE IT'S DOING ITS THING. You'll know when it's ready. It will reboot to the apple logo. The boot time will be longer than usual. DO NOT TOUCH.

Might as well set your expectations at this point. When you'r phone restarts it may: lack a phone icon, fail to get wifi (make sure that you don't just need to pair with your modem again)and cydia may be a blank icon.

Here goes. Switching on.

The worst appears to have happened. No phone icon. No wifi and cydia is blanK. I do seem to have SMS although I haven't tried sending anything and I have 3g. I'm not panicing yet (well ok I am a bit but trying to remain level headed).

I have icons. Even for the jaibroken apps although, at the moment they don't work. I clicked the cydia blank icon and it told me that I needed to join a wifi network. I entered my wifi code and put my router into pairing mode. The wifi icon appeared but cydia just closed. I tried to open it again. It closed. I tried again and it opened but with a new apple logo. It told me that I had essential upgrades which I accepted. Seemed to freeze but I'm not going to touch it till I'm sure. I can't screenprint what's happening as I need a jailbreak app to do that I'm afraid. It's taken ages so I'm re-booting the phone. I'm clicking on 'Complete Upgrade' again. Again I'm having to crash it out.

I'm going to try syncing with iTunes to see if that makes a blind bit of difference. I notice that whilst iTunes is syncing my phone screen is blank. This is unusual you would normally have a screen to say it was syncing. This does not seem good. It's taking an abnormally long time although it does seem to be trying to install some jailbreak apps (tomtom etc). At the end of the sync I got all sorts of errors but my jailbroken apps now seem to work.

Although I'm showing a wifi connection I just tried safari and it aint opening any web pages. Looks like this seriously doesn't work. I did dial my phone and it did recognise an incoming call. Call me old fashioned but I'd also like to make calls. Sorry folks but at least I tried.


Looks like I'm going to have to find a way to restore. Look at my next post to see what happens....

Don't try this at home....

T

Prepare to Jailbreak iOS 4.1 for iPhone 3G Part 1

It's the jailbreak blogs turn tonight folks so if iPhones mean nothing to you or your iPhone means more than life itself you may want to skip this one.

At some point tomorrow Apple will release iOS 4.1 for all variants of iPhone and some ipod touches. The new software offers a few new features, Ping (a kind of face book of music that I don't really see the point of but that will no doubt become something you can't live without), Game Center which offers online gaming and high def video for the iPhone 4. All good stuff but given the hassle of re-jail breaking and then restoring all my apps and all my settings probably I could bear to live without these changes. However.....

There will also be a camera improvement called HSD. It's not available for the 3g but I've already read that, a bit like multitasking, jail broken 3gs will have an app that allows them to use it. Given how shit my phones camera is any software that improves the resolution and quality of a shot is a must. In addition to this Mr Jobs has said that it will allow the operating system to run faster on a 3g. Thank you thank you thank you.

iOS 4.0 did bring some functionality and gimmicks that made it worth upgrading but god has it slowed the 3g down. I know that that's probably not helped by jail breaking the phone to over perform but it was seriously faster and less buggy, jail broken or not, before 4 came along. There are You Tube videos showing how slow the three has become (jail broken or not).

So I want to upgrade to 4.1 as quickly as possible but, as always, there's a problem. Someone has to jailbreak it before I upgrade or I'd lose loads of functionality. My phone is themed to within an inch of its life. It doesn't look anything like an iphone. I'd lose that. My 3g reception goes to sleep with my phone saving battery life. I'd lose that. If I find something in google maps I've got a button that allows me to navigate there using tomtom. I'd lose the button and the tomtom. I've got an app that makes my Internet think that 3g is wifi and so allows live streaming. I'd lose that. Multi tasking. Yep that too. Forget one or two stolen apps it's the functionality I'd miss.

I suspect that the dev-team are pretty much good to go with some jailbreaks for this one. They may even be ready already and I'm hoping that some version of Redsn0w is pretty much ready to launch with a version of jailbreak me following within the first fortnight. But even with this it can still be a hassle so I've taken some steps to prepare in advance. Watch this space and I'll let you know how they go.

I use a winterboard theme called iEllegance. However I wasn't 100% on the out of the packet theme so I replaced the clock with a natty HTC flip clock, I've created Icons for my specific app set and I've changed the wallpaper and lock screen. In addition I've fixed some glitches so I've removed the themes dock and restored the original and I've taken the shadows off buttons because they were offset. As a newbie that has taken bloody ages. When you re-jailbreak you start again. In other words download the default theme, download the clock,, find icons and make others etc... To avoid this I have copied the theme folder completely from my phone using a free software called WinSCP. (think it's this they are talking about when they mention SSHing something to your phone. It shows you the contents of the phone as a windows style file system and you just copy and paste files once you figure out your way around) Hopefully after jail breaking all I need to do is get winterboard running and then paste my theme back into the library where it's supposed to go.

On that note, I've also copied the winterboard application along with a few others. What's the chances that I can paste them straight back in without having to download again?

Until I try I've no idea if any or all of this will work. Without a jailbreak it's a waste of effort. Provided I can view and change the file structure of my phone then I stand a chance of making this work. So even if all the jailbreakers could achieve was to get OpenSSH running on the phone then we'd be good to go.

If all this did work then, who knows, I could be one step closer to understanding what all those dudes at the dev team are up to to jailbreak the phone in the first place.

It goes without saying that you should back your phone up on iTunes before upgrading to 4.1 or even considering jailbreaking. but even here there may be a slight problem:

I think Apple might be up to something a bit sneaky but I could just be being paranoid. When I turned iTunes on today it ceashed for the very first time with an error. Synchost had stopped responding tell microsoft about this prob. I thought nothing of it, as most people probably wouldn't, shut iTunes down and restarted. Now when I sync I get 'ITunes was unable to load provider data from sync services. Reconnect or ty again later'. The paranoid side of me thinks that this is some sort of software change aimed at either preventing jailbreaking or, more likely, unlocking. Of course it could just be that my software is nuts but there was no event leading up to this. After some experiments I did find that if I shut down MY3G, enabled 3g reception through SBSettings and then let the phone lock itself before connecting to iTunes then everything seemed to work but I've no idea why.

As soon as I've got any news on a jailbreak I'll be doing another iBlog. Hope that means that we will speak soon.

Interesting times.

TQ

Jail break IOS 4.02 withRedsn0w

For the second time in just a few weeks really I am putting up a quick blog to the jail breaking community for iPhones before my normal weekly blog. Apologies to those with no interest in the phone.


This week I did a stupid thing. Fortunately for me on this occasion I got away with it.

As I was reading on Redmond Pie that a new version of iPhone software was coming on to the market I was also being asked by iTunes if I wanted to downoad only or download and install. I selected download only but, as I did so, Redmond Pie confirmed that for iPhone 3g the original Redsn0w jailbreak would still work. Given that it worked so well when ios4.01 turned up hot on the heals of ios 4 I took them at their word.

Don't update

How many times in life do I need to be told, never buy the newest thing until you know that it works? Is that the first generation of a car that your driving? Does it have any problems that have been sorted out on newer models? Did you really pay £400 for that camera just before SLRs became the rage? Does windows mobile really beat iPhone?

I felt quite smug as the jailbreak was applied. I may have the old iPhone but mine would be up to date and jail broken. If the iPhone 4 brigade (who have waited months only to get a jailbreak and then have it shut down)think they are cool. Who's cool now with their 3g? The jailbreak worked. As I understand it it will work with 3g and below and iPod touch 2gs and below but for god sake check that info before you do it. The jailbreak did work but, because I was so far ahead of the game on this one Cydia etc weren't up to date. In other words I was jail broken but had very few of the real advantages. It's taken three days for everything to get caught up but now my phone is comfortably back to where it was.


The official line from all the jail breaking communities is hold your fire. ios4.02 Is simply an update that prevents nasty folk from hacking your iPhone using an exploit that was discovered by the jail breakers. The jail breakers needed a way to load software onto the phone and found one. In doing so it exposed the fact that there was a way that nasty people could do the same but for bad reasons. Given that iPhone hold bank details etc this was not good. Believe it or not the jailbreak community, realising the potential problem, had a fix out at the start of the week and have upgraded that to a proper patch for all phone variants before apple got to market with their solution.

So why did I update and why are so many people hopping from foot to foot waiting to hear when they can update? Simple, you can't fall behind with this stuff. Even as you read this there's software being created that will only work on ios4.02. Apple probably have a team working on a release for ios 4.03 whilst another team will be designing some major changes that will be called ios5. You need to be up to date.


Testers Required


To some extent it's really the jailbreak communities own fault. Apple should be paying these guys. The dev-team (jail breakers) are way ahead of apple in what they want their phones to do. The dev-team create apps that push the functionality of the phone to the limits. Sometimes they push beyond the limits and phones slow down or batteries drain too fast but none of us complain. If a development isn't what it should be delete it. IOS4 delivered folders. Jail breakers already had those. IOS 4 delivered multitasking. Jail broken phones had been doing that with varying success for at least a year. As before Jail broken phones had customisable lock screens and wallpaper. 3g and lower had already had video and camera zoom was taken for granted. All of these things had been available and were working with the jail breakers long before apple caught up. A suspicious person might think Apple monitored this activity with a keen eye to see what would be the popularity and impact on performance before packging them up into ios4.

A genius in the community known as Comex has pretty much launched a working flash application. IPhone has been stongly criticised for not having this and was even taken to court over an advert because of this. Apple was told to stop saying it's phones could access 'all of the internet, because without flash it could only access parts. You need it for a lot of movie and animation formats.

What Comex has launched is not yet perfect and he or she will probably work tirelessly until they get it perfect. Within 3-6 months of the the jail breakers launching Apple will probably package it and launch to the world. The jail breakers seem to be apples own research and development lab. And folk like me have no objection to being the lab rats. My 3g is almost equal to an iPhone 4 with the exception of memory. In terms of hardware it will fall behind but for the moment it's doing pretty well.


Jailbreaking also gives users applications that neither apple or the phone providers want you to have. I may not be able to use Frash on my 3g but one thing that I do use is MY3G. A fantastic little piece of software that can only be used on a jailbroken phone. What it does is makes your phone believe it has a wifi connection when it actually only has 3g. As a result your phone will attempt to do things like stream live tv when normally it would say that this could only be done through wifi. It doesn't actually increase the 3g signal but sometimes the signal is strong enough and the phone is just refusing because of data capacities.

DIY

Don't update
Given that I got my phone in May and have now jail broken it for about the fourth time I'm getting a bit pissed off. It's not difficult to jailbreak but jail breaking and then reapplying all your settings takes time and is annoying. For this reason I'm thinking about researching my own jailbreak. At the moment I'm not too sure what that means but I'm planning to find out. I'm not a programmer so I'm not talking about creating a jailbreak like the guys do with new functions and everything. I'm thinking much more simple. Is there a quick, button click, way of upgrading your phone and keeping all the programs and settings that you got from your jailbreak? A way of being on the newest version but maintaining functionality until the real geniuses at the dev-team work their magic.

The dev-team solution would always be better but this would offer a fix that would give them the breathing space to do their stuff. I know people would use that. Can I figure out how to do it? At the moment certainly not. If I do do it will anyone be interested? Maybe. Problem is I'll then need folk to test it as well because I'm stuck with my 3g till 2012.

This could become extreme jail breaking....

Stay hooked

T

Back to reality

Well, that's me back in the real world once again. Today is the last official day of holiday and then it's back to work on Monday.



After joking about the Scottish Weather, apart from a gray Sunday/Monday at the start, the weather was pretty good and, despite my wife's efforts to get me to wear suncream strong enough to protect vampires in daylight, I even have a hint of a tan. It's funny because we've been going up and down to the same region every year for the last seven years and yet we still discovered a forest trail that took us to a bit of deserted beach that we hadn't been to before. (The flies and insects in Forrest particularly loved my suncream and I ended up like that character out of Peanuts, Linus I think, that had a permanent cloud of bugs around their head). Also although we didn't get out fishing quite a few folk did so we had mackerel for tea on several occasions (note to self: look up mackerel recipes online because we're needing to get inventive if we're having it every second or third day). For some reasons the locals in the local town have now decided that we aren't caravaners anymore but are actually locals ourselves. It's very flattering but hopefully it doesn't get too obtrusive as we quite like our privacy. So all in all the holiday did exactly what holidays should do...we relaxed a lot. We stayed for nine days and then had a few days back at home at a slow pace to catch up so all good.

When I got back I checked the blog. The traffic slowed a bit without updates but still gained some visitors from some far flung places. Outside of the UK the USA now sends more visitors than Canada (need to get your friends involved Poet, Hi to Wisconsin, California, Ohio and Florida) with Australia (The Gold Coast has been loyal for a long time but is now joined by Sydney and Adelaide) out in front of the republic of Ireland (think Zoe has lost interest but Peter might still be keeping the side up).
There's also been some welcome but unexpected additions such as Iran, Romania, Singapore and Malaysia to mention just a few. Since I started monitoring in April there have been over 100O hits from 23 separate countries with the average hit spending 4 minutes on the site and viewing 3 pages per visit. OK so some sites get more hits than that per hour but I'm pretty impressed, not to mention grateful, that so many folk have taken an interest in my decisions to; give up smoking, attack a car company and switch to an IPhone.

So, without further ado, what about smoking, the car and the iPhone?

Well I still don't smoke so that's good. I'm not saying when but I did have a drag within the last eight weeks and it damn nearly blew the top of my head off so I think we're officially safe on that front. I don't remember it being anything like that back when I started smoking because, this time, I couldn't even contemplate a second drag. Didn't want to say at the time because I felt guilty but there you go.

I've heard nothing from the car garage. I'm quite surprised because I thought that going via the directors would have got me some response, even if it was just to tell me to shut up. Watch this space though because I will be following it up. I am a member of a forum for my particular brand of car (there is only one major forum for this car). When I got back from holiday I had a 'Friend request' from the forum from someone else in Scotland (my area too). It's only polite to accept such requests, so I did, and then sent him an email detailing exactly what I thought of the dealership. I explained, in reasoned terms, why I wont use the dealer for servicing and even suggested a garage that could do this for him with an average saving of £100 per time. Haven't heard back yet but here's hoping he takes my advice. Through the forum he may befriend other owners and before you know it there shoddy attitude and disgusting policies will be the stuff of Internet legend. I will of course keep you updated on this site but would rather not use this blog to do the actual campaigning.

Bad Apple just a barrel of Laughs

Before I left I also mentioned that Apple were going to address the reception problems of their new iPhone 4. Well they did. They offered every iPhone 4 customer a free Bumper (sort of rubber band that frames the phone) or case (not sure what quality). That's fine I suppose. I would have purchased a case at the same time as the phone anyway because it's a big screen that scratches easily. Despite not ordering a recall they did say that people could take the phone back if they were dissatisfied. In addition to this they issued a software update; IOS 4.01.

Software updates are a pain in the arse for those of us who choose to jailbreak the phone because you have to re-jailbreak and re-install your apps every time it happens. Did this using Redsn0w. Maybe because it wasn't a major upgrade this was easier than last time. It would seem that a major reason for the upgrade was to address the reception issue with the iPhone 4. Apparently it mis-reported reception making it appear that users were getting a better reception than they actually were. To my knowledge this only affected the iPhone 4. After the upgrade however my iPhone 3g shows poorer reception than it previously had. I have to say that this has little or no impact on my ability to make calls it just makes it look like the phone is getting poor reception. If you forget the fact that it works perfectly and gets 3g reception and everything and just go by the bars displayed after the upgrade...It would seem that I'd do better switching back to my HTC touch because it showed more bars. Well done Apple. On the plus side the advertisers have had a field day.
At Motorola, we believe a customer shouldn’t have to dress up their phone for it to work properly. That’s why the DROID X comes with a dual antenna design. The kind that allows you to hold the phone any way you like to make crystal clear calls without a bulky phone jacket. For us it’s just one of those things that comes as a given when you’ve been making mobile phones for over 30 years.

Note the reception bars in samsungs 'Hello'

I'll update again before Sunday but that's enough for now

Jailbreak iOS4 for spirit

Apologies to my normal viewers but I wanted to add this post here specifically for people who, like me, jailbroke their iphone using spirit and now are waiting to update to the new iOS 4.

If what I write below means nothing to you or you are not gungho about this stuff then don't think about trying this. What's the worst that could happen? For a wee while tonight I had lost all of my contacts. You could break your phone and no-one will fix it because you were trying to do something that the waranty doesn't allow. More likely you'll have to restore your phone and loose youre old jailbreak. Or...

it could work. Just don't blame me if it doesn't.

I have an iPhone 3G. It has 8GB memory. Prior to this it was running OS 3.13 with iTunes 9.2 and it was jailbroken (but not unlocked) using spirit. It had never been jailbreaked prior to spirit. It looked like the screenshot and I was happy.

I wanted to upgrade to iOS 4 but was waiting for a 'spirit type/userland' jailbreak. Well on http://www.redmondpie.com/ I read that Sn0wbreeze 1.6.2 had been released (July 1st) and that it would support phones jailbroken using spirit. I tried it. I followed step-by-step what was said and was soooooooooo close to jailbreaking, but it didn't work. For a while the phone didn't work at all.

>

I downloaded the official IPSW file because the one linked on the site didn't work. Sn0wbreeze cooked a new IPSW file but my phone wouldn't load it. (again if your phone means a lot to you and this means nothing don't get sucked in)

At this point I began to feel rather silly as I'd promised myself I wouldn't loose all my free apps to upgrade to something that wasn't much different than what I had.

My phone wouldn't switch on but, if I disconnected and re-connected to iTunes I did get a prompt saying I had to restore. If I tried to restore using 'shift' and the IPSW on my desktop it wouldn't work. In desperation I just did restore without using 'shift'. The iPhone was back to factory but automatically asked if I wanted to run my backup. I did this. It looked like it was adding everything (dodgy and all) but it wasn't really. It had an error at the end and, if you opened it, it told you that the dodgy apps hadn't been added. iOS 4 However was now added and working. All my legal software was good. My phone was perfect but not jailbroken.

In desperation I went back to http://www.redmondpie.com/ and downloaded redsn0w 9.5 b5-5. I extracted it. I ran the exe file. When it asked me to browse for an IPSW I browsed to the official apple one on my PC. C:\documents and settings\your user folder name\application data\apple computer\i tunes\iPhone software updates. Then I just followed the instructions and it worked.

I suspect it might have worked if I'd just upgraded to os4 and then run Redsn0w but I've no way of testing that theory.

It's also worth noting that my 3g does things like multi tasking that wouldn't work on the official download.

If you're struggling with this and there's something you think I can help with then use 'Comments' to give me a shout but I should be quick to add that I ain't got very much clue about this stuff myself. I only got the phone a couple of months ago.

Hope this helps..

T

Quick update

So I have a car that works although my wife has been out in it all day so I'll have to wait till later for a full report.

Consumer direct also got back to me with a slightly confusing email with regard to my rights regarding the fault on the wheel. It seems that the dealer/manufacturer are responsible to do only what they state in their published warranty (I'll need to check the book to see what it says but I hold out little hope). It turns out however that I could pursue the finance company. See below:

Based on the information supplied within your e mail I would advise that if you were to pursue the trader and the manufacturer they are offering redress as per the terms of the warranty , you could ask for a copy of these . An alternative option would be to pursue your statutory rights .

Where goods are bought under a Hire Purchase agreement, the contract is governed by the Supply of Goods (Implied Terms) Act 1973. Your rights are against the credit provider rather than the trader who supplied the goods. The Act states that all goods supplied by a trader to a consumer must be of a satisfactory quality, fit for purpose made known and as described. If they are not, you may have rights to claim ‘damages’ from the finance company i.e. the cost of having the faults repaired, or for the finance company to arrange repairs and cover the cost.

I would advise you contact the finance company , initially by phone , but follow with a written request . Letters are best sent by recorded delivery , state your request and a fixed time fro reply , 14 days . Keep a copy for your records. Template letters are available on the Consumer Direct website as a guide.

Not sure what I'll do next. What I wanted was to go to the manufacturer and have them demand that the dealer made good. Basically I wanted to watch the dealer squirm. The actual damage was never the issue. I'll have a think over the weekend but may look for another way to get at the dealer. I want this dealer to feel my pain. I want them to resent selling me a car as much as I resent buying it. But enough of that.

I love my car, I hate mechanics and dealers.
I love my iPhone, I hate apple
I loved cigarettes, I hated coughing

Guess I just want everything all my own way. Apple have upgraded their phone software to ios 4. I can't upgrade yet because nobody has got a jailbreak that I can use yet although I do believe it's close. It has been jail broke but the fix won't work in my circumstances. Interestingly though I found that Stephen Fry (British Comedian, TV presenter, genius etc) also follows the jail breaking blogs for iPhone.

Just (not) Enough Essential Parts

Hi folks

Since my last post a whole lot has happened. On reflection it's all pretty good but it started in a pretty bad way and may see a war that started with an individual escalate to war against a car dealership and even a worldwide car brand.

I'm not a serial complainer, in fact I'm much more likely to just have a rant and then let it rest. So when someone irks me significantly to make me take the effort to complain and then take it further then you know that customer service has gone wrong somewhere along the line.

Years working as a manager within a number of well known supermarkets has effectively removed from me the ability to complain. I have dealt with, and resolved to their satisfaction, so many unjust and ill informed complaints in my time that I frankly can't stand to have anyone, even a complete stranger, think of me in the same way as all the other moaning, grasping, compensation junkies who exist in order to see how far they can push to get something for nothing. Yet a world wide car manufacturer has offered me such piss poor customer service at every level that I now find myself wanting to publicly pursue them and force them to re-examine their policies.

Three years ago I bought a car. I made the decision to buy a brand new car in the foolish assumption that I would get a few years trouble free motoring from it before things started to go wrong. I stretched myself to buy a car that was, possibly,.... no probably, beyond my price bracket but just about justifiable given the mileage and conditions that I travel. A heavy smoker for two of the three years that I owned the car and yet it never smelled of smoke. Not once. Why? Because for almost all of that time I didn't smoke in the car. It was that important to me. The only times I did smoke in the car was because my morning commute was taking more than an hour for a couple of months and even then I had all the windows down so there was no smell.

Everyone who has ever sat in my car has been impressed but only those who have driven it appreciate why I'm so knocked out by it. It's no sports car, a house brick is more aerodynamic, yet it has an acceleration and road holding that's just unrivalled in its market (think the lower end of Mercedes, Audi, Saab, BMW to the mid range of Volkswagen or Citroen). As a new model in a now unpopular 4x4 market it also still manages to be pretty unique on the road and draws a lot of interest.

So when people ask what it's like to own will I say..Comfortable, fast, practical, tough both on and off road? A good tow car without the sacrifice of looking like some dull people carrier? Nope. I'll be saying don't touch this car. If someone offers you one view them with suspicion.

The makers of my car were under different ownership when the car was taken from concept to reality. The people who had the vision to create this fantastic, multi award winning car sold out their share shortly after and the company then proceeded to become one of the largest corporate failures in world history as the banking crisis hit.

Like any concept car issues began to arise when owners took their cars through the real day to day drudgery of car life. Winters with salty roads, towing boats and caravans, non stop city driving, snow driving etc. Don't get me wrong..the car didn't fall apart. Far from it. It performed well but it also became obvious that some tweaks would improve it. The original interior was light and eye catching but easily marked and damaged. After thousands of miles of day to day use the cab got a bit rattly. There was something wrong with the design of the alloy wheels causing them to become pitted and oxidise through time. This is not an unusual set of problems when launching a completely new vehicle. Later models had some revisions (a whole new interior) to deal with some of these problems. But (I assume as a result of its fight to stay in business) evidence started to appear that corners may be being cut.

My car was three years old on Sunday. It still looks and performs fantastically well. During its three years I've used the dealer for servicing, had three wheels (we'll discuss the forth in a minute) replaced because of oxidisation. I also had to leave it in one whole weekend till the engine computer reset and allowed them to fix the permanently locked drivers door. This might not sound a lot but remember this car is brand new and under 40,0000 miles. Followers of this blog will perhaps remember that I then fell out with the dealer because they were ripping me off over the price of breaks. Basically they could supply them to other garages for nearly half the price that they wanted me to pay them to fit them. To be clear the prices from the other garages included ordering the breaks from my dealer and fitting them but cost half what the dealer wanted. As a result I used a private garage to fit the breaks and disks as it eventually turned out.

Here in the UK all cars have to undergo what is known as an MOT Test(Ministry of Transport Test) at three years old and every year thereafter. The test checks the cars roadworthiness, safety and carbon emissions. Fail this and you cant drive the car. The police can use there in car PC to ensure you have the test and, if you don't, then you invalidate your insurance and will come close to loosing your license.

A lot of new car owners in the UK feel that this test is just a government money making scheme as cars between three and five years of age rarely need anything more than a new wiper blade or a bulb. I chose not to use the dealer to carry out this test as I also needed a service and most people don't trust the dealer to highlight problems when the car is close to the end of its warranty. Imagine my surprise then when told that my car could not be legally put back on the road. The ball joint on the drivers side suspension arm was completely worn out. Has anyone ever heard of anyone owning any car and driving it long enough and hard enough to wear out the suspension???? The car in question is 4x4 and has never been off road.

When I phoned the dealer they tried to wriggle. Rather than offer an instant apology and look to see how they could resolve the issue they immediately went on the defensive. A car that was not roadworthy at three years of age might not be an issue for them. "Bring it over and we'll have a look but we're not committing to fixing anything until we've been underneath". When I demanded that I would need a hire car.."we don't offer a hire cars, that's not part of the service unless you've paid for it as an option". To make matters worse I had searched forums online and now discovered that this appeared to be quite a common fault with this type of car. Many on the forum opined that it was only a matter of time before a recall was ordered. Others pointed out that the repair involves replacing one inferior part with another equally inferior part from the same manufacturer.

To be fair to the dealer they did eventually concede to my demands. The repair just sneaked in under warranty as the car had exceeded 36,000 miles but was days short of three years old. I still can't quite figure out how but I did get a hire car. I think it's because when I phoned for a progress update on the day I got someone who was actually stupid enough to admit that the car hadn't even been inspected. When I exploded I heard someone in the background instruct the poor service agent to tell me to expect a call from the manufacturers helpline to arrange a hire car. The part I needed was on back order and it took one day short of a week to get and fit. Had it not squeaked in under warranty it would have cost in excess of £300. I got the car back tonight and it seems fine although it won't get a proper test till tomorrow. So I'm happy now, right? Wrong wrong wrong.

First up I am ridiculously angry at how surprised they seemed at my anger that a car that's three years old with 36000 miles should fail an MOT. That is just not acceptable. I refuse to believe that I am being unreasonable in that expectation. Let me be quick to point out that there is absolutely no suggestion that this fault had anything to do with driving style.

Second, in my anger at putting the car into the garage I also asked them to look at the oxidisation causing marks on my drivers wheel (the only wheel not already replaced(see above)). The service manager was actually prepared to sign a document to say that the oxidisation is a fault with the wheel but, I should pay half the repair because there is also kerbing on that wheel. Now in my book there either is or isn't a fault. If the manufacturer admit that there is a fault then you get a replacement. If the manufacturer denies the fault then you have all sorts of problems. But I've never come across a manufacturer that admits to a fault but wont repair it because of other, unconnected, damage.

I genuinely thought the dealer was at it so phoned the manufacturer. No question...they'll make good on half the repair cost. The idiot I spoke to even tried to justify his stance by mis-quoting the policies of one of the best retailers in this country, Marks and Spencer (M&S). His example was that, if I had purchased a shirt from M&S and the buttons were loose because of a fault but I had also ripped the sleeve would I expect M&S to replace the shirt? He was surprised when I indicated emphatically that I absolutely know that M&S would change the shirt. I know this to be true because, as a one time manager with Salisbury's, who aspire to match if not improve upon M&S standards, I know that faulty goods will be replaced regardless of other circumstances. I have been the manager that replaced a bottle of wine that was all but empty because the dregs in the bottom tasted corked. I have replaced a chicken that ruined a dinner party even though the customer had destroyed the chicken and had no evidence. Here in the UK all goods must be 'Fit for purpose'. The word 'Fault' indicates that this is not the case.

To be honest I had held off on the wheel because it's a pain in the arse having the car off the road and the kerb damage is actually worse than the oxidisation. If they hadn't pissed me off I'd probably have left it. Now I'm after a full repair and have approached consumer direct for legal advice. I drive a fantastic car which has the potential to serve as a template to other manufacturers in creating a fantastic vehicle with good emissions, a good engine and a good price point. Should you buy one? No. Because it's made by a company who don't value customers and distributed by dealers who have no faith in the company that they deal for. Makes you wonder how they ever went bust.

How will it all end up?????

Stay hooked