08-03-10
Why jailbreaking sucks
Unlike my mate Tiago of scooterpt.com, I was never very enthusiastic about jailbreaking my iPhone. But, fed up with my 3G’s inability to display wallpaper images, yesterday I decided to give jailbreaking a shot.
So I went to this nice website that promises to jailbreak the iphone online, for free and in just a couple minutes. Apparently, all it does is install Cydia, which is like an App Store for teh hax0rs. Once Cydia is installed the phone reboots and you’re ready to enter the land of freedom, milk and honey.
… Except for one single detail. The entire Cydia experience sucks. It’s like a big black hole of user experience failure.
You can’t really appreciate the work Apple has done on the iphone interface until you jailbreak your iphone (or try a friend’s souped-up Android). It’s like… well, it’s like going from MacOS to Slackware Linux. There’s no doubt you’re getting an extremely capable system, but it’s a pain to learn and operate.
Cydia has to load what feels like a terabyte of data every time you open it. Then you get some kind of connection failure and need to try opening it again. Then there are more connection failures whenever you try to install an app, which the installer completely fails to notice when it tells you the installation is “Complete!”. Oh no, it isn’t. You’re going to spend the next few minutes searching every single home screen looking for the damned thing, only to realize it isn’t there. So you try installing it again, and again, until it works. Oh, and God have mercy if you let your phone go to sleep while something is downloading: it’ll just freeze there.
When you finally open the damned app, get ready for a shock. It was almost certainly designed by someone who thinks “User Experience” means kinky porn.
Let me give you an example.
All I wanted from the jailbreak was to find some way to maybe enable the display of wallpapers on my iphone 3G, right? So I googled around a bit and discovered that you need Winterboard to change themes and wallpapers. Download Winterboard. Download Winterboard again. Reboot. Restart spingboard (whatever that is). Open Winterboard. Decipher martian. Google some more. Huh, apparently, winterboard ONLY allows you to change the entire theme, not just the wallpaper. That’s not really acceptable, since all the themes look like they were designed by 12 year olds.
Google some more. Apparently there’s this Bosspaper app that lets you change JUST the wallpaper. Huh. Install Bosspaper. Two more times. Reboot. Open Bosspaper and… what?? There are 20 different buttons to push. One button block is labeled “Image / Folder selection”, and I’m left wondering what the hell does a folder have to do with a wallpaper image. Tap “individual pictures”, tap “add”, tap “wallpapers”…. strange, there’s nothing here to select. I could have sworn this folder is full of slick wallpaper images, but, whatever. Tap “back”, tap “back”… strange, nothing happens. Tap “back” 100 more times. Nothing. Close and reopen Bosspaper. Try selecting an image from the camera roll instead. Huh. Instead of thumbnails, I get only a list of file names. Do I want to have IMG_1005.JP or IMG_1006.JPG as my wallpaper? HOW THE HELL DO I KNOW? Select one at random. Turn on the thing that says “BossPaper Enabled”. Go back to the home screen and behold the glory of… absolutely nothing. Lock and unlock the phone. Nothing. Google again. Apparently, bosspaper doesn’t work with iOS4 unless you do a little hack with winterboard, reboot the phone and sacrifice your first born to the underground gods. I lay down the phone and go to sleep.
Fast forward to today. My friend Tiago rolls into the office, cheerfully showing off his wallpaper and multitasking enabled 3G. I tell him my woes and he replies that all I need to do is download a file editor and change two configuration settings on the iphone:
wallpaper=true;
multitasking=true;
Seems simple enough. I try downloading iFile, the app he used to edit the configuration file, but all my five downloading attempts fail. I finally give it up, ruing the hours I lost over this mess.
See, I’m working like hell at the moment trying to launch Treddie (not to mention the challenges at the day job that keep my mind busy enough as it is), so losing two hours over this jailbreaking stuff really hurt my schedule.
I’m very unhappy about the way Apple handles its customers. We’ve been getting bullshit for years now (copy/paste not working, camera not recording video, the 3G being left without wallpapers or multitasking, iphone 4 antenna-gate, etc), but the fact is, the alternative doesn’t quite cut it for me. Jailbreaking requires too hefty a time investment. It may work for you if you’re willing to put in the effort, sure. But then why do you have an iphone? You’d be better off with an android.
Later today I’m going to do a full restore on my phone and forget about fancy wallpapers.
08-02-10
Shutting down the information overload
I used to check twitter and facebook every day first thing in the morning. Then I’d re-check dozens of times during the day, plus one more time right before bed.
Other than my real life friends, I followed only tech blogs and startup-related people. It was a rather restricted group of sources, but it still meant I’d go through hundreds of tweets every day. That in itself wasn’t bad, since the average tweet can be read and mentally archived in well under a second; the problem was that my focus kept switching from the task at hand to whatever these tasty bits of information got me thinking about.
I want to start something. Build a web app or service that’s useful to many people for a good long while. Trouble is, my focus keeps moving from one project to another and I rarely get to finish anything. I know this pattern is broken, I know that I really need to focus on something and stick with it, but I have a VERY hard time working on stuff I’m not enthusiastic about. And I’m devilishly good at whatever catches my fancy. My challenge here is to find ways to manipulate my environment so that these traits start working in my favour, and I think I found one.
By following a lot less people on twitter and checking it once a day – tops – I stopped the main flow of stimulating new ideas. This is great because, once I start something, I really don’t need further inspiration. I just need to research stuff that’s directly related to the project and try to avoid becoming too excited with anything else.
My iPhone notifies me whenever people try to talk to me directly on facebook and twitter, I’m not missing anything important by not checking them. And shutting down the information overload has really helped me get stuff done.
Why, I even found time to update my blog!
09-28-09
Welcome to the blog!
I’m Pedro Gil Candeias, internet entrepreneur in training.
I live and work in Portugal, the West Coast of Europe, a country best known for its wine, food and beaches. But sadly not for its entrepreneurial spirit.
I’d like to challenge that.
My immediate aim is to create Internet solutions for real world problems, preferably focussing on the Motoring and Social Media industries, and one day I’d like to unleash the little engineer in me and dabble in the Energy sector.
I’ll be sharing my experiences with you in this blog, and hoping you find them useful.
Cheers!
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