The One and Only Screen On My iPhone

When I wrote about my top 10 jailbreak tweaks last week, many of you were surprised not to see Springtomize 2 on the list. As I explained in the comments, Sprintomize was not on the list because it hadn’t been really optimized to work properly on the iPhone 4S, which ended up causing me a bunch of troubles.

But this is now behind us as Springtomize was updated yesterday. It is more stable, and even brings its insane level of customization to the iPad.

In association with some of my favorite tweaks like InfiniFolders and InfiniDock, I was able to use Springtomize to create my ideal home screen…
So this is it. The one and only screen on my iPhone. No need to flick through pages of apps anymore. My 12 most important apps are all in the dock. The rest of them are either in folders or on the screen that you see.

I’m a minimalist kind of guy. I don’t like to have pages and pages of apps I don’t use. If it’s an app I use on a regular basis, then it has its spot on the home screen. If it’s an app I rarely use, then it’s going into one of the folders I created. I believe this format is going to fulfill my simple needs perfectly.

For those of you wondering about the wallpaper – there is always someone asking about the wallpaper – I got it from the Pimp Your Screen app, which I highly recommend.

Are you a minimalist like me, or do you like to collect tons of app icons on your springboard?

MusicBanners: Banner Notifications for Track Changes and More

If you use the iPod app on your iOS device as much as I do, then you’re going to love the new jailbreak tweak: MusicBanners. The tweak, made by popular developer Ryan Petrich, brings your music to iOS 5′s notification system.

So what does it do? Essentially, MusicBanners sends you a notification every time a new track comes up on your iPod app. This means that you receive a notification with the track’s name, album and cover art after every song change.
As usual, Petrich’s tweak works flawlessly — both banners and notifications look and act like native iOS elements. And for those wondering, it doesn’t appear to be limited to the default iPod app. I can confirm that the tweak works with Pandora, and am assuming it works with other apps as well.

Even if you don’t think you’ll end up keeping it, MusicBanners is definitely worth a look. You can download the tweak from Cydia, in the BigBoss repo, for free.

What do you think of MusicBanners?

RedSn0w Updated to Fix iBooks DRM Issues

The Dev Team has recently updated their renowned RedSn0w jailbreak tool to version 0.9.10b5 in order to fix the DRM issue for iBooks on jailbroken devices.

This fix, which was developed by PlanetBeing and integrated into RedSn0w, overcomes the jailbreak detection by iBooks that would cause some images to not display properly, if at all…
If you’ve had problems with iBooks, you may want to run RedSn0w on top of your existing jailbreak, making sure you do not select Cydia, should you decide to do that.

The Dev Team notes on its blog that:

If auto-detection fails and redsn0w tells you no identifying data was found, you can always pre-select the appropriate 5.0.1 IPSW using “Extras->Select IPSW”.

If you don’t want to use RedSn0w, Corona should be updated shortly to version 1.0-6 to incorporate this iBooks fix. When it hits Cydia, you can simply install or update the package.

As always, you can download RedSn0w from our downloads section. For more information about this jailbreak tool, please refer to our dedicated RedSn0w page. Those of you who aren’t sure how to use RedSn0w can also check out our comprehensive RedSn0w guides

Judge Interprets Key Realtime API Patent in Apple’s Favor

Apple has spent an estimated $100 million dollars on its so-called “war on Android.” And so far it doesn’t have much to show for it. Even its recent ITC court victory over HTC doesn’t look like it will have much of an impact on anything.

But that could all change thanks to a recent interpretation of Apple’s ’263 patent by a high-ranking US judge. The patent covers realtime API — a key component in Android that would be extremely difficult to work around if a manufacturer was found guilty of infringing on it…
Florian Mueller of FOSSPatents explains:

“In federal litigation with Motorola in the Northern District of Illinois, an extremely influential, high-ranking U.S. judge agreed with Apple’s interpretation of the most important term, “realtime API”, in its ’263 patent. Under this interpretation, Android most likely infringes on the patent, and a workaround appears difficult to say the least. I published the original infringement claim chart from Apple’s complaint against HTC, and Apple’s allegation, based on this patent, that Andy Rubin got the inspiration for Android while working at Apple (which might enable Apple at some point to have Google found liable for willful infringement).”

Yeah, Andy Rubin (one of Android’s creators) was working at Apple during the time that it developed the ’263 patent. In fact, Rubin was a low-level engineer that reported specifically to the inventors of the realtime API. Could it be a coincidence that Android contains a patent that Apple developed during Rubin’s tenure with the company?

We’re not legal experts by any means, but it seems as if Apple has a pretty strong case here. The next several months could prove rather interesting now that Apple has the interpretive support of an influential judge on its realtime API patent. Expect to see it come up again soon.