When Apple released iOS 4.2.1 last month, it was already possible to jailbreak any iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad running the operating system using the Redsn0w jailbreak utility. There’s just one problem: Redsn0w provides a tethered jailbreak, which means that any time you want to reboot your iOS device you need to connect it to a computer using a USB cable. The same is true if your phone battery dies.

But now it looks like an untethered jailbreak for iOS 4.2.1 is coming soon. Famed hacker MuscleNerd has posted a video showing a jailbroken iPod touch 4th generation rebooting. There are no wires anywhere in sight, but after rebooting MuscleNerd opens the Cydia store and other apps that are only available on jailbroken devices.

The new tools aren’t available yet, but when they are you’ll probably be able to find instructions at the iPhone Dev Team blog.

You can checkout the video after the break.

via 9to5Mac

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Apple’s AirPrint technology is a nifty tool that lets you send print jobs from supported iOS devices including an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad running iOS 4.2.1 to a supported internet-connected printer. Unfortunately right now that means that a handful of HP printers work out of the box. While Apple had originally promised that AirPrint would also work with almost any printer connected to your Mac or PC, that feature isn’t currently available… from Apple.

It turns out there are at least two third party apps, however, which will let you send print jobs to any printer connected to your computer. Printopia gets the job done quite nicely for OS X, while AirPrint Activator works for Windows.

Printopia costs $9.95, and lets you print from any printer connect to your Mac… or any printer connected to your network. It doesn’t matter if it’s physically connected to your computer via a USB cable or through an Airport wireless connection.

You can also use Printopia to “print” to a PDF file and send it to your computer or upload to Dropbox.

AirPrint Activator for Windows works with Windows 32-bit and Windows 64-bit systems. The free app lets you send print jobs to any shared printer on your network. You’ll have to enable AirPrint on your Windows firewall, but that’s about it for the restrictions.

Update: TUAW also spotted a new free app for Mac called AirPrint Hacktivator. I’ll give you one guess as to what it does.

via Download Squad

The Apple iPad has a switch on the side which was originally designed to lock the screen orientation so that your screen wouldn’t keep flipping while you were trying to hold the iPad and read a book or web site in bed. But when Apple launched iOS 4.2 for the iPad recently, the software update changed that button from a screen lock button to a mute button.

You can still lock the screen orientation, but you have to double-click the home button, drag the taskbar to the right, and hit an on-screen lock icon. It’s not nearly as convenient.

Many users preferred the old system, but Apple doesn’t officially let users remap button functions. That’s where third party apps for jailbroken devices come in, and developer Nicolas Haunold has been kind enough to write an app called NoMute. It’s available as a free download from the Cydia store for apps that run on jailbroken iPhones, iPads, and iPods touch.

As you’d expect from the name, NoMute does one thing: It switches the Mute button on iPads running iOS 4.2 back into a screen orientation button.

If you’ve already jailbroken your iPad, you’re good to go. If not, you can use the redsn0w tool to get started.

via Download Squad

One of the most talked about features in iOS 4.2 (and Apple TV OS 4.1) is support for AirPlay, which lets you stream video from an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad to an Apple TV over your home network. Unfortunately, out of the box this feature only works with the default video app. Third party apps like Netflix, VLC, and others aren’t supported — or rather, video from those apps is not supported. You can stream audio from some apps to an Apple TV.

The folks at TUAW decided not to take this sitting down, and they’ve put together a hack that lets you send video from third party apps to an Apple TV.

Right now TUAW’s Erica Sadun refers to the hack as “pre-alpha,” and “a bit unstable.” You may have to reboot from time to time. But right now it’s the only game in town if you want to send third party video from your iDevice to an Apple TV. Oh yeah, you’ll clearly need to jailbreak your device in order to get this working at all.

Hopefully Apple will officially add AirPlay support for third party apps eventually, which would eliminate the need for this kind of hack.

A number of users are reporting that after upgrading their mobile devices to iOS 4.2.1 the Music app no longer shows any songs. It turns out that the update doesn’t actually remove those tracks — it just hides them in some cases, for some reason.

I didn’t have any problems with iOS 4.2.1 hiding the songs on my iPod touch. But if you do have a problem, it looks like there’s a five step plan that can help:

1. Connect your iOS device to a computer with a USB cable.
2. Click the arrow next to your iPhone or iPod touch in the “Devices” section to expand the menu.
3. Select Music.
4. Play a song from the list on your computer.
5. Sync your device again.

That’s it. Once you’ve gone through those steps, all of your missing music should show up again in the Music app on your iOS device.

via TechBlog

Apple launched iOS 4.2.1 for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad today. It’s available for download today — just connect your mobile device to your computer and launch iTunes. If you don’t get an update notice, select your mobile device from iTunes and click the Update button to check for the latest software update.

While the update brings a number of new features to iPhone and iPod touch users, the big news is iPad support. This is the first version of iOS 4.x that will run on the iPad, which means that iPad users will finally be able to multitask, group apps into folders, change the home screen background, and perform other actions that have been available on smaller devices for months. It also means that Game Center will be available for the iPad.

Apple is also bringing AirPlay technology to all three devices, allowing users to stream music, videos, and photos from an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad to an AppleTV.

As we’d been hearing, it looks like AirPrint functionality will be available — but it will only allow you to send print jobs from iOS to a supported WiFi-enabled printer including several recent models from HP. The press release doesn’t make any mention of sending print jobs to your Windows or Mac PC to pass along to a connected printer.

In a surprise announcement, Apple has also removed the Find My iPhone feature from the subscription-based MobileMe service. Users can now find missing devices from the web by installing the free Find My iPhone app on and iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. The app will help show where your mobile device is on a web-based map, and it will also let you display a message or play a sound on your phone.

The OS update also adds support for TV program rentals.

Apple says iOS 4.2 will work with the iPad, iPhone 3G and newer services, second, third, and fourth generation iPod touch models. Multitasking and some other features will only work on the iPhond 3GS and up and the 3rd generation iPod touch or newer. Find My iPhone is only available on the latest devices including the iPad, newest iPod touch, and the iPhone 4.

One of the new feature Apple had been promoting for the upcoming iOS 4.2 mobile operating system was a feature called AirPrint, which would let you send print jobs from an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad directly to a supported printer or to any shared printer on your home network as long as it was connected to a PC running Windows or OS X 10.6.5. But now it looks like Apple may have nixed the support for shared network printers.

MacStories has received a number of tips suggesting that you’ll be able to send AirPrint directly to of supported printers from HP. But Windows and Mac AirPrint support has been cancelled… at least for now.

Word on the street is that developers using earlier builds of iOS 4.2 and beta builds of OS X 10.6.5 were able to use AirPrint with shared printers… but that it may have been too buggy, causing Apple to cancel the feature for now. Hopefully if the rumors are true, they just mean that PC and Mac support has been delayed, not ended altogether. It’d be nice to be able to use AirPrint without having to buy a new printer.

There are plenty of iOS apps for making music. They range from metronomes to virtual instruments to auto-tune apps. But soon we’ll actually start to see apps for serious music production thanks to support for MIDI control which is baked into the upcoming iOS 4.2.

Basically the new version of Apple’s mobile operating system will allow you to either use an iPad Camera Connection kit to form a USB MIDI connection or a WiFi connection.

This will effectively let you run MIDI capable software on your mobile device, connect to a MIDI instrument, and use your iPhone or iPad as a digital music controller, recorder, or other tool.

Create Digital Music has more details, plus a rundown of hardware and software tools that let you use MIDI with an iOS device with or without IOS 4.2.

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