Recommendations for great apps

To all you Iphone and Ipod Touch folks out there:

So I finally purchased an ipod touch 32G that ive had my eye on for awhile. Im completely new to exploring apps and wondering if you guys could give me some insight on to some most excellent apps; free or not. And dont say 8-bit. That was the first one I bought.

Thanks in advance

 

DoodleJump is the most addicting game you will find. And Angry Birds. Archetype is a great Halo-wannabe. Soundhound is AWESOME for finding out those songs you hear and don't know the title of. Photoshop Express is a good free photo editing app. Amazon, eBay, and PayPal all have good apps.

 

Knights Rush - good beat 'em up game.
Frogatto - The classic platformer is back!
Archetype - The best online FPS.
Pro Zombie Soccer - Kicking a ball into zombies, awesome.
Backbreaker - This game doesn't need an explanation.
Flight Control - *plane crash* ........ wasn't me.
World of Magic - I think its a good game.
Zombieville - We all know why....
Fruit Ninja - Because chopping fruit is fucking fun!
Pocket God - Everything happens for a reason...
Monster Dash - Zombieville meets Catabalt.
Trenches - WWIII is upon us.
Angy Birds - They might be making a movie, thats how good it is.
Plants vs. Zombies - You should know why....
God Finger - Pocket God meets God.
Battle Bears - Good game, but I think "Battle Bears -1" is meant to be better.

Check out this site which offers a new free game everyday - there has been some good ones here and there.

 

Archetype = win. when im on the road or if i don't have ma psp

 

Street Fighter IV is pretty good. As is Guerrilla Bob, Wild West Guns, Monster Truck Nitro 2, Rolando, Assassin's Creed and Sonic The Hedgehog. If you use Skype, there's an app for that!

If you're into social networking, like facebook and twitter, there are good apps for those as well.

It really depends on what you are into. Read an article couple of days ago that said the App Store apparently has nearly 650,000 apps or something!

 

I'm a big fan of
Simple Note
Pomodoro Timer
EpicWin
Facebook (must have)
Calvetica
Beejive (For instant messaging there is no superior app)
Twitter for iPhone
AllRecipes Pro
Typography
Text Expander
1Password (never deal with website logins again, a must have)
and
Reeder

I have some games but I don't consider them must haves or anything, those are the apps that really make or break my experience.

 

MKH beat me to it. Doodle jump and Angry birds. Nuff said.

And of course the Facebook app.

 

Can anyone tell me whats wrong with jailbreakme.com? I remember someone saying never to use it...

 

It uses a security exploit to jailbreak your phone. The part you should be very, very, concerned about is that because of jailbreakme.com this exploit is now public and can be used to do other, more malicious things. Every single phone jailbroken this way is vulnerable to that exploit. Even though the site doesn't do anything malicious to USE the site your phone MUST be vulnerable to this exploit which can be done through a .pdf file.

The reason i think you should not jailbreak in the first place is that it opens a host of potential technical hazards to your use of the phone. Not to mention there is no one making sure apps downloaded through jailbreak repositories are safe, or do what they promise. It's LESS safe than the Android store, which has already had numerous and notable instances of apps needing to be taken down because they misused personal information.

 

The trail finder apps are good for any outdoor enthusiasts.

 

You're completely explaining this wrong, as in, making it sound like jailbreakme.com makes the phone vulnerable, which is not true.*

"Every single phone jailbroken this way running iOS 4.0 is vulnerable to that exploit."

iOS 4.0 has a PDF security flaw, which ANY site can use to exploit it. jailbreakme.com makes use of this exploit to Jailbreak the iDevice. Bonus: once you're jailbroken, you can apply a patch to fix this security flaw, instead of upgrading to 4.0.1 which also fixes it.

Forget about jailbreakme.com, or the complete notion of jailbreaking for a second -- if you're running iOS 4.0, your device is vulnerable to the PDF exploit. Jailbreaking has nothing to do with it. You have two ways to fix this: upgrade to 4.0.1, or jailbreak and patch using the exploit patch in Cydia that one of the dev team members made. Yes, I'm repeating myself, for good reason.

Secondly, your argument about Cydia is over-exaggeration. Why? Look at your computer, it acts in the exact same way. You should ALWAYS use caution whenever you download something off the internet ANYWHERE - that includes the Apple App Store, because guess what? Apple's not perfect. They let all sorts of things slip randomly. For all you know, you might get some sort of virus-behaving app that they missed the next time you download something.

So, I highly recommend you stop posting about stuff you don't know, and spreading FUD which is absolutely incorrect. Jailbreaking does not cause the exploit - iOS 4.0 has the exploit, which jailbreakme makes use of.

* [edit] Clarification: vulnerable to the exploit. Jailbreaking can still make the phone vulnerable depending on how the user behaves - see my next post.

 

1) I am not explaining it wrong.

How is jailbreakme.com NOT requiring the use of an exploit to work? The correct answer is that it DOES require that your phone have a security flaw that, until jailbreakme used it, was not widely known. There is nothing about the way I worded this that was misleading. The fact that you can download a third party patch that is unverified in any way to fix a security exploit is.. I'm gonna calli it questionable at best. My statement that every phone jailbroken that way is vulnerable remains true, it NEEDS to be vulnerable in order for the jailbreak to have worked at all. And you "can" apply a patch? Security nightmare I tell you.

Regarding the way your computer works you're also claiming I'm wrong where I'm not. While there may be similarities in your computer's vulnerability to viruses, etc., that does not make it OK to reproduce those same systemic flaws in the mobile world. Even the most free of free software communities agrees with the App Store philosophy because they practically invented it, in Linux it's just called a "Repository" of pre-compiled software that is maintained for your benefit as a user of that operating system. That's not an accident, it's being done because it's more secure.

I highly recommend YOU stop posting about stuff you don't understand and trying to lull people into complacency based on past vulnerabilities. Just because you're all pro-jailbreaking does not make what jailbreakme.com did alright in any way. If you think I'm posting FUD then fine, but you'll also note that I said I recommend against jailbreaking precisely because it opens your phone to the same vulnerabilities as your computer. The entire process of jailbreaking remains questionable from a security standpoint and will not be supported by Apple when things go wrong because you tried to deliberately circumvent the security structure.

P.S. when someone charges thousands of dollars on your credit cards after using a key logger to steal your information —*you can reverse those charges with a single phone call. Have you ever tried to tell AT&T you didn't send all those text messages?

 

Yes, jailbreakme requires the exploit to work, that's exactly what I said. What you said is that "Every single phone jailbroken this way is vulnerable to that exploit." - note your wording. You're spinning it to make it sound like it's all the fault of jailbreakme, instead of iOS - it's completely spun to sound like it's the fault of jailbreaking instead of the fault of the OS - there's no way you could extract from this sentence that the exploit is iOS 4.0's fault.

Just because jailbreakme made it popular, doesn't mean any other hacker couldn't have found the same exploit and made use of it. There's blackhats and whitehats everywhere always looking. I'm sure there's still plenty of exploits in iOS just waiting to be exploited. The dev team is working hard on finding them for jailbreaking purposes, but they're basically doing Apple a favour by finding these exploits so Apple can patch them. Not favourable for the dev team to for Apple to patch it, but hey, that's how their scene works. It's a cat&mouse game. They find the exploit, Apple fixes it. Secure OS! Look at that, jailbreaking making things secure? In a way, but it still makes the OS somewhat insecure if the user allows it to be.

Yes, you can apply a patch to fix the security issue. What's the issue here? If Apple operated differently, they could do the exact same thing, but they release their patches in form of OS updates (4.0.1). It seems like yet again you're trying to spin this somehow to make it sound insecure.

I'm not claiming you're wrong, I'm claiming you're spinning everything to make jailbreaking sound horrible. Who's to say what's "OK" and not in the mobile world? An operating system is an operating system. Plain and simple. Just because it's a mobile device, doesn't mean it's something special. I have a very large mobile device, it's called a laptop - I can make calls on it, surf the web, download apps, send text messages. The only thing special about a mobile device is it's size. Everyone who jailbreaks should know that using Cydia is at their own risk. If they're the kind of person that gets viruses every week on their computer, I highly recommend against jailbreaking since they're bound to fuck up their device. Otherwise, if you're an experienced person who can distinguish between what's a virus or not, then go ahead and jailbreak if you want, it's your device, you should be able to do what you want with it, since you already understand the consequences of your actions.

I'm not posting FUD at all - I'm just clarifying facts that you're mudding up. I'm a computing science major, programmer, blah blah blah - I know how things work. I'm not just some person who reads crap on the internet. You, on the other hand are spinning things left and right, and putting words in my mouth. I never said that what jailbreakme.com did was alright either. Please point out where I did that. If you read my post, I'm correcting your spinning making it sound like jailbreakme is at fault for the exploit, which it's not. They never created the exploit, they just found it, just like any other hacker could. I also never advocated jailbreaking either, so again, where did I say that? You're putting words in my mouth.

Seriously, I'm fine with you being against jailbreaking, but please, don't make it sound like jailbreaking caused the exploit, they merely found it. Quit spinning things towards your agenda and state the plain exact facts, and then I won't say you're spreading FUD.

[edit] Also, the only difference jailbreaking makes is allowing the user to have root access. The OS is still completely secure after jailbreaking*. It becomes unsecure from the user. So, install Cydia apps and crap at your own risk, just like how you install any app at your own risk. Any OS is as secure as you operate it. The insecurity is at fault of the user, not jailbreaking. Sure, jailbreaking gives the user the ability to do it, but it's the user who's still at fault for jailbreaking their device when they're not responsible enough for it.

* exception to this, is SSH having default username/password, but one could argue that Apple's at fault for having a default username/password that's known. This concept can be applied to routers. Solution: change the passwords just like you would change them on a router when you get it. Nothing special here.

 

Jailbreakme did an incredibly irresponsible thing by releasing this public instead of telling Apple about it. There is no excuse for that, none. How many phones did they instantly make targets because of this?

Also YES a mobile device IS contextually unique particularly because you have a per-message charge on text, your minutes, etc., whereas you do not on your computer. Imagine if your computer charged you $0.04 for every email you sent, you got a virus, and it started spamming people from your computer. You're gonna be mighty shocked when you see that bill. Good luck talking a telcom out of making you pay it either.

I did nothing to imply that jailbreaking caused the exploit, even in my original wording I said every phone that is jailbroken this way is vulnerable. I was unaware of the "patch" but forgive me if I don't trust a third party patch over Apple's. That's me not knowing about the "patch" which is of unknown quality.

As for giving the user root access what is the number one rule that everyone in the free software world tells their friends not to do? Run as root. As a "computer science major, a programmer, blah blah blah" you should know that people, most people, are not capable of understanding the nuances of these machines and even the most literate among us will, inevitably, fuck something up by running as root. That default behavior is one of the things that makes/made windows so damn vulnerable in the first place. Jailbreaking quite literally breaks the two most basic user-land security rules: Don't run as root, and don't download shit you can't trust. You're right in that the impetus for safety at that point is then transferred to the user, and 90% of those users don't have a clue and you know it. Recommending jailbreaking to them is irresponsible.

You're right I'm not a programmer, but I've been heavily involved in those communities of people that do program (many of my friends are from MIT and Stanford) like the Ubuntu project and so it's not like I'm some ignorant commoner reading stuff on /. I understand the inner workings of these systems fairly well, I just don't speak their language. People recommending jailbreaking are under some guise that big bad apple is being a controlling bastard and you should get free! hence the name jailbreaking. The reality is far less dogmatic, people do not understand this technology and cannot all be expected to. People like you and me might be able to jailbreak and maintain some semblance of security on our phones but I would never give a jailbroken phone to anyone without something approaching my level of knowledge. Frankly, if a person has to ask what jailbreaking is they're not qualified to be able to use it in my mind. The people who ARE informed enough to jailbreak do so at their own risk and I have no pity for them — I just wish they would quit talking people into adopting behavior that we're trying to get people to stop using (running as root, downloading apps randomly, etc.,)

Also, dipping back into the context of the phone vs computer argument:

When was the last time you NEEDED your computer to be completely functional in an emergency situation? I can't think of one life of death situation where I'm gonna need my computer, but I'd sure as hell need my phone in them. If some virus rendered my phone inoperative in a situation like a car accident or a medical emergency death for someone might be the result. Obviously that is an extreme case but when you cut off someone's phone you cut off their access to lots of emergency services when you cut off their computer with a virus you cut off their access to lolcats and facebook.

You cannot tell me these machines are the same.

 

Yes, it's true that releasing the PDF exploit in such a widescale manner was a horrible thing. I'll agree with you on that. Personally I don't like how the mess turned out at all, but it's happened and been resolved. Apple fixed it in a reasonable amount of time, so that's what matters. Besides, 4.0 is no longer supported, since 4.0.2 is now, so it's a non-issue, but for that short while, yes, that window was open.

Skype. You can send text messages with it, make phone calls with it, all charged. Virus gets a hold of your Skype again, well damn. Then there's the viruses that attack your financial accounts - that's even worse. Gotta love going to your bank and finding out you just lost a thousand some dollars from a virus. You don't do your online banking on your phone usually, so I think the stakes are much worse on your computer still. Couple of days ago there was something about iTunes/Paypal being exploited and people finding they're missing a shitload of money.

"I said every phone that is jailbroken this way is vulnerable" -- you said it again. Saying that is completely flawed. My whole point here is that I'm trying to get you to say "I said every phone that is jailbroken this way running iOS 4.0 is vulnerable" Note that I crossed out "jailbroken this way". Why? The phone doesn't need to be jailbroken at all, it simply needs to be running iOS 4.0. Perhaps I'm wrong in thinking you're spinning things, instead you're just confused, since you made the same mistake again. This is what I've been arguing about this whole time, and why I posted. iOS 4.0 is vulnerable alone. Once you understand this, and start actually saying it, instead of saying that the exploit is due to jailbreaking that way (which again, it's not), then we can finish our discussion.

The iOS way of jailbreaking is a flawed way, honestly. If I undersand how Android rooting works (haven't had any experience with it yet, but some reading tells me this), when an app needs root access, you get a permission dialog. So at least you're aware of what's going on slightly more. You don't get that in iOS - I'm not sure if this is Apple's fault or the jailbreaking scene's fault. Although, still, most things aren't run in root anyway, afaik. Most people just jailbreak it so they can theme their phone, download some tools that can make a couple of tweaks to fix some annoyances they have, and then they forget about it. It's not like everyone's constantly playing in console under root. I'm fairly sure there's probably a bunch of people who don't know the password (console starts as user), although this is insecure as they don't know their device is now vulnerable over SSH (which is the first thing they were warned to change). Still, it's worrying that you have the idiots that download anything. The cracked paid apps worry me the most - Installous/apptrakr. Those are the most innocent ones that people forget could be easily spiked with malicious crap like stealing your data. At least Cydia warns you when you try to add their sources, so the badass hackers aren't all that horrible after all.

You could easily jailbreak the device, install a couple of things like Winterboard and sbsettings, and then forget about Cydia and everything else that comes with jailbreaking. Your device would be as secure as iOS is (once you changed the passwords for SSH, but this is a local network issue), since jailbreaking didn't introduce any new remote vulnerabilities. The second you start downloading untrusted applications, and treating Cydia like the Apple App Store, where you think everything is sugar and spice, is when you start on your slippery slope. People need to be taught what jailbreaking means and the dangers of it. Unfortunately they somehow still haven't learned from their experience with their computer and the internet.

As for the emergency situation stuff - I rely on email quite heavily. If my internet access was cut off, I'd be fucked. Imagine if you depended on Skype or Google Voice, or whatever else, which a lot of people tend to do. I personally haven't had a phone that I could use for calling in a while (just texting).

Personally, I think one-step jailbreaking methods shouldn't exist. This makes it easy for users to go into la la land. I'd rather them be frustrated with it and give up, so they don't fuck up their phone later.

 

So... in the event of a car accident you would.. text 911? I'm just curious.

 

No clue, actually. I wonder if that even works... I'll get back to you on that sometime, but I'm getting an Android in a week, so eh. Either way, you're avoiding my whole point of this discussion, and turning it to something different (which we seem to agree on to an extent).

The PDF exploit is due to iOS 4.0, and not caused at all by jailbreakme.com. Do you understand this? By affirming, you're going to stop saying "every phone that is jailbroken this way is vulnerable" (which you've said multiple times), because that sentence implies that the act of the jailbreak caused the exploit, which is false. Honestly, I'm not writing these walls of text for nothing.

And yes, before you say it again, jailbreakme caused the exploit to go hugely public, which is all horrible and dramatic (I'm sure plenty of kittens died for this) - fine. It still doesn't mean that it created the exploit, which you keep saying. You're also confusing me for someone who actually cares about how an exploit becomes known (I prefer it to be privately disclosed, but I'm not going to go whining about it otherwise).

One way or another, the exploit's there and it's a matter of time till someone finds it. Not everyone has morals, so you can't ever win. In order for a product to be ultimately secure, it needs to be constantly attacked to make sure it is secure. If someone finds an exploit, fix it and move on - plain and simple. You can't go running around with your hands on your head hoping that no one will be trying to penetrate your security.