Being a part of a community means chipping in with help as well as asking for help when you need it and there’s plenty of great members on iPod touch fans who do just this as they surf around the forums.
However, it has been noted recently that we have a bunch of tutorials and stuck guides that are starting to look dated or, in the case of more recent developments, missing completely.
We’d love to see more input from the community so we’ve set up a thread to discuss this issue where you can put in your tutorial requests and members interested in writing some guides have a pool of tutorial and guide topics.
So, whether you’re a seasoned iPtF member who’s been with us since OS 1.1.1 or a newbie who got an iPod touch 3G for Christmas, if you’ve spent enough time messing around with your little bit of Apple tech heaven then you’ve got the prerequisite to help out and get your guide stuck and maybe even a front page feature.
Since Tapulous first previewed Riddim Ribbon at an Apple keynote, there haven’t been any extra previews.
Yet they’ve managed to push another rhythm game, and this time it’s a ball-rolling game rather than a Rock Band clone.
Two songs from The Black Eyed Peas can be found included into the download, plus another three available as downloadable content, for 99¢ each.
You tilt to guide a ball down a green path, which goes through various balls and ramps. If you go off the path, the music beings to fade out, until it’s game over.
They’ve also added a few nifty freebies, such as a free download of ‘Meet we Halfway – Remix‘ and getting a 100 free credits for Tap Tap Revenge 3, which thousands of users have enjoyed.
Gameloft have just released their take on the professional racing genre into the AppStore.
They previewed it a while back, making the game look pretty bad graphically.
The current screenshots on the AppStore show a great improvement, and reveal pretty much great content.
It comes with over 100 cars, spread across 24 manufacturers such as the best Ferrari models and the Nissan GT-R.
They’ve also managed to get 14 licensed tracks. It seems very similar to Real Racing, with a in-cockpit view.
Either way, Gameloft seem to have really spent time on this title, compared to other titles they’ve produced.
Yesterday the Dev Team released the latest incarnation of their PwnageTool, which will allow owners of iDevices with the older bootrom (i.e. not iPod touch 3G or newer iPhone 3GS owners) to create a custom jailbroken OS 3.1.3 firmware file. This firmware file will contain the older base-band so if you have unlocked with blacksn0w you should NOT use it. This tool is for Macs only – there is no Windows version.
Make sure you read and properly digest the full Dev Team post on this release HERE before you even consider using it.
The few who remember me from my early iPod touch Fans days will know that my time then was focused on finding an effective way of reading comics on the jailbroken iPod touch and iPhone OS 1.1.1. Things have moved on and we now have a rack of jailbreak and App Store solutions for reading comic scans and downloading licensed comic content on the iPhone and iPod touch.
The early rumours of an Apple tablet device turned my thoughts to its comic reading capability, though this enthusiasm was dampened with the keynote iPad launch on January 27th. However my (and Stephen Fry’s) view is that we’ll all slowly warm to the iPad over the coming months as we expand our view of its capabilities and developers start to roll out applications.
And so it begins. Panelfly, in collaboration with Sugarcube, announced that they plan to release an optimised version of their comic book reader (US only) in March 2010. The app will be free to download and allow in-app comic purchases. They already have a good range of Marvel titles as well as a range of quality indie publishers on their books so they’re sure to do well. I’m excited but I fear it may go the same way as the plethora of current App Store comic readers; i.e. if you like a range of comics you’ll need to have a range of reader apps due to licensing and back catalogue limitations. I’d prefer to see Apple taking control similar to the iPad’s books app and offer one app for all content. In the 21st century comics aren’ t just for kids and readership is set to increase as the electronic format gains a wider appeal.
However, what I’m really waiting for with baited breath is the new iPad app solutions that will allow comic lovers to read their own comic scans. So developers, if you’re listening, we want an app that will allow us to sync or upload our own scans, support higher resolutions (no more scan reformatting) and industry standard cbr and cbz format support, provide a quality bookshelf library view and a host of in-comic functionality to personalise the reading experience! Be first on the iPad App Store scene with a solid solution at an affordable price and you’ll make a killing.
Many users use AppShopper as a prime source for application screenshots and app descriptions.
Although iTunes doesn’t have a web-version, iTunes Preview is as close as we’ll ever get.
It’s simple, yet saves us a lot of time. It works by you clicking an iTunes link, for example this link here.
Now what you should see is an iTunes Preview page on the Apple website, showing you a small preview of what the application page will look like in the iTunes application on your desktop.
It’s pretty simple, and saves us time waiting for iTunes to load, especially seeing as iTunes Preview loads in no time.
You can test it out once more by checking out Remote:
Apple ceased signing 3.1.2 firmware today, which means that Apple will no longer activate the 3.1.2 firmware for use on 3GS and iPod touch 3G.
If you have an iPhone 3GS or iPod touch 3G on 3.1.2 and want the ability to downgrade back to 3.1.2 in future then make sure you have backed up your ECID SHSH signatures through Cydia or Rock. Users of these devices who haven’t backed up their signatures in this way will be stuck at 3.1.3 if they are forced to restore.
Source: BigBoss
WARNING – DO NOT UPDATE TO OS 3.1.3 BEFORE YOU HAVE READ THIS
By all accounts the new 3.1.3 provides no real benefits but will kill your chances of jailbreaking if you are on an iPhone 3GS or iPod touch 3G (or iPod touch 2G with MC serial). It also contains a new baseband that has not been hacked and so if you need to unlock your iPhone 3G you should avoid upgrading.
Blacksn0w has not been updated and does not work with 3.1.3 but the ever industrious Dev-Team have made a few tweaks to their recently released redsn0w 0.9 tool so that it will jailbreak OS 3.1.3 on iPod touch 1G, older models of the iPod touch 2G, iPhone 2G and contract (no unlock required) iPhone 3G.
If you’re a 3GS owner then you need to make sure you have backed up your ECID/SHSH signatures through Cydia or Rock to ensure that when Apple stop signing the 3.1.2 firmware you can restore or downgrade to 3.1.2 if required.
Sources: Dev Team blog / BigBoss / GeoHot’s blog
Update/ 3.1.3 jailbreak guide HERE
The folks over at the cleverly named EyeDevs have been kind enough to supply the iPod touch Fans Member Reviewer Team with a promotional copy of their newest release on the Cydia Store: SnowCover Pro. SnowCover Pro is a MobileSubstrate extension expanding on the original SnowCover concept seen on MacThemes and other forums. You can purchase this product for $0.99 on the Cydia Store. Check out the review after the jump.
Earlier today, Apple discreetly released firmware 3.1.3 for the iPod touch and iPhone, including the following changes:
- More accurate battery readings on iPhone 3GS
- Fixed bug which caused applications to crash when using the Japanese Kana keyboard.
- Fixed bug which did not allow third-party applications to launch.
In short, this is a very minor upgrade. You should feel virtually no obligation to upgrade. However, if you choose to, be warned. We have received isolated reports that redsn0w 0.9.2 works on the iPhone 2G. If any experimenters would like to try this out, please inform us as well.
edit/ News from the Dev Team on jailbreak redsn0w compatibility here. To summarise: iPhone 3GS, iPod touch 3G, iPod touch 2G MC (not older models) and iPhone 3G users who need an unlock should avoid the new 3.1.3. OS. Other models should be okay. Reportedly blackra1n doesn’t work with 3.1.3 and GeoHot hints at such in his latest blog post.