Dear

Dear ,

These past 2 months that we've been together have been nothing short of phenomenal. The fun we've had, the amount of time I've had my hands all over you. I really like getting you all charged up and then just play with you all day. I can almost hear you giggle as I run my finger over your face.



Yes , my dear iPhone, it's been a fun time. Being kept close by your invisible handcuffs, being able to access Twitter, Facebook, Words with Friends, WhatsApp, the WWW, just to name the most common ones I use, at all times. All the games that I have on you that I barely play but you always have them ready when I need them.

Even recently, when I jailbroke you, you did not complain, but only smiled with a skull instead of showing me your favourite apple as you used to. Ah, the vast possibilities that I've unlocked with that jailbreak - it turns you into a cool gadget into an AMAZING MONSTER.


However, recently I've been getting tired of a problem. A problem of your BATTERY. Why do you deplete so rapidly? Why does your energy trickle out even when I'm not doing anything? Why do you not last more than a day?
Please stop dropping faster than  a free falling man from a building.

Please stop falling like the leaves in the autumn. Please stop being the world's worst battery.

Love,
Me.

Why you should jailbreak your iPhone/iPod Touch

So, you have heard all about it. Your friends tell you to do it, but you have doubts. 

I'm here to convince you why you SHOULD jailbreak your device. In this post, I will tell you two general things:

a) Why you shouldn't be AFRAID to jailbreak
b) Why you should jailbreak <-- I'll focus more on this, talking about the functionality benefits that people don't mention enough.
and lastly I'll provide some sources which will teach you HOW to jailbreak and some important notes.


a) Why you shouldn't be AFRAID to jailbreak
The first thing many people think about is that it is illegal. However, it is NOT illegal. The only thing 'bad' is that your warranty becomes void with Apple. This is NOT a problem though, because assuming you are unlucky enough to have your phone actually break down and spoil somehow and you need to send it for repairs within your warranty period, you can simply 'unjailbreak' it via a simple iTunes restore:

"Plug in the iPhone and sync it to make sure you have a current backup. Then choose to restore (the firmware) it to factory settings from in iTunes. Then you can right click it and restore the backup (of thecontents) from the backup. The term restore is used for both actions, but they are two separate actions.
A backup of a jailbreaked phone can be restored onto a non-jailbreak firmware. That's not an issue (I did it when I upgraded to 2.1). All jailbreak apps and features will be gone, but all App Store apps, contacts, settings, etc, will be preserved."

(via http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=574128)

After which, you can just send it in to Apple and they won't know anything.

(Disclaimer - distribution of copyrighted material is still illegal, according to Singapore law. In other words, downloading  a cracked app (i.e. originally available on App Store) is as illegal as downloading a song from the Internet.)

The next thing people are worried about is that it will slow down their devices. This is also not true - I have been using my jailbroken device without any noticeable lag from the jailbreak. HOWEVER, that is because I don't use this thing called Winterboard, which I believe is the cause of lag.

In fact, many users do admit that jailbreaking does lag their device, which I noticed in the form of a 1s delay everytime i close/open apps, but I realized it was Winterboard causing this problem, so I just removed it.

Winterboard lets you customize your themes and icons like this. Notice how the default apps (e.g. Mail, Camera etc...) look different?

Winterboard is just for customizing themes and such, so if you don't mind the classy look of Apple, you can just not install it. (note - Winterboard has a ton of other uses too which I haven't really researched so if you don't mind abit of lag for some added customization, go ahead and use Winterboard :) )

There are TONNES of other useful stuff .

Ok enough of the grim stuff, on to why you SHOULD jailbreak your iPhone.

b) Why you SHOULD jailbreak your iPhone

1) FREE apps!!

This is the most obvious no-brainer reason - There are a ton of fun and cool apps on the App Store, but many of them are paid apps, and not all of us can afford or want to pay for those apps. With jailbreak, all these apps are FREE. 

WhatsApp @ USD 0.99 on the App Store and @ $0.00 when you Jailbreak!
For free SMSing, MMSing, and group conversations!

PES for free!

Final Fantasy 3 at USD 15 on the App store.. yes, they're mad. Totally ripping you off. FOR FREE WHEN YOU JAILBREAK.

Cut The Rope, one of the most fun games you can play, for FREE ONLY when you jailbreak!

And of course the all-time popular Angry Birds (now Rio!) for FREE!

Of course, this is just a very very small slice of all the available apps that you can get when you jailbreak. There are also many EXCLUSIVE apps that you can only have when you jailbreak!

2) Functionality
(blurry parts of screenshots are what I've edited out, not part of the jailbreak)

Non-JB users always overlook this point when they are considering whether to jailbreak their devices. After all, the allure of free apps is already quite big and unbelievable and the only reason why you should jailbreak right? WRONG.

What jailbreak does is bring you a whole new array of FUNCTIONALITY improvements that I don't know why Apple doesn't implement. Perhaps Apple will include a few in their iPhone 5. Who knows. I will start by listing these added functions:

Utilizing the Lock Screen

How would you describe the lock screen? Classy? Sleek? How about, USELESS? The screen shows close to nothing besides the time and date. When you have notifications, it'll only show if it's a missed call or a SMS - it does not show for other apps.
Other phones have RSS feeds, calendars, notifications on their lock screen. Why not the iPhone?

With jailbreak, this is what it can look like:

Accessing Settings

Let's say you are at home and want to use WiFi. How do you turn it on? Home button -> Settings -> Wifi

How about when your battery is running low and you want to turn off your 3G? Home button -> Settings -> Network -> 3G 

Ugh so many steps.

How about if your screen is too dim? Do you even know where the brightness function is? 

With jailbreak, everything is made easy:

Just swipe the top of the screen and...

VOILA!! This awesome function is called SBSettings, a jailbreak-exclusive app. Highly accessible settings, just swipe the top of the screen! You can also configure your bluetooth, data, etc, I removed those because I don't use those often. You can even configure how it looks by downloading additional themes!

Easy SMSing

Let's say you are playing your favourite game, Smurf Village. (Or whatever ridiculous lame game you play) Then you receive an SMS and it pops up on your screen. You want to reply it now. What happens? It tabs out of your game, opens your Messaging, and when you have completed the reply, you have to go back to your Home screen, and open the app again.

LONG WINDED YES?

With Quickreply (or biteSMS)...

.

.

This pops up instead.
And you can just hit 'Reply'...

Type your reply, hit 'Send'..

AND IT RETURNS TO YOUR APP IMMEDIATELY. You don't even leave the app!!
SO much more logical and awesome right!?

And even from your lock screen, if you receive an SMS, it looks like this:

You just have to double tap the text bubble to type a reply, and after you've sent, it just goes back to the lock screen!

Activator

This is in my opinion, one of the best reasons why you should jailbreak your iPhone. Before I explain what this does, I should share a concern I previously had - My Home button on my iPhone was always very slightly buggy, and I couldn't double-press it sometimes and sometimes it doesn't seem to respond on the first click.
Also, being just about the only button you use, it's bound to succumb to wear and tear!
So I was quite worried that over time, my Home button would become unusable and I would have to replace/fix it so I don't really like to press it too often.

With Activator, this concern is totally gone.

Activator is one of the basic jailbreak-only apps that you will most definitely get.

Basically what it does is create shortcuts via touch-screen gestures or button sequences. To make this clearer, I'll just give the example of my own current settings.

- When I'm using an app, I tap the Status Bar (the top of the screen with your battery, time, Singtel/Starhub/M1 sign) and swipe down and it goes back to the Home screen.

- Anywhere on my iPhone, I double tap the Status Bar and it brings up the multitasking function (which you otherwise have to double-press your Home button)

- When I'm at my Home screen, I can lock my phone by swiping down from the Status Bar.

-At the Lock Screen, double tapping my clock brings up my iPod controls

-Pressing Volume Up followed immediately by Volume Down opens my Messaging app from wherever I am.

No more over-pressing of the Home button!

You can basically open any app you want via a wide array of gestures such as Shake Device, Slide from Bottom, Slide from Bottom Left, Swipe Down from status bar, Swipe Left on status bar, combination of Volume button presses, etcetc..
You can also make these gestures perform other things like Lock your phone, simulate a press of the 'Home Button' (don't have to press it anymore!), Take Screenshot, etcetc.

The list is endless. It's up to YOU how you want to customize your phone to make it EVEN MORE convenient and handy to use!
This is such a simple function that Apple can implement and they'll be stupid not to add it to the iPhone5.




And while this is the end of this section, it is not the end of the functionality options available via Jailbreak. There are many other apps that I haven't discovered either, so go read up! You won't regret it!
.
.
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How To Jailbreak + Important information
There are 2 basic forms of a jailbreak - A tethered or an untethered jailbreak. A tethered jailbreak means that everytime you reboot your device, you will have to connect your iPhone to your computer. An untethered jailbreak means you can just.. use it as a normal iPhone even when rebooting. To put it simply, you should always get an untethered jailbreak if it's available.

I used http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSUr3S2Jm5c this link to do my (untethered) jailbreak (iOS 4.2.1), it's not a difficult process so just follow the instructions on the screen carefully.
However, at the time of this post, a tethered version of 4.3 is already out, and I would presume soon an untethered jailbreak for 4.3 will be out. So... you can just search youtube for another instructional video on how to do it for the newer version, though it'll probably be very similar.

And just to end off with some helpful notes:
* Backup your iPhone with iTunes before you jailbreak your device. Just connect it via iTunes and click Backup.
* You're going to need to Add Sources before you can get many of the useful customization apps from Cydia. Search Youtube for recommendations for top sources to add and HOW to add these sources.


Have any questions? Feel free to leave a comment or ask on the tagboard and I'll answer it asap :D

Starcraft 2 - Which race for a newbie?

Was doing some thinking and came to this conclusion - If you are a newbie starting off in Starcraft 2 and have absolutely no preference for race and just want to start playing the game, pick PROTOSS.

Let me explain why. (you can read on or just watch this video)
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8WnFMaoBEA]

A brief examination of the different races shows why Protoss is the easiest race for a new player to pick up. This is NOT the same as saying that Protoss is the easiest race to play - at the highest level, it's really quite different, and there are differing opinions as to which race is the so-called 'easiest' to play. But I'm talking about at the newbie level, at the basic level - Protoss is the easiest.

Let's first look at what I believe is the most difficult race : Zerg.

Why is Zerg the most difficult to pick up? In most scenarios, if you were to play a proper drawn out game (no cheese, all-ins), a Zerg player needs to go a fast -expand build to sustain his (weaker) army (weaker in terms of supply-wise - e.g. 200 vs 200 army) and economy. It is very macro heavy which may be hard for newbies to pick up.
In addition, getting a fast-expansion will mean learning HOW to defend it, which poses additional difficulties.
Most of all, it requires a delicate understanding of when to get Drones, and when to get an army. It also  has the most crucial 'economy mechanic' of Inject Larva - If you miss it too often, you can't get a good economy AND army up. (I'll explain why it's not so crucial for the other races below)
On top of a more difficult macro style to master, zerg engagements require good flanking and positioning, whereas the other 2 races generally can engage in a ball (of course, avoiding chokes etc, is impt)
Of course, this does not even include other mechanics like spreading Creep Tumors, when to get Overlords, etc (since it takes up larva too)


How about Terran? Well, as mentioned before, its economy mechanic of MULE/Scans are much easier to handle than Zerg - even if you miss a few MULEs, you can always drop 3-4 at once, or even use the energy for scans. It doesn't help you get more resources (just FASTER minerals) and is probably only crucial in clutch situations (perhaps after losing a base, and trying to catch up) so having some energy stocked up is good (for scanning cloaked units, for instance)
Why I deem it harder than Protoss is because it has much more different production buildings - 3 types in total for a typical game (e.g. a newbie friendly build like MMM), whereas Protoss typically only uses 2 (warpgates and  stargate/robo)
(Be clear that I'm talking for new players here - of course higher level players mix up their units more)

In addition, the whole 'queuing' up of units is something that new players will struggle with - It is common knowledge to more experienced players that you shouldn't queue up 2 many units at once, and while Toss don't face this problem with Warpgates, Terran have to handle multiple Barracks/Factories/Starports well.
Also, choice of addons? How many to get? Which addons? Protoss have no such headaches.

And while Terran armies generally can fight in a ball, there are many occasions where you'll WANT to spread out your army in an engagement, such as against Banelings, Colussus, etc, which are very very typical responses against a Terran army. This requires more micro and more skill and harder to learn too. (Which drives players to do a mech build which is newbie friendly but very gas intensive and needs multiple bases to handle, etc)


Now let's look at Protoss and their 'economy mechanic' of Chronoboost. You generally shouldn't miss too many chronoboosts in the early game even if you're new as there's nothing much happening- thus you will get your harvestors up and easily outnumber other races since you can produce them faster at the start.
As the game drags on, even if you  miss them it's ok, you can use them to chronoboost out units and upgrades! Which is what you WILL be using them for in the mid-late game anyway.

Production? Warpgates make production easy as pie. There's no need to even rally units, just warp warp warp warp. At the bronze-silver levels, I can easily win all games with just gateway-robo units. No problems at all.
Micro? Just move in a tight ball, and engage as such (of course general rules like Zealots in front, sentries away from fire, should be adhered to as much as possible, but this isn't that hard to manage) And with the gay unit Sentry, you can just spam Forcefields to cut the other army in half at chokes, etc. Not that hard to learn, but crazily effective.

It's so easy to play Protoss! Gosh. I still love my Zerg though.

Not convinced? Leave a comment below or a tag on the tagboard and I'll reply as soon as  I see it.