I have entered the DARKSIDE...

[SFC Archer]

or what I now call the ENLIGHTENED side!!!

After 3 generations of iPhone since day one and all of my posts against jailbreaking, I have stepped over to the enlightened side and am loving the iPhone even more. I have been waiting and waiting and waiting for Apple to allow us the simplest of options and that is to theme your iPhone. We are not iRobots and after the release and purchase of 3GS w/3.0 and still NO option to personalize my iPhone I decided to jailbreak and see what all the hype was about.

I love it and the fact that I can now have so many options that were restricted before and restricted for now single reason other then selfishness. The ability to personalize an iPhone does nothing to hurt it or affect its operation. Since using RedSn0w my battery stats and operation has not changed at all. In fact when I was Beta testing 3.0, it crashed more often and had more problems then the 1 or 2 freeze ups that I have had with RedSn0w. My battery still lasts two days without a recharge and I have a few cydia apps that always run.

I do have a question to those that know...How, if at all do you back up your cydia settings/apps so that when a new version comes out and an update jailbreak is released that you do not have to ssh back in to re-set up all of your winterboard settings???

Here is my setup so far:

 

[IBradMac]

I find it hard to be satisfied with "one" particular theme and look. *sigh

Yours looks fantastic! nice work!

 

[MBHockey]

SBSettings and Backgrounder are enough for me. Winterboard is nice, but I go crazy trying to find themes I like.

Backgrounder is essential...i just wish they could get the backgrounder badges working so I can easily tell which apps are on in the background.

 

[SFC Archer]

I find it hard to be satisfied with "one" particular theme and look. *sigh

Yours looks fantastic! nice work!

Thus the need for a change and jailbreak. I was tired of the same old black boring background and no life icons. No personal taste allowed, no adding message bars that tell you what is going on with your world of accounts! The iPhone is great but so limited with the current restrictions on personalization and ability to set things up that cydia opens the door to.

Cydia is so American...Freedom to????
Apple/iTunes is so....Communist/Socialist (nothing personal) do it our way or dont do it at all.

Sad

I am a happy convert and jailbreaker now and apologize to all those that I criticized in the past!

 

[ODog4523]

I'm on my 2nd IPhone now and getting closer to finally jailbreaking myself. I'm still held up by some questions though...seen many phones on youtube that aren't looking so healthy. How is your phone performing since you jb'd??

Are heavier games and apps still running OK?

Normal day-to-day operations still good and snappy?

Is the phone still stable...apps crashing, locking up, etc?

How's your battery holding up?

 

[SFC Archer]

I'm on my 2nd IPhone now and getting closer to finally jailbreaking myself. I'm still held up by some questions though...seen many phones on youtube that aren't looking so healthy. How is your phone performing since you jb'd??

Are heavier games and apps still running OK?

Normal day-to-day operations still good and snappy?

Is the phone still stable...apps crashing, locking up, etc?

How's your battery holding up?

I can answer all but the game question. I do not play a lot of games and when I do the battery suffers regardless of if it is jailbroke or not.

My normal everyday use remains the same and my battery life can go for two solid days. My biggest battery saver is that I do not have 3G where I live and thus can not use it to kill my battery. I have also turned of push capability and keep safari on a blank web page. With those 3 things...my battery life still gives me two days.

All of my apps are opening as normal...no quicker, no slower then when I was using my 3G. Some of the intelliscreen info loads slower when I access the iPhone but other then that...all is normal. I have also found that some apps like the iTunes store do not operate in the Cydia "Categories" app. As an example...I used Shazam and found a song that I wanted to purchase from iTunes. iTunes would not open while in a categories folder but as soon as I removed it then Shazam was able to open and select the song for review and purchase. I have had no bad game experience using categories though and with the categories folders i only have 2 pages of apps .vs my old 7-8 pages.

I have not had any apps crash yet. I have only had two apps freeze which has happened without jailbreak so do not feel any loss of accessibility with jailbreaking.

Over all...I will never go back to a restricted iPhone until Apple treats us as Americans with the freedom to use our device freely. I love being able to have my iPhone MY way and be just like Burger King.

 

[ODog4523]

Thank you for the thorough answer! More I consider it the more I think I'll just go ahead and do it...at least to try it out.

 

[1rottenapple]

Wow I love your settings-themes. Care to share the info?

Yeah I love the jail break... I have the sbsettings via touch function. I basically touch the time area on the screen and a drop down menu pops up. Also have backgrounder.

 

[SFC Archer]

Wow I love your settings-themes. Care to share the info?

Yeah I love the jail break... I have the sbsettings via touch function. I basically touch the time area on the screen and a drop down menu pops up. Also have backgrounder.

Not sure what you are specifically asking...I posted my winterboard settings as the third screen shot.

The wallpaper comes from www.digitalblasphemy.com which you have to become a member for most of the wallpaper I use. Ryan does offer a free section and is what I used for two years before I started paying him for his outstanding work. My computer all uses the same wallpapers and rotates currently through 6 scenes on the iPhone. I am having problems changing it to 9 wallpapers through ssh and they have not responded to my emails yet.

 

[The General]

Guh, that looks absolutely hideous. Especially that typeface. This is obviously the work of someone who knows little to nothing about design and typography.

 

[SFC Archer]

Guh, that looks absolutely hideous. Especially that typeface. This is obviously the work of someone who knows little to nothing about design and typography.

LOL...no problem...i totally understand to one that had an avatar of a nerd with cream on his face to one of no composition.

I am experimenting and will use what fonts I desire...I now have that freedom as you do for changing your avatar.

When you show yours then we shall know???

 

[The General]

LOL...no problem...i totally understand to one that had an avatar of a nerd with cream on his face to one of no composition.

I am experimenting and will use what fonts I desire...I now have that freedom as you do for changing your avatar.

When you show yours then we shall know???

If I understand you correctly, you would like to see my home screen? Okay. I made this theme to mimic Mac OS X. I will have a solid status bar once Winterboard is updated to fix the bug causing the status bar to disappear.

 

[darngooddesign]

If I understand you correctly, you would like to see my home screen? Okay. I made this theme to mimic Mac OS X. I will have a solid status bar once Winterboard is updated to fix the bug causing the status bar to disappear.

Guh, that looks absolutely hideous. Especially that size of the dock icons when compared to the stock icons. This is obviously the work of someone who knows little to nothing about proportion and visual weight.

To realistically mimic OSX your center icon should have been to the right of the dock separator. See, I'm a style critic as well.

PS. Good job of getting down with the customization SFC, whether or not I like it is irrelevant.

 

[bugout]

Guh, that looks absolutely hideous. Especially that size of the dock icons when compared to the stock icons. This is obviously the work of someone who knows little to nothing about proportion and visual weight.

To realistically mimic OSX your center icon should have been to the right of the dock separator. See, I'm a style critic as well.

PS. Good job of getting down with the customization SFC, whether or not I like it is irrelevant.

Thanks for the laugh

 

[The General]

Guh, that looks absolutely hideous. Especially that size of the dock icons when compared to the stock icons. This is obviously the work of someone who knows little to nothing about proportion and visual weight.

LOL, yeah I need to make the upper icons smaller. Apparenly your name "darngooddesign" means nothing. The dock icons on my computer are smaller than on my desktop.

Sounds like you're just making things up.

To realistically mimic OSX your center icon should have been to the right of the dock separator. See, I'm a style critic as well.

What? Negative, darngooddesign. The icons will go in whichever order I choose they go.

PS. Good job of getting down with the customization SFC, whether or not I like it is irrelevant.

Whether or not you like it DOES matter. He posted here for advice. Notice in the OP where he posted his stuff on a forum? That means we can post back with what we think.

You can't possibly be defending anything about that theme he has. It's hideous. Of course, so is mine. Because calling something hideous means that anything I've made is hideous too.

 

[SFC Archer]

Thanks for the support guys! I know that there are some things that clash with other things and as some of you have stated, I am having fun with the FREEDOM to experiment and create and also learn ssh. I am still having problems with one of the cydia apps because I do not know coding and cant find where to change in ssh.

I do not take stock in anything the General says as I have watched his harsh posts for years now and have never really understood him and a few others and why the persist to be evil and rude. I also feel that his home page looks a lot like something I have seen before...oh yeah...an apple fan boy with all apple icons and apple wallpaper...real inventive and creative, I am so impressed

I can take a lot of criticism and at the end of the day am still able to go to sleep and be happy with my new found freedom that many have reveled about....now I understand and agree. I also know that MR forums are harsh and cruel a lot of times and I have come to accept it. Obviously if the owner is happy with his setup and cares to share what he thinks looks good then he is happy. Those that criticize and don't show their own ideas until challenged have no weight in what they say.

Needless to say...thanks again for the support and to those that asked for more info...hopefully I have successfully answered your questions and at the same time joined the jailbreak crowd.

The those that want to be rude...you can continue to build up your post counts but it will not affect me

 

[The General]

I do not take stock in anything the General says as I have watched his harsh posts for years now and have never really understood him and a few others and why the persist to be evil and rude.

And I will never understand why you people like hideous themes. 99% of the themes in the Cydia repositories are absolute eye sores. Why people think it's cool to have no icon labels, green text with a red drop shadow over some hideous photo that requires payment to get from some website... that part is over my head. It boggles my mind why anyone would make a theme where all of their icons have the same repeating overall design. Icons are to make it easier to distinguish applications from each other without having to read text. Yours makes that difficult and actually REMOVES the text.

A UI is about usability. When it's hard to tell icons apart at a glance, impossible to read the labels because they aren't there, and difficult to read anything else because of poor choice of typefaces and/or text colors ... the UI becomes unusable.

I also feel that his home page looks a lot like something I have seen before...oh yeah...an apple fan boy with all apple icons and apple wallpaper...real inventive and creative, I am so impressed

Mine isn't creative or inventive. I made it look like Mac OS X on purpose. The reason I did that is because I wanted continuity between my computer and my phone. I wanted them to look as similar as possible.

 

[STEVESKI07]

I do not take stock in anything the General says as I have watched his harsh posts for years now and have never really understood him and a few others and why the persist to be evil and rude.

100% agreed.

 

[kwani16]

srry if you get this a lot but i want to know how to get that your name "Gary's Iphone" on the top like that ill show you mine right now.

I want to add my name after the date/time

 

[SeanMcC]

This thread has convinced me to jailbreak

I think I'll do it when I get home from work today.

 

[darngooddesign]

This thread has convinced me to jailbreak

I think I'll do it when I get home from work today.

Don't forget to install a tacky theme.

 

[STEVESKI07]

This thread has convinced me to jailbreak

I think I'll do it when I get home from work today.

I just did it yesterday and you will NOT regret it. The things that have changed my life that have been installed are RealQuickSMS and Backgrounder. The other little things I have installed are nice, but not anything that is worth jailbreaking for alone.

Don't forget to install a tacky theme.

I struggled with trying to find a theme I liked and decided that no theme is the best theme. I don't even like the way every background image I tried looks behind the apps. What I did do and I do like is modifications to the dock and modifications to the status bar. What do you guys think?

 

[SFStateStudent]

Welcome to the party OP......

 

[SeanMcC]

What did you do to get text where the time was in the status bar?