Monday 14 April 2014

JailbreakCon 2014 day two


JailbreakCon 2014 day two


Today was the second and final day of JailbreakCon 2014 and was filled with lots of talks by some of the most authoritative figures on the jailbreak scene. From new app announcements to the history of Springtomize, there was a lot of talented people in one room. Here's an overview of some of the talks that happened this year:


Our second and final day of JailreabreakCon kicked off with Josh Tucker — designer of apps such as CallBar and many more — talking about IX/UX design and how to take an idea to reality. He touched on topics such as partnerships and why who you choose to work with is so important and how it ultimately effects the end product. Josh also places a particular emphasis on the fact that you don't have to be a master programmer to have a great idea, that's where partnerships and building a network are important.



We also heard from Steven DiFranco, better known as iH8sn0w to the jailbreak community, on Activation Lock — a feature specific to iOS 7 and above. Some of the key points were how Activation Lock works in comparison to how Find My iPhone worked in previous versions of iOS. iH8sn0w also provided an overview of how Apple's activation server, better known as Albert, processes activation tickets and why Activation Lock is more effective than previous versions of Find My iPhone, which could easily be worked around with a simple DFU restore.



Next up was Filippo Bigarella talking about his experience creating Springtomize and how it has evolved through three generations. His experiences were a great example of how products get better over time through experience. Filippo also touched on the real issue of piracy in the jailbreak community. There are currently over 900,000 installs of Springtomize but only 8% of them are legitimate installs. App Store apps aren't the only apps that get pirated, jailbreak developers are heavily affected as well.



Ryan Petrich then followed with a talk on how to build successful jailbreak tweaks and apps. From coding to testing to releasing a finished product, Ryan touched on the importance of having normal people — aka your non-coding friends — test your app and provide honest feedback. There are also benefits to creating a well thought out preferences pane with one of the most important aspects being have an On/Off toggle since reviewers appreciate that — and yes, thanks Ryan, we do appreciate that!


After Ryan's talk there was a brief break for lunch before Britta Gustafson, Cydia's Community Manager, took the stage to discuss JailbreakQA, iPhoneDevWiki, and /r/jailbreak. After a brief overview of Reddit, Britta provided attendees with some information on how to use the Jailbreak reddit as well as why it's so important to the jailbreak community. Not only does it help members find answers to commonly asked questions, it's a great place for jailbreak enthusiasts and developers alike to share ideas, provide feedback, and brainstorm together.


Next up was Kevin Bradley, better know as nitoTV and is responsible for Seas0nPass for Mac and most of the jailbreak software we have seen for the Apple TV 2nd generation. Kevin's talk centered around why there hasn't been an exploit for the Apple TV since the A4, which is mainly attributed to the BootROM and how small it is in comparison to the iPhone and iPad. There also isn't a mobilebackup2 available to fall back on to exploit.



Surenix was up next and talked about his experience with interface and design and how he got started. Some of his projects include iRetina and iRetina+ for SBSettings as well as popular themes such as ayecon and ayeris. Surenix also talked about his experience with creating the Mobile Substrate icon and what it was like working with saurik — if you're wondering there were 17 revisions before they settled on what we all know so well today. More exciting yet, Surenix gave a live demo of auki which is a joint project with Benno that focuses on creating the ultimate messaging experience on iPhone. It's now available for purchase in Cydia starting today for $3.99.



The next talk by pod2g detailed his involvement with the Chromic Dev Team and then later, the evad3rs and the roll he played in the many exploits and jailbreak tools he contributed to. A lot of his talk focuses on the dynamic and working relationship between different Dev Teams. He also spent some time highlighting the main differences between iOS jailbreak and root for Android.


winocm wasn't able to attend but managed to give a short talk over FaceTime about low level hardware and kernel exploits, something that not many hackers know a lot about. He also gave a brief overview of Darwin and kloader. No, there is no release date for an iOS 7.1 jailbreak, so we'll have to keep crossing our fingers for that one!


Last but definitely not least, saurik, creator of Cydia, took the stage to talk about jailbreak and education. His talk focused on the difference between software engineering and computer science and how current college curriculums are applicable in iOS programming and design. More importantly, saurik emphasized that it's never to late to start learning to program.


After saurik's talk there was a brief Q & A where attendees were able to ask all the day's speakers any questions they had. That brought us to the end of the second and final day of JailbreakCon 2014. If you weren't able to attend JailbreakCon 2014 this year and missed my day one recap, you can hit the link below to check it out!


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