Hey all, if any of you, like me, have been stuck without AnkiMini because there was no jailbreak available for your device, you can now rejoice:

http://www.spiritjb.com

It works on all devices which can run 3.1.2 and 3.1.3 firmwares, and it's untethered (so you can restart your device without losing the JB).

It's real, safe and I just used it. Finally, I can have a decent anki experience in my pocket (the reason I bought the iPhone in the first place).

Sweet Mother Of God!

Guessing you are using a 3.1.3 ? before I tear down my iPhone, it's still working for you?
I've been stuck without my phone and needing to GPS where the hell I am more than a few times recently and having to find a netcafe to do a tethered JB is a massive pain in the arse. This will (hopefully) be a lifesaver. Cheers!

Yes, I'm on a new bootrom iPhone 3Gs with 3.1.3. Yeah it's working perfectly, I've been following all the JB devs on twitter waiting for this to happen and the iPhone dev-team are all supporting this one.

In about 2-3 months there will be an official native Anki on iPhone, you could just wait

My exams are in a month, and since there is absolutely no harm in jailbreaking, no need to wait!

Blahah Wrote:My exams are in a month, and since there is absolutely no harm in jailbreaking, no need to wait!

I consider myself a geek, and usually do these kind of hacks. However, when it comes to jailbreaking I'm worried invaliating my warrently or killing my shiney new itouch.

Thoughts? What are the advantages apart from being to run Anki mini?

thurd Wrote:In about 2-3 months there will be an official native Anki on iPhone, you could just wait

Where's this information from?

Ryuujin27 Wrote:

thurd Wrote:In about 2-3 months there will be an official native Anki on iPhone, you could just wait

Where's this information from?

Anki group on Google groups:
Latest thread

aphasiac Wrote:

Blahah Wrote:My exams are in a month, and since there is absolutely no harm in jailbreaking, no need to wait!

I consider myself a geek, and usually do these kind of hacks. However, when it comes to jailbreaking I'm worried invaliating my warrently or killing my shiney new itouch.

Thoughts? What are the advantages apart from being to run Anki mini?

It's not possible to kill your itouch just by jailbreaking - you can always do a restore (as jailbreaking occurs at the firmware level, and DFU mode will always let you replace the entire firmware through iTunes). Your warranty is invalid whilst the jailbreak is applied, but once you restore the official firmware your warranty is valid again - there is no way to tell if a device has been previously jailbroken.

Other advantages to jailbreaking include some really great JB-only apps such as (very small sample):
SBSettings (review here http://goo.gl/i47g) - gives you a settings panel which is called by swiping your finger across the status bar - it has switches to quickly turn on/off anything on your phone (e.g wifi, 3g, bluetooth, SSH, wifi) and change settings without closing the current application)
ProSwitcher (review here http://goo.gl/ibtS) - awesome and beautiful multitasking with a palm-pre look. You can keep one application open whilst accessing another one and switch between them easily.
Winterboard - lets you fully customise your iphone SpringBoard (the visual shell of the iphone OS) including changing icon themes, full phone themes, customise the lock screen, change your background image etc. You can also get further addons which allow you to have e.g. 5 icons in the dock, rotate the screen so you can see the homescreen in landscape mode, etc.
Intelliscreen - customise the lock screen to display information such as emails, to-do items, calendar events, weather etc.
snes4iphone and n64iphone - pretty good emulators for various consoles (snes and n64 in this case). I can play Super Mario 64 really quite well on my iPhone 3Gs.
Categories - lets you organise your icons into folders, which makes it a bit nicer to navigate (don't have to scroll sideways ten times to find an app)

There are also loads of apps for making custom ringtones and setting songs from your music library as ring tones.

I know you have an iTouch, not an iPhone, but there are some other cool things for iPhones such as:
My3G - tricks Wi-Fi only apps into thinking they are on Wi-Fi when there is only a 3G connection. Many apps restrict internet usage to Wi-Fi only, and this gets around that restriction.
MyWi - turns your iPhone into a wireless hotspot, sharing the 3G connection. This allows you to tether a laptop wirelessly to your phone to share the 3G link. This has been really handy a few times.

There are also hundreds of other apps, both free and paid, which are only available through Cydia, RockApp, Icy or other stores and non-apple repositories.

Themes, app folders and multitasking are all in Iphone OS4 (admittedly that's not out until September).

Emulators + tons of new apps does sound tempting, but I reckon I'd end up with the same issue i've had with my hacked Xbox 1.0, Wii and DS w/ flashcard- if you suddenly have access to unlimited free apps and games, you end up downloading hundreds and never playing any of them..

My other worry is I'm starting an Iphone development project in a few weeks, and I'm worried about invalidating that somehow..

iPhones suck! Down with the Man aka Steve whatshisface, raiding innocent journalists' homes and kicking babies. ;p

aphasiac Wrote:Themes, app folders and multitasking are all in Iphone OS4 (admittedly that's not out until September).

Emulators + tons of new apps does sound tempting, but I reckon I'd end up with the same issue i've had with my hacked Xbox 1.0, Wii and DS w/ flashcard- if you suddenly have access to unlimited free apps and games, you end up downloading hundreds and never playing any of them..

My other worry is I'm starting an Iphone development project in a few weeks, and I'm worried about invalidating that somehow..

I've been using OS 4 since the first dev release, and I think the final release is actually due on June 6th. Folders in OS4 are much better than the JB equivalent, they are actually really elegantly done in the OS4 implementation. However, themes are NOT a feature of OS4, you are simply able to change the background. Icon themes, lock screen widgets etc are not in OS4. Multitasking IS in OS4 but it really, really sucks. It doesn't actually keep all the apps running, it just restarts them when you select them from the dock. In future, apps will have to specifically implement the multitasking features of OS4 before true multitasking is available for any app. The JB version of multitasking is much nicer.

I agree with the downloading loads of apps and never using them problem, but then I do that from the normal appstore anyway. The point is there are some really useful apps available JB which you can't get in the app store. I've only installed about 10 jailbroken apps and they've all been excellent (compared to the 150 or so junk apps I've got from app store, with about 20 really good ones).

Jailbroken phones are actually useful for iphone development as you don't have to join the developers program (with the $99 fee) because you can self-sign apps. Having a jailbroken phone doesn't compromise your position as a dev - there's really no way for apple to find out.

However, I completely understand that jailbreaking isn't for everyone. I wouldn't want to encourage anyone to do something they don't feel comfortable doing, I just wanted to dispel all the myths because it's really not a risky process.

Jailbreaking allows you to download OpenSSH as well letting you move files and junk from and to your ipod wirelessly.

Jailbreaking would be worth the minimal effort for just the apps available in Cydia. The fact that you can do even more with it just makes it even more awesome. (Personally I had a lot of use for it when I developed iPhone apps since I didn't have to pay the dev fee, but it was quite a lot more effort to get Xcode to work with the ipod touch properly.)

thurd Wrote:

Ryuujin27 Wrote:

thurd Wrote:In about 2-3 months there will be an official native Anki on iPhone, you could just wait

Where's this information from?

Anki group on Google groups:
Latest thread

Yes!!!!

I wonder if Resolve has actually rewritten the library or if he has used pyobjc or something... because apparently, you're not allowed to do that in the new agreement for Iphone OS 4.

"Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited)."

Which would mean that a Python program wouldn't be accepted even though it was made to work by pyObjC.

I have had to rewrite it all. Give me some credit - I'm not going to expend effort on something that is clearly against Apple's T&C.

Resolve is Damien Elmes? Neat-o! I didn't know you were a member of these forums...

I'm looking forward to the new clients, keep up the great work! I can't imagine learning Japanese without Anki...

Thanks :-) I'm glad to hear you're finding it useful!

Grinkers Wrote:Resolve is Damien Elmes? Neat-o! I didn't know you were a member of these forums...

I'm looking forward to the new clients, keep up the great work! I can't imagine learning Japanese without Anki...

I agree, without this wonderful piece of software my japanese learning wouldn't have gotten far at all. Definitely have to donate before the end of summer.

ta12121 Wrote:I agree, without this wonderful piece of software my japanese learning wouldn't have gotten far at all. Definitely have to donate before the end of summer.

I'm planning on it too. I'm currently between visas, schools, and work right now, but that'll be sorted in a couple months. I can't wait to help support what basically made my Japanese learning possible.

I've been happily using Anki as a user, but I also can't wait to study the code/algorithms too. It's amazing how such a simple little program/formula like Anki can completely change the way we remember things.

Back more on topic, who else hates apple and wants an Android phone? Hopefully by time my Softbank contract is up, there'll be more Android options in Japan!

This was released a few days ago. There's a 1+ month waiting list though, unfortunately: http://mb.softbank.jp/mb/product/X/09wi/...html#x06ht

I'll have to keep an eye on it, and see how much it'd cost to change phones with my contract. I'll probably just "tough it out", and maybe next year there'll be an Android phone with infra-red! Although then I'll miss having somebody trying to take a picture of my QR-code on a bumpy train. That's always a fun game.

Ok, I got my iPod Touch jailbroken. I installed SSH (changed the passwd naturally), then installed Terminal and AnkiMini. Set my info to download my decks.

Now comes the fun part of getting media onto the iPod. That's the part that seems a bit more complicated, though I guess it's to be done via ssh? Let the fun begin.

What I like about the idea of AnkiMini is I can immediately show off to anyone the benefits of Anki. That you don't have to be attached to a laptop or the internet will be a big boost to try to convince my wife to use it.

Grinkers Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:I agree, without this wonderful piece of software my japanese learning wouldn't have gotten far at all. Definitely have to donate before the end of summer.

I'm planning on it too. I'm currently between visas, schools, and work right now, but that'll be sorted in a couple months. I can't wait to help support what basically made my Japanese learning possible.

I've been happily using Anki as a user, but I also can't wait to study the code/algorithms too. It's amazing how such a simple little program/formula like Anki can completely change the way we remember things.

Back more on topic, who else hates apple and wants an Android phone? Hopefully by time my Softbank contract is up, there'll be more Android options in Japan!

Same here, also yea almost everyone I've been talking to says get an android vs an ipod. So I might just do that by the end of the summer.

Nukemarine Wrote:Now comes the fun part of getting media onto the iPod. That's the part that seems a bit more complicated, though I guess it's to be done via ssh?

You can do it manually by SSH using FTP (you'll need to put an FTP server on your iPhone), or you can copy them using a GUI program over USB like Diskaid (http://www.digidna.net/products/diskaid). You need to copy the media folder for the deck (keeping the original name) to /var/mobile/.anki on the iPhone. The easiest way is to use Diskaid to transfer them to /var/mobile (Diskaid can't see the .anki folder) then SSH into iphone and type:

Code:

mv /var/mobile/MEDIAFOLDERNAME /var/mobile/.anki/

This moves the folder into the right place. After that, ankimini should just work with all the media files.