iPod Hacks - Hacks, iPod downloads, Cracks, Mods, Utilities

A lengthy guide has surfaced to Jailbreak your iPod Touch and seemingly run all existing iPhone apps.

iPod Touch Jailbreak Guide

“I need some beta testers for the exploit to make sure everything is perfect for the release. If you are interested. Please jump on my IRC server.

\Niacin”

- source: irc.toc2rta.com

The new Jailbreaking method for the 1.1.1 firmware utilizes the familiar TIFF exploit, which is run through MobileSafari.

From tuaw.com:

“The iPhone/iTouch Dev guys have been hard at work for weeks and have finally managed to jailbreak 1.1.1. Right now, they’re nowhere near releasing a general-use tool but the first steps have been made. Congratulations to dinopio, asap18, netkas, Martyn, mjc, Niacin, BloomFilter, pytey, tE_gU, pumpkin, roxfan, sam, SmileyDude, NerveGas, Nate True, Arminius, DirectriX, Edgan, ixtli, kroo, xorl, and the rest of the team.”

The wait is almost over.

What’s the coolest, latest, multi-touch-OS X running device from Apple? The iPod touch of course! It’s currently the first in it’s own new line of iPods. It’s very similar to the iPhone and is just about as good (minus the phone part). So if you’ve used an iPhone, you have basically used an iPod touch. I’ve been using it for the past couple days and here are is what I have found.

Music:
The most important part of any iPod is obviously the music. iPods have had a fantastic interface and music playing capabilities since the first ones. This interface is a revolutionary leep between the last iPod Video’s interface to this. You have basically two ways to browse your music, flick through your artists, songs, ablums, etc and coverflow. Both I must say are awesome. The new Now Playing screen displays huge album art and the new set of play controls. Coverflow is simple to get at, just rotate it 90 degrees. The one thing with coverflow is that it doesn’t seem as “high quality” as the one in iTunes. It still plays all your favorite, Apple-approved, file types. One difference between the music on the iPhone and the iPod touch is that the movies and music have complete different sections. Not a big deal.

Movies
Movies look beautiful on this device. Truly a great movie playing device. It has a five-hour play which is a little short, but will do for most trips. Controls are easy to use and for the most part very nice. The only problem i have with the movies is the playhead isn’t quite accurate enough and can get annoying when your trying to find just the right part of the movie. Other wise movies are very enjoyable and very high-quality.

Photos
The viewing experience is great. The screen makes pictures look great and is good way to show of your photos from your last vacation. The iPod touch lets you view your pictures in landscape or vertical and adjusts from how you are holding it. Photo browsing is fast and fun, but there are a couple things that could have been done better. I would like the see a quick rotate tool, photos that aren’t properly rotated are a pain in the butt to deal with. I would have also liked to have seen the built-in camera feature that the iPhone has (with some of the features the iPhone forgot).

Internet
We all love Safari, admit it. It rocks and on the iPod rocks even more. It will make you wish that every mobile device had it! It gives you the same experience that the iPhone gives you. You can easily navigate the internet and watch youTube content with the youTube module. You can view web-pages in both vertical and landscape views. The web-apps of the iPhone also work with your iPod touch giving you instant messaging, e-mail, and games. They have even included the iTunes store. I lets you browse, preview, and buy music from iTunes. The internet is fun and very functional. There are the downsides though. It only connects through wi-fi so you can only use it were wireless networks are. The internet and youTube really use the battery. I have found that you get about four or five hours of constant internet usage. Safari isn’t quite stable enough, it does crash every once in a while and can’t handle a large web-page and music. Overall though an A- on the internet.

Other Things
The design of the device is very close the the iPhone’s. The front has the same glass, multi-touch screen as the iPhone which is great because it doesn’t get any scratches. The back unfortunately has the very scrathable and shiny back-plate. Mine is already scratched up on the back! If you don’t mind scratches on the back, I’ve found that you don’t really need a case for it. The device is slimmer than the iPhone and fits very well into your hand. The storage was very disappointing, only 8GB and 16GB. So if you have a large music library that you HAVE to always have and a movie theater on your computer, this may not be the best iPod for you. The battery life is great and if you do the constant sleep technique it will last for a while. I do suggest though if you aren’t using wi-fi to turn it off.

Overall
Overall this is a fantastic device. The music, videos, and photos look beautiful on the screen. If you don’t mind the lack of storage and is in your budget I highly recommend it. It gives you the same interface and ease of use as the iPhone and is very enjoyable.

Music:5/5
Movies:4.5/5
Photos:5/5
Internet:4.5/5

Overall:4.5/5

LifeHacker has released a video outlining use your iPod Touch to manage appointments and tasks.

Until the iPod Touch is “jailbruck”, we’ll revel in this simple hack.

CNN Money is purporting that the upcoming release of Leopard (OS X), there are signs that Steve Jobs is set to open up the iPhone (iTouch) to third party developers.

The article doesn’t name the iTouch directly, but so far everyone is still referring to the two as one and the same even though there’s been no noticeable progress on the iTouch hacking front thus far.

The iPhone was open to third-party software from day one, of course, as long as coders stuck to writing within the confines of the Safari development environment and didn’t try to write so-called “native” apps — a restriction that some hackers took as an invitation to crack the thing open on their own terms.

Aimersoft has released a suite of DVD ripping and video conversion tools for the latest iPod Nano/Touch/Classic.

“Aimersoft iPod Converter Suite is all-in-one easy-to-use iPod MP4 video converter that can convert DVD and video to iPod video and the latest iPod Nano, iPod Touch and iPod Classic. It includes two excellent iPod converters: DVD to iPod Converter and iPod Video Converter. With its powerful function, It can help you rip DVD and convert video to iPod Nano/Touch/Classic MP4 (MPEG-4) H.264, and can also perfectly convert almost all popular video and audio formats such as AVI, Divx, XviD, WMV, MPEG, MPG, FLV, DAT, RM, RMVB, MOV, ASF, FLV, etc. to iPod Video supported formats, including MP4, M4V and MP3.”

Key Feature Highlights:

• Automatically rip protected DVD movie to iPod MP4 MPEG-4 H.264 Video.
• Convert various video formats including AVI, DivX, XviD, WMV (Windows Media Player Video), MPEG (limewire), MPG, FLV (Youtube), DAT (VCD), RM, RMVB (RealPlayer), MOV (QuickTime), ASF, etc.
• Fully supports dual-core and multi-threading, convert video to iPod MP4 Video with super fast speed.

Apple today released their updates for the iPod touch and iPhone. On the iPod touch we saw the general updates and one very nice one. It would seem that some people who were experiencing problems with their negative screens don’t have the issue with this update! Yea! Now, this hasn’t fixed everyones, but it has fixed a good number. The only bad side is that the jailbreak might be even slower with this software update.

This screenshot of a crash report in the iPod Touch indicates that the Bluetooh framework was intentionally left in the iPod Touch, or it’s simply further evidence of the sloppyness we’ve seen in the port from iPhone to iPod Touch:

I don’t know about you, but I would like to see this solved once and for all…

Gizmodo is reporting that they exchanged their faulty iPod Touch for one with a good screen.

“iPod early. I thought I was stuck with a wonky screen. I waited a couple of weeks to see what was up, and once Walt Mossberg said the defective screens were only an early production problem, I was off to the Apple Store to exchange mine. While we still don’t know if the problem has been resolved completely, I can say that my iPod touch has a screen that looks as great as advertised.”

“I made an appointment with the Genius Bar guys who did some video tests of their own, and came to the same conclusion I did. No questions asked, they took my old iPod touch, handed me a new one, and I was on my way. Pretty painless overall.”

Good news for all those who have faulty screens, go get yours.