iPhone World

I haven’t gotten a single song from iTunes, ever, but a lot of you have. Apparently, both iTunes and Amazon release free singles and sometimes complete albums on a daily basis. I installed it for this write-up, and of the currently 10 songs available, spanning 3 days worth, I have not heard of a single one of the artists. I’m not sure if it’s because of the fact that next to nothing I listen to would ever appear on any Top 40 list, or if these are just totally obscure and unheard of artists. Either way, if you find something you like here, then this post has served its purpose.

In order to install this you will need to be running the 4.x version of Chrome, and visit the extension page at http://www.chromeextensions.org/music-videos-photos/broketunes/

This isn’t really news, and is barely iPhone related, but since I’m trying to make more posts, here you go..

This is either the result of bad programming, or just a shiny PR page. A few days ago I finally registered my wife’s iPhone with the AppleCare plan. Today I got an email asking me to complete a survey. I usually don’t do those, but I figured why not.

After answering what I think was 6 questions (which Apple estimated would take me 3 minutes), I was presented with the following page. Keep in mind all of the questions were given in only English. Why? because my browser reported my language as English. The fact that I had to make it over 1/2 way down the page before I had a clue what I was looking at puts the icing on the cake.

While it can be a bit annoying, I can understand why free apps often come with ads. If done correctly, there is nothing wrong with this, it’s free, so you can’t really complain. What I do have a problem with however, is when the ads are placed so as to make it difficult to use the app without accidentally tapping on the ad. 9 times out of 10, this is done intentionally, and this I have no patience for. Cydia doesn’t have too many ads, but when they do show up, they can get a little out of hand. Lately I have been noticing more and more of the ads that will follow you as you scroll down the page, to the point where they can make it difficult to read app descriptions.

There is a quick easy way to eliminate these ads altogether. To rid yourself of these dreadful things, FTP/SSH to your device, and modify the file /Applications/Cydia.app/package.js. What you are looking for should be on line 209.

Find this

if (depiction == null)

and change it to

if (depiction == null || true)

From that point on, you can enjoy an ad free Cydia. There will however still be ads on the screenshot pages, but at least they will be gone from the app details, and they will load faster also.