If Image Capture shows multiple copies? Don't delete them!

I just had a bit of an iPad-induced panic attack, so I thought I'd let you all know what happened so that you can avoid the same fate. Luckily, Restore from Backup fixed me, but better to not have to do that, right?

With the recent release of the evasi0n iOS 6 jailbreak, I was all ready to upgrade my iPad (which is still on 5.1.1) and re-jailbreak. But I'm running out of space on my little 16GB-er, and iTunes said I had 3GB of photos, so I decided to clean house a bit first. As I've mentioned many times, I had a baby right after buying my iPad, and I've been using it to take little videos of him since we brought him home - meaning I now have a lot of video of him taking up room on my iPad.

I opened up Image Capture to import these videos onto my Mac and get them off the iPad, and an odd thing happened - it showed me as having three copies of every photo and video. I thought Well gee, no wonder it's taking up so much space! and promptly selected two of each video and hit delete.

Surprise! There weren't really three copies! Only one, and I just deleted them all! I checked, no longer on the iPad. No longer in Image Capture. It still showed ghost copies, but wouldn't let me do anything with them. All those precious videos of my baby, gone!

After panicking for a minute or two, I managed to get my head together enough to try restoring my iPad from the backup I'd made only ten minutes before. I'd never done this before, so I had no idea if it would work. The dialogue box says it will "only" restore contacts, calendars, notes, and settings, no mention of Photos, so I wasn't sure. And I'd heard people claim that it destroys your jailbreak, but that didn't matter since I was about to upgrade and re-jb.

Luckily, it did work. All photos and videos restores, and jailbreak was not touched, for the record. My iPad is now exactly as it was before I hit the delete button. I have now properly imported all those videos and they are safely on my hard drive. I also have a good 3GB of space open on my iPad, which is more than I've had in months.

So, lessons:

• Every time you plug your iPad into the computer, make sure it's backed up before you do anything.
• If Image Capture shows multiple copies of things, don't believe it. Act as though every copy is the only one.
• If you do delete things unintentionally, Restore from Backup will fix it. It takes a good 15 minutes, though.
• Restore from Backup does not destroy your jailbreak! (At least, this was true on an iPad 2 running 5.1.1 jailbroken with redsnow. No clue if it will hold true with the new stuff.)

iKeyWi HD - The tweak I've been waiting for!

For the longest time, one of the main jailbreak tweaks I have really, really wanted is a keyboard with arrow keys. Sometimes, especially when you're moving (or have a baby bumping the iPad), it's really hard to get the cursor exactly where you want it. It's easy to get it within a couple characters, but that doesn't cut it if you've placed it before the stuff you want to delete.

Thanks to iPad Help, I discovered that such a thing finally exists! iKeywi HD (link will take you to Cydia) adds a fifth row to the keyboard as well as arrow keys in the lower right corner, and makes all non-alphabet keys completely customizable. The tweak costs $3.

This is exactly what I've been hoping for! Not only arrow keys, but numbers on the main keyboard as well as the ability to make all kinds of symbols easier to get to. The keys are smaller because you're fitting more into the same space; for some people with big fingers this might be a downside, but for me it just makes it easier for me to type one-handed in landscape!



Now, I was all set to tell you that, unfortunately, the tweak is buggy to the point of being unusable. BUT - I went back to Cydia to check for an update, and sure enough, the worst of the bugs have been fixed! Yay for developers who are on the ball! There are still a few problems to watch out for, though:

- At first, it had problems capitalizing words at the start of lines or sentences. Now the only issue is if the word needs to be autocorrected, it gets corrected to lowercase.

- The arrows weren't working for me in many apps - now they work almost everywhere. They still aren't working for me in Mail, or on some website text boxes in Atomic.

It's also a bit sad to lose the ability to swipe up from the . and , keys to get to ' and ", but since everything is customizable I can still get to those with the shift. The other feature I'd like is being able to actually turn the keyboard on and off in Settings - right now the only way to revert to the standard keyboard is by deleting iKeyWi entirely.

Now that the worst of the bugs have been fixed, I think this tweak is definitely worth the $3 if you've been wanting a better keyboard. I came for the arrows, but I'm staying for the ability to assign entire HTML tags to a single key.

Thank you, iFile!

I write and post most of my posts using the BlogPress app, and it has served me well.

But today it didn't. When I tried to post my last entry, it hung. It eventually claimed to have posted it, but the entry didn't appear on the blog. I tried again, and the same thing happened. Then BlogPress crashed. When I restarted it, my entry was gone! Because BlogPress thought it had been posted, it was deleted from the list of drafts. But since it hadn't actually made it, it wasn't in the list of current posts either!

Enter iFile, a Cydia app available to jailbreakers that gives you actual access to your iPad's filesystem. I managed to find, in BlogPress's documents folder, all the drafts I'd saved today as text files and copy the text out to PlainText for safekeeping until I had time to try and repost. Success! A half hour's worth of typing saved!

For those naysayers who claim that the only reason to jailbreak is for silly cosmetic improvements - this is why I jailbreak!

What IS jailbreaking?

Over on the MacRumors iPad forum, someone asked why the authors of jailbreak tweaks don't release their apps to the general unjailbroken public. This question indicates a fundamental misunderstanding about what jailbreaking actually means, one that I think is quite common.

So what does it actually mean to jailbreak your iPad?

When your iPad arrives brand-new from the store, there is only one way to get apps onto it: Apple's App Store. Whether directly onto the iPad or via iTunes, the App Store is the one and only place where you can download apps and install them onto the iPad.

Apple has 100% control over what appears in the App Store. There are good reasons for this - for example, because Apple tests every app before approving it, malware doesn't make it into the App Store Andy thus has no way to make it onto your iPad. But there are certain types of apps that Apple simply doesn't allow, such as those that make system-wide changes or affect iOS itself. And there are other apps that can't be approved for other reasons - for example, VLC is a popular media player on desktop computers. But VLC, and thus the VLC app, is written using code that is covered by the GPL (Gnu Public License), and some of the App Store's terms conflict with the GPL. Thus, distributing the app in the App Store would violate the license its code was written under.

So where does jailbreaking come into this? Well, jailbreaking your iPad does exactly one thing: When you jailbreak your iPad, it adjusts the code so that it is possible to install apps from a source other than Apple's App Store. That's all. Well, and it installs Cydia, which is just an alternate app store. So once you've jailbroken, you can download apps from Cydia that Apple would never approve, like ones to change the appearance of your icons or reassign what happens when you click the home button.

Of course, the downside is that since Cydia doesn't have the lengthy approval process of the App Store, there is the possibility of malware or just bugs in tweaks that are system-wide. But it's not too hard to Google a package before you download it to make sure it's legit - and the one time I had one that messed things up a bit, it all went back to normal once I deleted it.

I think that a lot of people hear the "break" part of jailbreak and think that it somehow involves breaking the iPad or iOS itself - it doesn't. The one and only thing that changes when you jailbreak is where you can download apps from - until, of course, you start downloading them and tweaking the things you want to tweak.

iOS 5 and lovin' it!

With the release of the Absinthe jailbreak, I have finally upgraded to iOS 5.0.1!

I am super-impressed with the new photo album features. I've mentioned before that I do a lot of photo management and editing on my iPad, and now it's going to be twice as easy! I'd been searching for a good red-eye eliminator, and now it's built right in, along with rotating and cropping - all without the annoyance of a second copy of the photo. It's about time! Also long overdue is the ability to create multiple albums, though I'd gotten around that with the Cydia tweak PhotoAlbums+.

Less-intrusive notifications are also nice, but the multitouch stuff I've mostly disabled. With an infant often banging on the iPad, I prefer the gestures provided by Activator - though now I do wish Activator provided a way to switch directly between apps like the built-in multitouch.

Honestly, there's not much else that I find that exciting in iOS 5 - but the photo improvements are enough to make me very happy!

Decisions, decisions

For those of us with jailbroken iPad 2s running iOS 4.3.3, things are a bit precarious right now.

See, a jailbreak of iOS 5.0.1 was released for devices with A4 chips (iPad 1, iPhone 4, etc) last week. But it doesn't work for our A5 devices yet. We don't know exactly when the A5 jailbreak will be out. Why is this a problem?

Well, when it does come the jailbreak will almost certainly also be for 5.0.1. But now that this version has had one JB, Apple will be rushing to update to 5.0.2 (or possibly 5.1?) as soon as they can close whatever hole the JB uses. Once Apple moves on to the next version, 5.0.1 won't be available, so anyone still on 4.3.3 will have to either stay there and continue missing out on iOS 5 features or upgrade to a version that won't be jailbroken for quite a while, if ever. But upgrading to 5.0.1 before it's jailbroken means losing your current jailbreak, with no actual guarantee that anyone will definitely find one for A5 devices on iOS 5.

Just the other day, jailbreaker p0sixninja tweeted a somewhat cryptic warning - he says that everyone, including A5 users, should upgrade to 5.0.1 now. But he hasn't elaborated - does he know that a jailbreak is imminent? Or that 5.0.2 is imminent? Or is he simply guessing that 5.0.2 will be coming soon due to the A4 jailbreak, and that 5.0.1 will be jailbroken fairly soon (or at least before 5.0.2 is)?

For now, I have downloaded 5.0.1 but not installed it. I don't know exactly how these things work, but I've read that once Apple releases the next version, they'll keep signing the old version for a short time - maybe a day? not sure - so if you're quick you can still install it and back up your SHSH blobs with TinyUmbrella. So right now my plan is to install it as soon as either a JB or new version is announced - and I really, really hope this won't mean losing my current JB for more than a few days!

Update: The plot thickens

Now a second jailbreaker, pod2g, has taken to Twitter to announce that we could see a release within a week, and he, too, suggests upgrading to 5.0.1.

Why jailbreak?

So far all I've said about jailbreaking is that I briefly screwed things up with IncarcerApp - but all was well once I deleted it. Not a ringing endorsement! But the truth is, JBing has given me control over a variety of features that make using my iPad easier and more enjoyable every day.

SBSettings/Activator - these sort of go hand-in-hand, and are generally suggested to be the first things you get from Cydia, as many other tweaks depend on them. Among other features, with SBSettings I can now swipe my status bar and get control of a variety of settings, like brightness and switching wifi on/off. (My iPad and router don't always agree, so being able to reset wifi with a touch is a huge improvement for me.) Also note in the screenshot below that my status bar shows not only the time but the date and how much memory I currently have free - also due to SBSettings!



Activator, on the other hand, allows me to assign meanings to a variety of actions - for example, a certain swipe on the screen brings up the task switcher bar, without the possibly-baby-waking noise of a double-press of the home button.

NoLockScreen - What it says on the tin. A lock screen makes sense on a phone to avoid embarrassing butt-dials. But when was the last time you hit the home or sleep buttons but didn't actually mean to turn on your iPad? If you're tired of sliding to unlock, here is your fix.

BrowserChanger - If you use a non-Safari web browser like Atomic or iCab (and if you don't, you should check them out), you're no doubt frustrated that links in all other apps still open in Safari. Fixed!

RetinaPad - Now we're getting into paid packages. You know how Apple cripples iPhone apps on the iPad, not allowing them to run at full resolution even when you hit the 2x button? They did this for an okay reason - to encourage developers to create real iPad versions of apps instead of just resting on their iPhone version. But now that the iPad is a bona fide hit, it's kind of silly to keep the pixelated mess - RetinaPad will fix that for you.

Dimmer - I actually just bought this tonight, and I don't know what I was waiting for! If you've tried to use your iPad in bed (say, during 2am baby feedings, not that we know anyone doing that right at this very moment...), you know that the brightness controls really don't go down that far. Dimmer lets you dim the screen as far as you like - and I am loving the results so far!

iFile - Direct access to your iPad's filesystem. Don't use this one unless you consider yourself clueful enough not to move or delete anything important! This has been really helpful to me in getting some word and excel files back and forth to DropBox from apps that don't let you do it directly. The downside is that I've discovered just how many apps don't really store your work in individual documents that can be easily moved around!

I've installed a few other packages, but these are the ones that I actually use regularly and that have a real impact on my iPad experience. Do you have any to suggest?

Ooooopsie

Well, I ran into my first JB problem. I installed IncarcerApp, which is supposed to let you turn off the home button at will - trying to iPad one-handed while feeding the baby, I often hit home by accident while holding the bezel.

I went in and turned it on... And my iPad promptly froze. I had to do a hard reboot (holding down both sleep and home buttons), but then I was able to go into cydia and remove the offender. No permanent damage! But it did remind me that I should really be backing up more often, especially before I install any JB apps that aren't well-known to be stable. But yeah, steer clear of IncarcerApp.

I do, however, have RetinaPad, SBSettings, Activator, BrowserChanger, and several other JB apps/tweaks running beautifully!

Dun did it

My iPad 2 is officially jailbroken! Haven't installed much yet, but looking forward to things like RetinaPad, iFile, and whatever the one is that lets you put infinite app icons in each folder. Oh, also the one that takes away the lock screen! And maybe the SNES emulator....

Suggestions?


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad