iNode: Nota Bene

I should have read the page at Kiwi-ise properly … the Voicemail Fix is not a package to be installed from AppTapp Installer, it's just instructions telling you how to connect the Phone application's VoiceMail button to the Vodafone standard voicemail number …

Just a normal GSM/SIM instruction, but quite useful.

The iPhone is a wonderfully crippled machine. It can do stuff, but Apple just haven't provided you with the tools you need to do your job …

The “correct” way to manage your iPhone captured photos is with iPhoto on OS X, of course. If you have Windows and just iTunes, you can “sync” photos from your PC onto the iPhone. Once on the phone, these pictures can be viewed and used (i.e. added to contacts, emailed, wallpapered, etc), but they cannot be deleted. You also can't rename or reorganise them – because the iTunes sync is only one-way, from the PC to the iPhone.

Also, you can't sync your “Camera Roll” pictures from the iPhone back to the PC using iTunes. When the phone is connected, the Camera Roll directory does show up as an attached drive (this doesn't appear to be a generic USB Mass Storage device, but rather a software device mediated by iTunes), and you can use some other sync software such as Picasa to collect the pictures from there.

The shared location is /private/var/mobile/Media/DCIM/100APPLE, and you'll find pairs of .JPG and .THM files in there. Pictures from the camera are around 400KB, and are 1600×1200 pixels. Pictures collected with the snap2album command or Capture application are 320×480 of course.

Good luck in identifying the green thing I'm using for my lock screen wallpaper. I took that photo with my iPhone, no post-processing or manipulation has been done. Answers in the comments please …

Pictures sync'd from iTunes don't appear to be stored as individual files, and I haven't yet found them. The files in /private/var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/iTunes/Photos* seem to name the folders on the PC that pictures are to be sync'd from, and /private/var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/Artwork looks suggestive – but simply deleting something from there doesn't seem to make any difference, even after a reboot (but then again, iTunes seems to have sync'd it in real quickly, and all the files changed)

Just a heads-up … the iPhone repository at http://kiwi-ise.co.nz has moved. You should look at updating your AppTapp Installer source from i.kiwi-ise to get.kiwi-ise …

Despite earlier problems, the new repository works just fine. Enjoy!

Also I see that kiwi-ise are now recommending the use of iPlus instead of ZiPhone for unlocking 1.1.4 units. Not quite sure that I understand the differences yet, but thought I'd mention it now.

There's a new House Rule at home, as provided by my 4-year-old boy …

“No phones in the toilet, Dad. You can take a book.”

I think I've been spending too much time playing with my iPhone …

I'm not the first, nor will I be the last. But last week while I was on a business trip to the US (Minneapolis, -20 degrees; but sunny and still, so it was actually quite pleasant) I stopped by the Mall of America and their Apple Store … and walked out with a 16GB iPhone, for US$499.

Apple just sell the iPhone itself, and don't mind what you're going to do with it. When it switches on, the only thing it will do is demand to be connected to iTunes. And the only thing that iTunes will do to a new iPhone is to sign it up to AT&T.

Obviously I don't want service from AT&T, being in NZ (and therefore having to use Vodafone …). So step one was to find someone who has successfully hacked iPhones, to tell me what I needed to know … Thanks Alex!

There are two things that need to be done; the phone needs to be unlocked to allow it to work with Vodafone, and it needs to be jailbroken in order to install extra applications and software mods.

The same program will do both; ZiPhone – and it'll do it from both Windows and OS X. You can ignore all the other methods; this one works fine :-) As soon as iTunes detects your phone, and before you ask it to do anything, run ZiPhone, and say “Do it all!”. Sit back for a few minutes and watch the text console scroll by happily …

When it's done, you'll have an iPhone that works just fine with Vodafone NZ, and can have extra applications installed on it with the (new) Installer app. What you choose to put on is up to you!