The number of jailbreak tweaks i must have keeps shrinking – it’s really down to a decent 5 row keyboard (the app store version of Ikeywi is inexplicably worse than the jailbreak version) and a way to make autocorrect only change something when I tell it to, now.
if you didnt know, the zoom feature found under general setiings > accessability, lets you dim the screen as an option. I use it at night. it’s not perfect, but i didnt want to muck about with jailbreaking just for f.lux
We need more ways to allow such developers to say no to the corporations and to keep publishing anyway.
“Too big to disobey” is too big.
When developers register with Apple, they are signing a contract. Developers shouldn’t sign contracts that they don’t intend to honor.
The f.lux folks did the right thing when they withdrew their app, although their approach was pretty clever. I think if they shift to shipping source rather than object code, they would be fine.
If you have the choice of either sign a contract or not to develop for a major platform, it can be considered as signing under duress and that nullifies the honoring requirement.
A vendor, regardless how big, should never have full control over the platform. Regardless by what mechanism but there have to be alternatives available easily enough.
To a degree I’d agree. Still, there should be an easy way to obtain and validate (e.g. hash, which can itself serve as a search token for some P2P networks) the binary, for those who don’t want to run a compiler.
Part of me agrees with you.
My cable modem from my internet provider is actually a little Linux box that I would love to be able to tweak, but they have it locked down pretty hard.
I would love to be able to install software on my DVR or the computer running my Toyota, or my PS4. Apple’s developer program is relatively open and free compared to Motorola’s, Toyota’s, or Sony’s.
The brute force route is to go right at the Flash chips. These are usually compliant to the ONFI standard that defines pinout and commands, so when the chip is desoldered it can be read out and written into with relative ease. (Todo: learn that, do it.)
Sometimes it could be done even by just soldering wires to the signals and leaving the chip on the board. And keeping the rest of the system in reset, so the line drivers on the chip bus are in high impedance state.
A simple bit change in the filesystem that gives SUID to a binary that gives you some access, and you should have root.
Don’t bother asking the vendor for permission, you won’t get it. Just take what’s rightfully yours.
Apple allows them to share their code however they want. What they can’t do is to share a signed binary that was signed through illicit means.
If they wanted to open their source and give it away for others to compile, and see what was in it? It would have been fine.
So allow a simple way to run any binary the user wants. The user should be the highest, overriding authority. This right should not come with any fee or paperwork hoops.
If this right is denied, then I don’t see anything wrong in taking it back from either the user or the vendor side. “Illicit signing” my ass, that’s a walled gardener’s speech.
I’m just curious whether Apple’s implementation will be better or worse than the f.lux I’m currently running on my 6s (via the “signed binary trick”). I’m afraid it will leave me with less options for customization, and I’m already not really satisfied with the f.lux app.
Huh, from the screenshots it looks like it will work better than f.lux and just the way I want it to: turn it on manually and it will turn itself off “in the morning”. That’s all I ever wanted (and a quick way access that setting, but that will surely come later).
.[quote=“shaddack, post:11, topic:71956”]
So allow a simple way to run any binary the user wants.
[/quote]Nah. Either open source it so you can see what is in there, or have a company that I trust vet it. Most of us in the Mac ecosystem have different viewpoints on the idea than you might. Its like a home owner association…I would never live in one, but I understand why some people find it to be awesome. And yet, I want the home owners association on my electronic device.
Don’t want this? Then you don’t want 90% of what Apple is affording you. Google has some really nice tenements just down the street I hear.
You can have both, and you can have an additional option - “this binary has SHA256 hash of xxx, signature on it belongs to subject ABC, do you trust it enough to run it?”.
The HOA should never be mandatory. I am all for having that option out there - but there should be an opt-out, if only to keep the gatekeeper from abusing its position.
Then you should also have a robust opt-out, so nobody of the self-imposed Guardians of Right and Proper could tell you that you cannot have that dish on the roof or a pole with a Yagi on top in the garden. Or that particle accelerator in your attic.
I also don’t want proprietary connectors and other crap they push. I still speak up against it in order to prevent the Fruitheads from normalizing the perception that it is Something Good.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they were looking in the fruity direction, thinking about how they could usurp more control on their segment too.
I have lots of others. By far the biggest for me (after Flux) is Activator, which lets me assign any button press or gesture to any action. I use my flashlight about 20 times a day so I map a long press of the Home button (whether my phone is awake or not) to turn on/off my flashlight. That alone is worth the proverbial price of jailbreak admission for me. I also map 3 quick presses of the Home button to activate the camera (awesome for getting that quick shot). And two double touches on the Home button for Siri, since I never used the default feature of lowering the screen to bring it in reach of my thumb.
I also love to be able to customize the Control Center (the thing you see when you swipe from the bottom of the screen). I installed Flipswitch, which lets me add a toggle for Flux. Flux is awesome but its great to be able to turn it off easily and quickly. Also a button for Settings so I can quickly do bluetooth and wifi configs, which comes up often for me. And I’m able to remove the Do Not Disturb toggle, which I would always inadvertently press and thmed ringing.
Wifi Explorer is a great tool for troubleshooting wifi networks. It lists all the wifi networks within range (listing many more than the stock wifi browser, since many are too weak to be useful), along with channels. This used to be allowed until Apple removed all these utilities from the App Store for mysterious reasons.
And openSSH and iFile for SSH and file level access are nice.
Less important but still nice:
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Carrier M lets me change the carrier name at the top of my phone. I don’t need to see the word “Verizon” 85 times a day.
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iTransmission lets me download torrents
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YouTube ++ lets me get rid of YouTube ads and allows background play. Less essential now that YouTube has their Red service, which does the same.
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Adblocker, blocks ads on webpages and the New York Times app. I pay $15 a month for the New York Times app and get annoyed when I’m bombarded by ads when using it.
And its interesting how the jailbreak community continues to be a big source of innovation for Apple. The Control Center was available to the jailbreak community long ago as SBSettings for example, and now Flux is being integrated. It reminds me of the automobile hot rod community in the 1940s - 70s coming up with innovations later adopted by Detroit.
But to me the two biggest reasons to jailbreak will always be 1) to take full ownership of something that I in fact own, and 2) to protect myself against the whims of an over controlling company.
It is a slippery slope. Give me the source or don’t. I don’t want half measures. And again, most of the folks with Apple products want the same thing. I know its hard to believe that someone MIGHT want something different than what you logically want, but this is what we want.
Until we don’t.
I’m a firm believer that the minority of people that the product wasn’t designed for in the first place shouldn’t dictate how something should work for the rest. Especially when great options that you want exist. There are a LOT of great Android products that I’d never use in a million years unless I was forced to that do everything you seem to want.
Maybe while they are at it, they can make Music not suck so much? I swear ever since they introduced Apple Music, the music app has devolved to near uselessness.
I want it all. Source for when I want something advanced, binary if I just want to run the bloody thing and run it now. Nothing halfway here, no disadvantages from whatever angle you look.
The slaves who want the yoke.
I don’t insist on you shedding it. I just want that there is a pin that you can reach that opens it when you want.
And that’s it. You should have all the options - without a crystal ball you don’t know what you will need in the future.
I am not forcing you to pull the pin from your slave yoke. I just want it to be there. The slaver, knowing that even you can pull it whenever you want, whether freeing yourself forever or just to go pee, will then ease up on the whip.
I use it on my mac in the evenings. Wonderful tool!
