I was responding to Acumowchek's question 'did it give you the advantages that you thought it would?' (which I realise wasn't aimed at me). I don't make claims for it to be universally useful, just explaining why it's useful to me, and therefore why it was worth the small effort of jailbreaking. Also for anyone here who might be curious as to why someone would jailbreak their phone, the above is a set of examples why I find it useful. Anyway, here we go...
Lock calendar: I guess I'm not busy enough to have to constantly look at my calendar. Wish I was sometimes...but I'm not.
I am. I have short work shifts in 3 different houses in 3 different towns. If I don't keep up, it's a mess. And that's just my work schedule, never mind my manifold social life.
Tap to unlock: Right-hander here, so swiping is easy and I don't like the idea of tapping to unlock. Seems like it would be easier to accidentally unlock it. But my brother is left-handed, so I'll ask him about the swiping thing.
I only explained it because it was on my screenshot. It's not very important, but makes it quicker for me to get in. Needs just enough of a touch never to have gone off accidentally.
5 column dock: Guess I'm happy with the 4. Everything else that I use the most gets on the 1st page. And having the iPod icon down there is useless. Did you know that pressing the Home button twice brings up the iPod commands? And the option to go to the iPod?
As conjected above, I'm using my double-click for something else. Besides, hardware buttons have a tendency to wear out, so the less I use it the better, I think.
SBSettings: so this is an app? I don't see it on your 1st page there. How do you access it? Basically this is the same thing as your Settings app, just different layout and access? Handy I guess if you really need to access such things. So far I haven't had the need.
It's a background app that you pop up/away by stroking the statusbar from anywhere in the system. If you lived, as I do, in an area with weak signal, you'd find it saves a lot of battery life if you keep turning wifi and 3G and Location off until you need them. This takes about 1/10 of the time to do this way compared to going into the Prefs app, and therefore I actually do it more often, and therefore I have a lot longer between charges.
That iRealSMS doesn't sound like it does anything different than the one that comes with the iPhone. I get Text messages that pop up when the phone is locked or when I'm in a different app. I tap to Reply or Close if I'm watching a movie, on phone, playing a game, etc. What do you mean "with a photo and scrollable message"?
Well, it has a lot of features that I don't even need, more for business users, like the same folder structure as Exchange, and a blacklist, and templates and so forth. But the main things I like about it are the character/message counter, and the thing you're asking me to explain more clearly, which looketh like this:
download helper for Safari: what do you download through Safari? (just wondering) because I never see/find anything that I want to download. Usually things that I download are programs for my mac. Help me out here...where would that come in handy?
Mainly a work thing - I have to access updates to policy/procedure documents as pdfs, docs etc. that are on a website, not emailed to me.
Backgrounder: ok...give me an example of something running in the background that you have to have running. Mail, Text, etc do PUSH notification, so they check while I'm doing whatever. I'm not sure where this would come in handy either, but perhaps I'm missing something? And how do you switch between apps without closing the one you are currently using?
I have the SMS app backgrounded, so it doesn't have to get launched every time I switch to it. Similarly with my Calendar app - much quicker to add or edit events if it's up and running already.
There is actually an app that works like the cmd-tab switcher on a mac desktop, but I don't need that. This is just a way to keep my most commonly used apps running so that I have quicker access to info if I'm asked for it at work, for example. I still switch apps by closing the last one, but if it's backgrounded, it reopens again pretty instantly when I return to it.
Action Menu: Cipboard history & Favorites...well...I guess if you need those they might be handy. Or you could create a new note with those things. But so far I haven't ever had to use Clipboard history, even on my mac. The other things (dial number...see Favorites in your phone) (send as tweet...useless to me) are useless to me, but again, I may be missing out on something.
Exactly - if it's something that's been indispensable on your mac, it's very much the same deal on the phone. If you don't use it you wouldn't miss it. I'm constantly having to repeat details in messages and emails, or forward someone's address to a few people at different times. this way I can save it as a favourite (so it's permanently available to paste in anywhere) or drop it out of the clipboard history. Plus you should remember that I suffer from arm/finger strain, so the less typing the better.
5 row keyboard? Holy crap! Can you even see a preview of what you are typing? Especially in landscape mode? 4 is enough for me. 5 would just make the window showing what you are typing even that much smaller...and I need that window.
Nope, the 5 rows take up the same height as the old 4. And no, it isn't harder to type that way. Having quick access to .,;:'"?!/ without having to hit the 123 key every damn time is a stress-saver for me, especially since I type whole words in my text messages, with, you know, grammar and punctuation'n'stuff.
Quickscroll: how is this easier/better than swiping finger on screen? So instead of using say your thumb to swipe up and down, you have to hit arrows on the scrollbar? nah, swiping is MUCH easier. Of course, I haven't seen the scroll bar on the iPHone, so I must be missing out on something here.
Yup, no arrows involved - there's a faint white scrollblob on the right edge, and one swipe on it can take me from the very top to the very bottom of the current doc, whether it's a 2-screen-long web page, or a 120 page pdf. Much better than swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe... and you can set it so if you tap on it 2/3 way down, you go 2/3 way down the doc, just like on the mac scrollbar. Arrows redundant, I never use them on the mac scrollbars. Not a big deal in short docs, very very time-saving in long ones.
What attachments are you sending with your Mail that you can't do without this Quickscroll? I can send pictures, video, and Notes now so I don't know what else you would send as an attachment?
Not sure what Quickscroll has to do with this, it probably just crept into your sentence. I can use the mail attachment thing to forward on docs that I've downloaded (or been emailed) and edited. Since the phone is jailbroken, I can send any file I can find on there, including any useful stuff I might have ftp'd onto the drive when I was at home and thought: oh, so-and-so may want a copy of this.
Snappy: Well, I guess that might come in handy, but so far I haven't run into anything that requires me to activate the camera within a second.
It's constantly happening to me - I see something I want to snap in passing, like out of a bus window, and the phone is too slow for the spontaneity. Useful for me.
What are those little circular icons on the bottom left of the Phone and Mail icons?
That shows which apps are backgrounded - it's optional to show that.
I'm not saying people don't find them useful. I did when I hacked my iPod Touch. I just don't find anything useful in what you posted about.
Cool - I maybe wouldn't find most of the apps on your touch useful. We ain't the same people.
You say that very few apps are pay apps, you only spend roughly $6. But some of the ones I see in your screen shot do.
Ultralingua (french to english) - $19.99
ultralingua (french dictionary) - $19.99
PhotoForge - $4.99
feX - $1.99
So perhaps you meant $46?
Unless those are obtained other ways, which brings up a whole 'nother thing about hacking the iPhone....
No, I just meant that hardly any of the jailbreak-necessary apps I listed above cost anything to use.
The thing is, I've got a particular way of using my mac which I tend to want to emulate on my phone - that's all to do with finding shortcuts. On the mac it's a leftover from my DOS days, when the hands sped up work by learning lots of key combos - I've never really let go of the idea that it's a waste of time/energy to have an app you're typing into that requires you to use the mouse too to make things happen, if you could do it all from the keyboard. So on my mac I use the iKey app and have numerous shortcuts set up. Ultimately this means less strain on dodgy wrists, fingers, arms.
Ever since I got the iPhone, I've found it frustratingly slow to get from place to place to do things. So I jailbroke it to get access to faster ways to work/play with it. The first thing I did it for was originally so I could tether it as my maodem when I didn't have broadband at home for 2 weeks, and then it was the 5-row keyboard that got me hooked on the possibilities.
Yes, there's a certain geek-factor involved. But until I can afford a faster iPhone, I'll just mkae this one faster to use instead.
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