iPod

A Nice Tweak for the iPhone iPod App

There's been quite a few interesting jailbreak mods lately. MultiMusicInfo is another one of those simple, yet very nice jailbreak tweaks for iPhone. MultiMusicInfo shows you the information of the song that's playing on your iPod app in the "now playing" bar of the app switcher.

It adds the artist name, the album and the title of the song that's playing. It even replaces the iPod icon with the album cover if available. Tapping the album cover will still behave like the iPod icon and take you to the iPod app.

Conserve Your iPhone Battery with ScreenDimmer

ScreenDimmer

Apple promised better battery life with the iPhone 4 but let's face it, it still falls short. But then again, depending on how you use it, a full charge can last anywhere from just a few hours to a couple of days (I'm being very generous). I'll admit I'm a heavy iPhone user. It's useful and I like it and being a heavy iPhone user obviously taxes the battery. I run very few things in the background to conserve battery life but I want more conservation.

Is the iPod Touch For People Who Don’t Want an iPhone?

Apple's event today wasn't filled with too many surprises. The iPod Touch was beefed up in features that included many of the predicted and leaked abilities that were floating around. Mimicking nearly all of the features of the iPhone 4 makes me wonder now more than ever if the Touch is specifically designed for those who don't want an iPhone.

Adding FaceTime and Retina Display to the Touch gives it both of the best features from the iPhone 4. The speedy A4 chip will make the two devices close to equal in processing time, something that the iPhone previously ousted the Touch in considerably. So what's the difference?

Watch Apple Event Live Tomorrow

As you might know by now, Apple is holding a special event tomorrow, where the firm will presumably unveil new iPods and more. For the first time, Apple will be streaming the event live. Sounds great, right? Well, the downside is that you need a Mac or an iOS device to watch the event:

Predictions for Tomorrow’s Apple Event

Unless you've been underneath a rock for a few weeks you're aware that Apple will be holding their annual September event this Wednesday. With such an event so close, you can pretty much find a rumor for any wild idea you could think of. We figured here at iDB we'd toss around some ideas and let you add your own.

I'll start with the casualties:

iRemix Considerably Improves Your iPod App

Do you feel that the features of the iPod app of your iPhone or iTouch are limited? You're not alone. The other day as I was miserably stuck in a bus between Ninh Binh and Halong Bay in Vietnam, I was playing with my iPod and building an on-the-go playlist. I found it absolutely ridiculous that I couldn't add songs to the on-the-go playlist while playing the songs.

After doing a bit of research online (all this over the amazing Vietnamese 3G), I came across iRemix, a jailbreak app that aims at enhancing your iPod experience. iRemix is more a mod than an app per say. It integrates seamlessly with your iPod app, making it much better.

I was excited about iRemix because it was supposedly able to do what I wanted: easily add songs being played to the on-the-go playlist. But it also has other badass features:

Favorites: tap and hold on a song then add it to your favorites Bookmarks: tap the little bookmark icon to create a bookmark anywhere in a song or audiobook Quick add: quickly add songs to the on-the-go playlist Fast search: simple and powerful search feature Song info: easily get artist or album info. Also allows you to watch the video of the song as well as search for lyrics Enhanced FFW and REW: tap and hold the FFW or REW button to easily jump forward or backward by 15 s, 30 s, 1 min, or 5 minutes.

In the first image below, you can see the bookmarking feature, the "i" for information search, and the FFW/REW feature. Note that I added all of them for this screenshot but the screen doesn't normally look so busy. In the second image, you can see the "add to on-the-go" and "add to favorites" features.

These sounds like very simple features, don't they? Well, they are very basic but very powerful. So powerful that I suspect we will see some of them in iPhone OS 4.0.

iRemix is available from Cydia for $2.99 and comes with a 5-day trial period. This app is a no brainer for anyone looking to make enhance the iPod feature.

You might have already heard or even tried iRemix since it's not so new. If so, what do you think about this app?

BlackRa1n is the New iPhone and iPod Touch Jailbreak

We already knew that GeoHot was up to something but we now have confirmation that he is this close to release a new jailbreaking tool called BlackRa1n.

First, he wrote a short blog post titled "I'm just going to leave this here". The post has no text besides the title and shows what could be mistaken for an iPhone running a bunch of codes that most of us wouldn't understand. Well, it's not an iPhone. It's an iPod Touch 3G. You can tell by simply looking at the location of the image, which reveals its name: ipt3_jailbroken.JPG. You can also tell by zooming in the image.

What does this mean? Well, this is a teaser to tell us that he has successfully jailbroken the iPod Touch 3G, which could be considered as the hardest device to jailbreak these days. And from what I understand, he's using the same exploit on both the iTouch 3G and the iPhone 3GS. According to this tweet, he's pretty much done with these 2 devices and will now get to work on the 4 others, which shouldn't take too long.

GeoHot also gave us 2 interesting clues about the name of his new jailbreak. First, he said his new website was up, asking who could find it. Then he gave it all away by saying that "black is the new purple". Have you connected the dots yet? His last jailbreak was called PurpleRa1n. If black is the new purple, then his new jailbreak is BlackRa1n (see BlackRa1n.com).

We still don't know exactly when to expect BlackRa1n to be available but according to GeoHot's own ETA, it should be sometimes today. One thing is sure though, I will be refreshing GeoHot's Twitter page like a maniac for the next 12 hours.

This BlackRa1n jailbreak will be a huge release for many of us jailbreakers, especially those stuck at 3.1. Are you one of them?

UPDATE: BlackRain has been released. Refer to the following tutorials:

BlackRa1n RC1 tutorial BlackRa1n RC2 tutorial BlackRa1n RC3 tutorial BlackSn0w unlock tutorial

New iPod to be Unveiled Next Week?

Apple has finally confirmed the long-rumored event to be held on September 9, in San Francisco. The image above is the "official" image used on the invitations sent out by Apple. For some reason, I haven't received my invite yet. I assume it was lost in the mail ;)

Last week, I predicted that a new iPod will be unveiled at this event and that Apple will make firmware 3.1 available. I also predicted that MMS will be available around that time.

I'd like to hear what YOU would like Apple to announce at this event? A new iPhone? A tablet? A spaceship?