‘Change Package Settings’ — An Overlooked Feature in Cydia

Have you ever uninstalled a tweak from Cydia, but still found yourself interested in any updates it might receive in the future? Perhaps it’s a tweak that has potential, but it’s just not finished baking yet.

By default Cydia does not announce changes for a package that isn’t installed on your device. That’s a good thing, because it prevents you from being harassed by tweaks and apps that you have no interest in.

If you’ve found yourself in that scenario, the best thing you can do is to enable a little talked about option that announces updates to a package, regardless of whether or not you have it installed.
To enable this option, select your package of choice, and at the top you will see a “Change Package Settings” panel. Open that panel, and you will see a “Show All Changes” toggle.

I like this option because it only applies to a specific tweak or app of your choosing. That means that if there’s one tweak in particular that you have your eye on, you can monitor its updates closely without being spammed by the rest of the package updates in Cydia.

Have you ever used this option before? Let me know what you think about it in the comments below.

Apple Fifth Most-Visited Store on Black Friday

Apple has found itself in the top 5 most-visited online stores in the United States for the first time, according to data compiled by comScore for Black Friday. Sitting pretty in fifth place, Apple is the highest ranking product brand in the list, almost overtaking Target in the fourth spot.

The impressive results come as Apple is also experiencing fantastic sales in its brick and mortar stores, with the Black Friday sales apparently breaking forecasts left and right…
The top five online and physical stores for Black Friday:

1.Amazon
2.Walmart
3.Best Buy
4.Target
5.Apple
Online shopping as a whole saw huge sales, with $816 million in products being bought, up 26% from the previous year. Not bad results at all, considering nobody seems to have any money these days.

“Fifty million Americans visited online retail sites on Black Friday, representing an increase of 35 percent versus year ago. Each of the top five retail sites achieved double-digit gains in visitors vs. last year, led by Amazon. Walmart ranked second, followed by Best Buy, Target and Apple.”

It may be worth noting that comScore’s figures also take into account Apple’s digital store, meaning apps, music, and video bought through iTunes.

The news comes as Apple is expected to have a record quarter, with strong sales throughout its range of products seeing customers easily parting with their hard earned cash.

Apple is clearly in a win-win situation here, with its products being sold in all of the four stores ranked above it.

The iOS Hacker’s Handbook Reveals How Jailbreaking and Exploit Research Works

Some of the greatest minds in the security research and hacking community, including a couple of prominent jailbreak developers, have put together a new book called The iOS Hacker’s Handbook.

The book is a collaboration between infamous security guru Charlie Miller, Dion Blazakis, Dino DaiZovi, Vincenzo Iozzo, and Ralf-Phillip Weinmann. Stefan Esser (better known as “i0n1c” in the jailbreak community) is also listed as an author. The Dev Team’s MuscleNerd served as the book’s Tech Editor.
MuscleNerd himself announced the book yesterday, noting that it “should jumpstart lots of Apple hackers.”

The book description:

Discover all the security risks and exploits that can threaten iOS-based mobile devices

iOS is Apple’s mobile operating system for the iPhone and iPad. With the introduction of iOS5, many security issues have come to light. This book explains and discusses them all. The award-winning author team, experts in Mac and iOS security, examines the vulnerabilities and the internals of iOS to show how attacks can be mitigated. The book explains how the operating system works, its overall security architecture, and the security risks associated with it, as well as exploits, rootkits, and other payloads developed for it.

■Covers iOS security architecture, vulnerability hunting, exploit writing, and how iOS jailbreaks work
■Explores iOS enterprise and encryption, code signing and memory protection, sandboxing, iPhone fuzzing, exploitation, ROP payloads, and baseband attacks
■Also examines kernel debugging and exploitation
The iOS Hacker’s Handbook is available for pre-order on Amazon. If you pre-order, you can get it for $29.24, which is 35% off the full price.

Whether you’re an aspiring hacker or an enthusiastic admirer of the security research/jailbreak community, this definitely looks to be interesting read.


iPhone Sets Itself On Fire Aboard an Australian Flight

If there is one thing you really don’t want to happen, it’s your iPhone setting itself on fire. If there’s something you really, really don’t want to happen, it’s the aforementioned combustion happening on an airplane!

During a flight between Lismore and Sydney, Australia, a passenger’s iPhone began to emit “a significant amount of dense smoke, accompanied by a red glow,” which apparently isn’t a good thing to happen mid-air.

The fire was extinguished and the flight landed safely, but the poor iPhone has certainly not survived…
While no details have been given by the airline as to which particular model the iPhone was, as you can see in the photo, it was either an iPhone 4 or 4S, and the mini-blaze has clearly made a mess of that glass panel.

The main thing here is obviously the safe landing of the plane and the fact that nobody was hurt, but it does raise an uncomfortable question for Apple. With millions of iPhone users flying around the globe, is there a potential for this to happen again?

This isn’t the first time Apple has had issues with its batteries. A couple of years ago, reports suggested that certain iPods had faulty batteries that could significantly overheat. More recently, Apple recalled and replaced the original iPod nano due to a similar fault.

Is anyone else acutely aware of how warm their iPhone gets now?

Create Your Own Fake Siri Conversations with iFakeSiri

Since Siri is turning into the biggest thing to hit the internet since cats playing pianos, it was probably inevitable that someone would get around to making an easy way to fake Siri screenshots, and it has finally happened.

By offering a simple interface, the iFakeSiri web app allows self-professed comedians to enter their imaginary Siri conversations and have a fake screenshot created. This is perfect for, say, anyone that needs to write blog posts about Apple’s fancy assistant technology!
Just to add a little more control to how your screenshot turns out, iFakeSiri even allows you to choose which carrier you want to be displayed. Unfortunately, the only three options right now are for the US carriers of Sprint, AT&T and Verizon, but we’re hopeful international carriers will get added, too.

It has to be said that most people will file this under the “absolutely pointless” folder, but for us, it’s one of those awesome little web apps that brightens up our dark and lonely days.

Go on, you know you want to sit and make Siri come up with all kinds of things, don’t you?

WSJ Confirms Apple Has Tapped Sharp for iPad 3 Displays

According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple has tapped Sharp as a display supplier for its next generation tablet. We’ve heard the news before from analysts and their “supply checks,” but this obviously lends some credibility to the story.

WSJ believes the move is in an effort, by Apple, to diversify component suppliers for its products. And given the company’s ongoing court battle with another display supplier (Samsung), it makes sense that it would want to do so…
There’s been several rumors regarding Apple’s upcoming iPad 3 over the past few weeks. The new tablet is expected to house a Retina-like display, the rumored A6 quad-core processor, and several other upgrades.

But the manufacturer isn’t just making iPad screens for Apple, WSJ claims that Sharp is also slated to produce displays for its 6th generation iPhone. The new relationship between the two companies could just revive Sharp’s LCD panel business.

Word on the street is that Apple invested a billion dollars in Sharp’s manufacturing facilities, suggesting its partnership with the TV-makers is just beginning. Perhaps Apple has other things in mind for the Japan-based company.