Michal Ždanský Pablo Picasso once said the famous quote "A good artist copies, a great artist steals". Although Apple is a leader in innovation, it also sometimes borrows an idea. This is not the case with the iPhone either. With each new version of iOS, new features are added, but some of them were able to be used by users thanks to the community around Cydia.
Notification
The old form of notifications has been a long-standing problem and the jailbreak community has tried to deal with it in their own way. One of the best ways brought Peter Hajas in your application MobileNotifier. Apparently Apple liked this solution enough to hire Hajas, and the final solution found in iOS closely resembles his Cydia tweak.
Wi-Fi sync
For several years, users have been calling for the option of wireless synchronization, which other mobile OSes had no problem with. Even the now-dead Windows Mobile could be synced via Bluetooth. He came up with a solution Greg Gughes, whose wireless sync app has also appeared in the App Store. However, it didn't warm up there for a long time, so it moved to Cydia after it was removed by Apple.
Here he offered it for more than half a year at the price of $9,99 and the application worked perfectly. At the launch of iOS, the same feature was introduced, boasting a rather similar logo. Chance? Maybe, but the resemblance is more than obvious.
Notifications on the Lock Screen
A few of the most used apps from Cydia were also tweaks that allowed various information to be displayed on the lock screen, among them intelli screen or LockInfo. In addition to missed calls, received messages or e-mails, they also displayed events from the calendar or the weather. Apple hasn't made it that far in iOS yet, "widgets" for weather and stocks are only in the Notification Center, and the list of upcoming events from the calendar is still completely missing. We'll see what the next betas of iOS 5 show. Hopefully we'll see more of these widgets and therefore more use of the locked screen.
Take photos with the volume button
Apple's restrictions strictly prohibited the use of hardware buttons for purposes other than those for which they are intended. It's long been possible to program these buttons for different functions thanks to Cydia, but it was a surprise when the Camera+ app offered taking photos with the volume button as a hidden feature. Not long after that, it was removed from the App Store and reappeared a few months later, but without this useful feature. Now it is possible to take photos directly in the native application with this button. Even Apple is maturing.
multitasking
It's been two years since Apple came up with a big-mouthed statement that multitasking on the phone is unnecessary, that it consumes a lot of energy, and brought a solution in the form of push notifications. This was solved, for example, by task lists or IM clients, but for other applications, such as GPS navigation, multitasking was a necessity.
The app has been running in Cydia for a while now backgrounder, which allowed full-fledged background running for specified applications, and there were several add-ons for it to switch background applications. Power consumption was higher, but multitasking served its purpose. Apple eventually solved multitasking in its own way, allowing certain services to run in the background and sleep apps for immediate launch. Even with running multitasking, the charge level does not decrease at a murderous pace.
Springboard background
It was only in the fourth version of iOS that users could change the dull black background of the main screen to any image, while thanks to the jailbreak this function was already possible on the first iPhone. The most famous application for changing the background and entire themes was Winterboard. He was also able to change application icons, which she also used Toyota when promoting your new vehicle. However, thanks to good relations with Apple, she was forced to withdraw her car-tuned theme from Cydia. However, owners of older phones like the iPhone 3G can't change their own background anyway, so jailbreaking is the only possible way.
Wi-Fi Hotspot and Tethering
Even before the introduction of tethering in iOS 3, it was possible to share the Internet through one application directly in the App Store. But Apple withdrew it after some time (probably at the request of AT&T). The only option was to use an application from Cydia, for example MyWi. In addition to tethering, it also enabled the creation of a Wi-Fi Hotspot, when the phone turned into a small Wi-Fi router. In addition, this type of Internet sharing did not require iTunes to be installed on the computer, as was the case with official tethering. In addition, any device, such as another phone, could connect to the network.
Wi-Fi hotspot has finally appeared, for the first time in a CDMA iPhone designed for the US network Verizon. For other iPhones, this feature was available with iOS 4.3.
Folders
Until iOS 4, it was not possible to merge individual applications in any way, and so the desktop could be quite a mess with several dozen applications installed. The solution then was a tweak from Cydia named Category. This allowed applications to be placed in folders that would run as separate applications. It wasn't the most elegant solution, but it was functional.
With iOS 4, we did get official folders, unfortunately with a limitation of 12 applications per folder, which is perhaps insufficient in the case of games. But Cydia also solves this ailment, specifically InfiFolders.
Bluetooth keyboard support.
Bluetooth has never been easy on the iPhone. Its features have always been quite limited and it couldn't transfer files like other phones have long been able to do, it didn't even support the A2DP profile for stereo audio to begin with. The alternative was therefore two applications from Cydia, iBluetooth (later iBluenova) to btstack. While the former took care of file transfers, the latter enabled the connection of other devices via Bluetooth, including wireless keyboards. All this was possible two years before the introduction of Bluetooth keyboard support that appeared in iOS 4.
Copy, Cut & Paste
It's almost hard to believe that such basic functions as Copy, Cut and Paste only appeared after two years of the iPhone's existence in iOS 3. The iPhone faced a lot of criticism because of this, and the only solution was to reach for one of the tweaks in Cydia. This made it possible to work with the clipboard very similarly to how it is today. After selecting the text, a familiar context menu appeared in which the user could choose one of these three functions
Mirroring
Although the iPod's standard video application has long supported video output, the mirroring function, which transmits everything happening on the iDevice's screen to a television, monitor or projector, was only available through Cydia. The application that enabled this feature was called TVOut2Mirror. True Mirroring only came with iOS 4.3 and was first demonstrated on the iPad together with an HDMI reduction through which mirroring was possible. In iOS 5, mirroring should also work wirelessly using AirPlay.
FaceTime over 3G
Although this information is not official, video calls made via FaceTime should not be limited to Wi-Fi network only, but it would be possible to use them on 3G network as well. This is indicated by a message in the iOS 5 beta that appears when Wi-Fi and mobile data are turned off. FaceTime on the mobile network was so far only possible with a jailbreak thanks to the utility My3G, which simulated a connection on a Wi-Fi network, while the data transfer took place via 3G.
Do you know of other features that Apple has borrowed from developers in the jailbreak community? Share them in the comments.
Source: BusinessInsider.com
Really great article!
yes, great. Very nicely summed up, thanks!
Although jailbreakers had most of the gadgets earlier. But it all worked slowly, and it didn't look very nice either. And when Apple, after a year of development, released it in the official iOS, it all worked very quickly and in style.
We should not forget that.
I think the developer community, which hacks the system and expands the possibilities, is very important. I understand Apple in their attempt to make jailbreak impossible, but on the other hand, I think that without Cydia, today's official iOS might lack a couple of interesting functions.
Cool. Thanks for the article! Looking forward to iOS 5 ;-)
Very nice article...
I won't allow myself to say that it is not above JB ... where would the iPhone be without it ... Apple is on the one hand one step ahead, but on the other hand it is 20 years behind the monkeys .. ugh :(
what iPhone fatally wrong, and not only in my opinion, is something like SBsettings. to be honest, I jailbreak mainly because of this utility
Totally agree...I can't even imagine it without it
Hi, yes, nice article, but I know from my experience that you can't take photos with the volume button, I couldn't find anywhere how to turn it on and it just doesn't work. I have a new os 4.3.3 (on 3gs) and so I am interested in what ios it should run on, or where do i make it work. A similar problem is with the hotspot, where ONLY bluetooth or usb works. Wifi nothing... so I don't know, can it be reconfigured somewhere?
I definitely HAVE to AGREE that even if apple adds to it over time, THE IPHONE IS NOTHING WITHOUT JB. Definitely SBSettings, Lockinfo, these are the things that make an iPhone a smart phone. Faster control makes the phone easier to control, more pleasant, but also logically -> the less you have to click, the less you have to leave the display on at all, so you also save energy and time! And apple fur has a 3G switch on somewhere in the options... oh yeah :D
Well, just iphone+cydia+installous and we have a smartphone, apple learn. And about how fast or slow it works - I think it's written by people with 3g (unfortunately, they are right, but you can use JB without backgrounding, without a screen, then even 3g works as normal), on gs I did not encounter any slowdown, not to mention four.
Bye MatezZ
Taking photos with the volume button works in iOS 5 (still beta). Wifi Hotspot works normally, at least on iPhone 4, no idea on 3GS.
Do you happen to know where the iOS 5 beta can be downloaded, or is it still not downloadable?
HotSpot only works on iP4. On 3GS only with JB.
That's right... taking pictures with the Volume Up button should only be available in iOS 5 as far as I know :)
so you probably borrowed notifications from Android, MobileNotifier is a young utility and it was inspired there
If he continued to be inspired, it would only be good. I miss a complete landscape mode, I would personally like notifications to be triggered by a button (instead of voice control), I still have to overwrite some sounds with pure sound because of the sounds (charging, keyboard sound can be turned off, but cydie ignores it, camera), I also have to solve the own SMS sound overwriting another from the list. I also still miss functions like "no lock screen", "no spot", "folder closer". As someone already wrote here, some settings (3G, WiFi, display brightness) would like to be put in the notification center, as some cydia widgets and, of course, android do. I've been testing iOS5b2, there are some interesting things, but so far quite slow (safari is quite scratchy when opening a page, zooming), the battery drains quickly. But otherwise great, keep going.