9 ms·

Whited00r: iOS Community Custom Firmware

118 points by krrrh 12y ago

quarterto 12y ago
This is in fact iOS 3.x skinned to look like iOS 7. This means absolutely nothing in the App Store is compatible.
- FreakyT 12y ago
  Exactly! I installed this on my original iPhone at one point, and it was a complete waste of time. Apple's goal is to ensure that old iDevices are 100% useless by refusing to update them, and this project does absolutely nothing to rectify that.
  - dtech 12y ago
    I'm no fan of Apple, but this is baseless Apple bashing. "Refusing" to update old devices is certainly reasonable. You cannot continue to support 7 year old phones when there is so much (hardware) development, it would either make them unsuitably slow or deprive newer models of features. iPhone 4 (06-2010) received it's last (?) update in 06-2014, 4 years of support, other devices have had similar durations of support. Compare that to Google: Nexus One (01-2010) never received 4.0 (10-2011): less than 2 years, Nexus S 11-2010 to 10-2012: 2 years, Nexus S 10-2011 to 07-2013: less than 2 years.
    - jwr 12y ago
      Actually, iPhone 4 should never have received iOS 7. The update crippled people's phones: the software ran so slow, that in some cases I was unable to answer the call before it timed out! Subsequent updates made the situation slightly more bearable, but still bad. I would much rather have Apple flat-out refuse to provide updates for devices which are unable to handle the new bloated software.
      - freehunter 12y ago
        I'm unable to do that on my iPhone 5c sometimes. The screen just doesn't respond when I try to pick up. And it was made for iOS7.
        wvenable 12y ago
        As an iPhone 5 user, I have experienced the same thing. A reboot fixes it. More than likely the problem is more frequent/pronounced the slower the device is.
      - gurkendoktor 12y ago
        iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G and iOS 5 on the first iPad have been the same. They could come out of it looking generous if they would allow us to downgrade our devices again...but all I hear is "your device is practically bricked, where's your credit card?"
        slantyyz 12y ago
        >> iOS 5 on the first iPad have been the same Man, I would pay a small fee to Apple to be able to do that. I bought a maxed out iPad 1 when it was released and it was basically unusable in 24 months. I expected to be able to use it for 3y.
      - dubya 12y ago
        The initial release was pretty bad, but subsequent ones are fine. Safari, for example, is at least as fast as before. More annoying are third party developers testing only on new hardware. A phone that can run "Infinity Blade" should not take two minutes to start "Threes".
        slantyyz 12y ago
        >> The initial release was pretty bad, but subsequent ones are fine. Well, it seems there is some variability on this, so the better response may be "YMMV". iOS7 on my iPhone 4 (including the latest updates) -- just made it unusable -- and keep in mind, most of what I do are just the core apps, Safari, RSS and Read Later. I basically had the same issues with the last supported iOS versions on the original iPad and iPhone 3G. The pattern I notice is that Apple tends to offer one OS upgrade too many on older devices, which is basically what led me to leave iOS. The refreshing pattern I've experienced on Android is that most of the upgrades have featured performance improvements.
    - Kayou 12y ago
      So yeah they are better than one of the worst. This doesn't mean they should not try to do even better. Why can my 2008 Vista laptop be upgraded all the way to 8.1 and use software that come out today and my 2008 pocket computer / smartphone cannot do that? Especially that this year, smartphone specs are a little stuck. We should have an OS as independent as possible from the hardware, on any device.
      - aroch 12y ago
        Because smartphones are in the exponential phase of development, much like computers were in the late 90's early 00's. Smartphone silicon has changed dramatically in the last 4 years, laptop silicon has not.
        fleitz 12y ago
        To be fair CPU performance has massively improved since '07, however, it just doesn't matter because everything you wanted to do is fast enough. If you take an modern game and run it on an '07 PC it will be very slow at max settings. Back in 06-07 it you needed a 15x15K drives and a controller with 256 MB of cache RAM to hit 800 MB/sec random read/write. Now you can drop in two $200 SSDs
        aroch 12y ago
        They are still, in comparison to mobile phone SoCs, incremental increases in power. Especially the Core-i series of the last few years. On top of that they still sell computers with dual-core celeron and pentium processors because they're "good enough" and instruction sets haven't changed much. Smartphone SoCs have seen leaps and bounds both in the physical silicon and in stuff like instruction set support, hw codecs and the like.
      - potatolicious 12y ago
        Because: 1) You pay for Windows, and part of that cost is specifically to ensure backwards compatibility. iOS is free. 2) The performance of smartphones in 2008 vs. smartphones in 2014 is very different than the performance of PCs in 2008 vs. PCs in 2014. In 2008 smartphones and mobile ARM platforms were in their infancy. The latest smartphones (Android, iOS, or otherwise) are easily 100x faster than those old phones. This is why I'm personally skeptical that these guys can get the iOS7-blur effect on an original iPhone1. You'd see incompatibilities galore, too, if PCs advanced by a factor of 100 in 6 years. In fact, we did see that in the mid-late 90s when PC performance was exploding - the upgrade cycle back then was way, way shorter than it is today.
    - chrisdevereux 12y ago
      Apple don't help by requiring App Store submissions to be compiled with a current version of Xcode, while removing compiler support for older ARM CPUs. Not suggesting that this is a deliberate ploy (it likely makes very little difference to their bottom line), but it certainly doesn't help...
    - chaz72 12y ago
      This year, you're absolutely right: Apple has among the best support for older devices, among smartphone makers, which are a breed apart from more general purpose computing. For now. Long term, as things stabilize, I think we all can agree we want more from these gadgets.
  - bushido 12y ago
    I may get some flack and down votes for saying this. But, I have experienced something quite the opposite. Apple keeps pushing updates that cripple older devices. In the last few years I have had a number of my devices and those of my friends rendered useless because of updates pushed by Apple. I have seen a variety of issues the most common and annoying of those include: 1. Battery Failure - Immediately after an update (happened to my iPhone 4, my cousins and two friends in the same week, immediately after the update) 2. Extreme lag/slowdown when receiving calls/typing 3. Front camera stops working or more accurately hangs the application making use of it. I am not a conspiracy theorists. But in all cases I have seen people including myself upgrade soon after, at times to android devices, but most often to iDevices. Don't know if it is a deliberate goal. But it truly sucks.
    - tracker1 12y ago
      I'd say vote with your feet and wallet... if you move to a competing device, and convince others to do the same, that's good for the larger community imho.
laichzeit0 12y ago
I can't help but ask, why? I'm using an iPhone 4S and I feel like it's time to "let it go". I feel the life force ebbing from the battery each day, the camera quality is starting to feel dated, it's becoming increasingly rare to find an "old style" Apple charging cable when I'm somewhere else, etc. It's nothing more than a disposable electronic good to me and trying to fight this is, ultimately, a losing battle.
- Osmium 12y ago
  There's something to be said for trying to get as much life as possible out of older devices. For not just discarding them because they're 'old' even though they're still fully functional (battery replacements aside). I'm not saying I can do that myself--it's hard to willingly keep using an inferior device when you have the option to upgrade to something better--but I see why some people think otherwise.
- themartorana 12y ago
  Because to some, either an iPhone was a major investment, or one they couldn't make at all and were gifted/handed-down an old device. I ran out and grabbed an iPhone 6, but I'm a pretty lucky person to be able to. I know others who can't afford to - who are on pre-paid minimalist plans and can't even practically afford the monthly uptick for a new device payment plan. Or you have a kid. I don't know...
  - 3JPLW 12y ago
    Exactly. Once I moved away from the expensive plans with "free" phones, it made me value and appreciate the major investment that a pocket computer is much more than I had before. And I'm saving lots of money — I recoup the cost of the (used) devices within 12-16 months, with every month thereafter being a bonus ~60 USD (for two iPhones). The $800-1200 outlay for two replacement phones is a very nice motivator to stretch them as far as we can, too.
- mathgeek 12y ago
  I think this is actually the epitome of hacker culture, for the same reason that some folks still create games for the NES and a few people still run dial-in BBS's. The feeling of taking old tech to its limits and seeing what's truly possible... that's a strong desire for some folks. I don't personally have the time to play around with such things anymore, but I still think it's awesome.
zapshu 12y ago
Although it's pretty cool by itself, they modify and distribute copyrighted IPSWs (iOS firmware), which is basically illegal.
- abritishguy 12y ago
  Do you see Apple doing something about it? Because I don't.
  - hahainternet 12y ago
    This is reckless.
    - freehunter 12y ago
      It's reckless to base a business around it or depend on it for production use, yes. For fun, it's just hacking.
      - hahainternet 12y ago
        Which is a federal offence where even just issuing a bunch of GETs can get you sentenced to years in jail.
        abritishguy 12y ago
        Not that definition of hacking! I mean seriously given the title of this website I didn't expect that.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
Yizahi 12y ago
I'd prefer if somebody would make an iOS7/8 reskin as in iOS6, while retaining all new functionality. I don't mind flat and clear interfaces, and I like Windows Phone UI for example, but iOS7 design is not so good. New folders, dock, newsstand, app icons, some button icons. Some people said that I'll get used to it, but no - I didn't. Still looks bad for me.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
gergles 12y ago
> "Push Fixer is a premium service. The generation of unique sets for push notification is power and time consuming. The price for a set is really cheap and it allow us to continue offering this service." what. This firmware breaks your existing push support then demands a fee ($1, but still.) to restore it because, literally, "generating certs is hard". Really?
- goatforce5 12y ago
  Imagine that instead of the code being free and the Push Fixer service costing a dollar that the code costs $1 and the Push Fixer service is included in the cost. Feel better?
  - sp332 12y ago
    Right, it breaks push "for free".
- tacotime 12y ago
  I think it's less about generating a certificate and more about managing and serving push notifications which assumedly takes resources to serve and manage. Not to mention the cost of setting up the servers in the first place. They have to make money somewhere, right? I mean you can't expect this much work for a pure passion project can you? Honestly I'm more concerned that it's so damn cheap. It's hard for me to believe that a $1 fee on software that only works with devices >6 years old is much of an economic incentive for a project of this scope. It becomes a lot easier to believe when you look at their sourceforge download stats and realize that they've been at this for years now and they have some pretty amazing numbers on their side: http://sourceforge.net/projects/whited00r/files/stats/timeline?dates=2012-09-01+to+2014-09-16 http://sourceforge.net/projects/whited00r/files/stats/timeli... We all know that Apple is obviously under-serving older generations of devices in the interest of getting people to buy the new one. This project appears to be proof that there is a sizable segment of the market that still cares about their 6+ year old Apple devices.
yalogin 12y ago
So they spent so much time and effort on making older iOS devices to look like iOS7? Why? What is the return on investment there? And it only works on jailbroken devices (I am assuming). So how are they getting their money on this? I am being really cynical here but the first thing that came to mind is, are they peddling malware or syphoning off user information under the hood?
- wingerlang 12y ago
  This is a modified iOS you install, so it doesn't "require" a jailbroken device.
5414h 12y ago
Great work guys , it would be cool if it was for the 3gs too :D
josteink 12y ago
While I admire the hacker spirit behind this, and can definitely respect that people want working firmwares on perfectly good hardware... What these people will eventually discover is that, unlike Android, which was based on open-source from the get-go, they will meet the wall where they will find issues they simply cannot solve. They should look into porting Android to iPhones instead.

118 points by krrrh 12y ago

quarterto 12y ago

This is in fact iOS 3.x skinned to look like iOS 7. This means absolutely nothing in the App Store is compatible.

FreakyT 12y ago
Exactly! I installed this on my original iPhone at one point, and it was a complete waste of time. Apple's goal is to ensure that old iDevices are 100% useless by refusing to update them, and this project does absolutely nothing to rectify that.
- dtech 12y ago
  I'm no fan of Apple, but this is baseless Apple bashing. "Refusing" to update old devices is certainly reasonable. You cannot continue to support 7 year old phones when there is so much (hardware) development, it would either make them unsuitably slow or deprive newer models of features. iPhone 4 (06-2010) received it's last (?) update in 06-2014, 4 years of support, other devices have had similar durations of support. Compare that to Google: Nexus One (01-2010) never received 4.0 (10-2011): less than 2 years, Nexus S 11-2010 to 10-2012: 2 years, Nexus S 10-2011 to 07-2013: less than 2 years.
  - jwr 12y ago
    Actually, iPhone 4 should never have received iOS 7. The update crippled people's phones: the software ran so slow, that in some cases I was unable to answer the call before it timed out! Subsequent updates made the situation slightly more bearable, but still bad. I would much rather have Apple flat-out refuse to provide updates for devices which are unable to handle the new bloated software.
    - freehunter 12y ago
      I'm unable to do that on my iPhone 5c sometimes. The screen just doesn't respond when I try to pick up. And it was made for iOS7.
      - wvenable 12y ago
        As an iPhone 5 user, I have experienced the same thing. A reboot fixes it. More than likely the problem is more frequent/pronounced the slower the device is.
    - gurkendoktor 12y ago
      iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G and iOS 5 on the first iPad have been the same. They could come out of it looking generous if they would allow us to downgrade our devices again...but all I hear is "your device is practically bricked, where's your credit card?"
      - slantyyz 12y ago
        >> iOS 5 on the first iPad have been the same Man, I would pay a small fee to Apple to be able to do that. I bought a maxed out iPad 1 when it was released and it was basically unusable in 24 months. I expected to be able to use it for 3y.
    - dubya 12y ago
      The initial release was pretty bad, but subsequent ones are fine. Safari, for example, is at least as fast as before. More annoying are third party developers testing only on new hardware. A phone that can run "Infinity Blade" should not take two minutes to start "Threes".
      - slantyyz 12y ago
        >> The initial release was pretty bad, but subsequent ones are fine. Well, it seems there is some variability on this, so the better response may be "YMMV". iOS7 on my iPhone 4 (including the latest updates) -- just made it unusable -- and keep in mind, most of what I do are just the core apps, Safari, RSS and Read Later. I basically had the same issues with the last supported iOS versions on the original iPad and iPhone 3G. The pattern I notice is that Apple tends to offer one OS upgrade too many on older devices, which is basically what led me to leave iOS. The refreshing pattern I've experienced on Android is that most of the upgrades have featured performance improvements.
  - Kayou 12y ago
    So yeah they are better than one of the worst. This doesn't mean they should not try to do even better. Why can my 2008 Vista laptop be upgraded all the way to 8.1 and use software that come out today and my 2008 pocket computer / smartphone cannot do that? Especially that this year, smartphone specs are a little stuck. We should have an OS as independent as possible from the hardware, on any device.
    - aroch 12y ago
      Because smartphones are in the exponential phase of development, much like computers were in the late 90's early 00's. Smartphone silicon has changed dramatically in the last 4 years, laptop silicon has not.
      - fleitz 12y ago
        To be fair CPU performance has massively improved since '07, however, it just doesn't matter because everything you wanted to do is fast enough. If you take an modern game and run it on an '07 PC it will be very slow at max settings. Back in 06-07 it you needed a 15x15K drives and a controller with 256 MB of cache RAM to hit 800 MB/sec random read/write. Now you can drop in two $200 SSDs
        aroch 12y ago
        They are still, in comparison to mobile phone SoCs, incremental increases in power. Especially the Core-i series of the last few years. On top of that they still sell computers with dual-core celeron and pentium processors because they're "good enough" and instruction sets haven't changed much. Smartphone SoCs have seen leaps and bounds both in the physical silicon and in stuff like instruction set support, hw codecs and the like.
    - potatolicious 12y ago
      Because: 1) You pay for Windows, and part of that cost is specifically to ensure backwards compatibility. iOS is free. 2) The performance of smartphones in 2008 vs. smartphones in 2014 is very different than the performance of PCs in 2008 vs. PCs in 2014. In 2008 smartphones and mobile ARM platforms were in their infancy. The latest smartphones (Android, iOS, or otherwise) are easily 100x faster than those old phones. This is why I'm personally skeptical that these guys can get the iOS7-blur effect on an original iPhone1. You'd see incompatibilities galore, too, if PCs advanced by a factor of 100 in 6 years. In fact, we did see that in the mid-late 90s when PC performance was exploding - the upgrade cycle back then was way, way shorter than it is today.
  - chrisdevereux 12y ago
    Apple don't help by requiring App Store submissions to be compiled with a current version of Xcode, while removing compiler support for older ARM CPUs. Not suggesting that this is a deliberate ploy (it likely makes very little difference to their bottom line), but it certainly doesn't help...
  - chaz72 12y ago
    This year, you're absolutely right: Apple has among the best support for older devices, among smartphone makers, which are a breed apart from more general purpose computing. For now. Long term, as things stabilize, I think we all can agree we want more from these gadgets.
- bushido 12y ago
  I may get some flack and down votes for saying this. But, I have experienced something quite the opposite. Apple keeps pushing updates that cripple older devices. In the last few years I have had a number of my devices and those of my friends rendered useless because of updates pushed by Apple. I have seen a variety of issues the most common and annoying of those include: 1. Battery Failure - Immediately after an update (happened to my iPhone 4, my cousins and two friends in the same week, immediately after the update) 2. Extreme lag/slowdown when receiving calls/typing 3. Front camera stops working or more accurately hangs the application making use of it. I am not a conspiracy theorists. But in all cases I have seen people including myself upgrade soon after, at times to android devices, but most often to iDevices. Don't know if it is a deliberate goal. But it truly sucks.
  - tracker1 12y ago
    I'd say vote with your feet and wallet... if you move to a competing device, and convince others to do the same, that's good for the larger community imho.

laichzeit0 12y ago

I can't help but ask, why? I'm using an iPhone 4S and I feel like it's time to "let it go". I feel the life force ebbing from the battery each day, the camera quality is starting to feel dated, it's becoming increasingly rare to find an "old style" Apple charging cable when I'm somewhere else, etc. It's nothing more than a disposable electronic good to me and trying to fight this is, ultimately, a losing battle.

Osmium 12y ago
There's something to be said for trying to get as much life as possible out of older devices. For not just discarding them because they're 'old' even though they're still fully functional (battery replacements aside). I'm not saying I can do that myself--it's hard to willingly keep using an inferior device when you have the option to upgrade to something better--but I see why some people think otherwise.
themartorana 12y ago
Because to some, either an iPhone was a major investment, or one they couldn't make at all and were gifted/handed-down an old device. I ran out and grabbed an iPhone 6, but I'm a pretty lucky person to be able to. I know others who can't afford to - who are on pre-paid minimalist plans and can't even practically afford the monthly uptick for a new device payment plan. Or you have a kid. I don't know...
- 3JPLW 12y ago
  Exactly. Once I moved away from the expensive plans with "free" phones, it made me value and appreciate the major investment that a pocket computer is much more than I had before. And I'm saving lots of money — I recoup the cost of the (used) devices within 12-16 months, with every month thereafter being a bonus ~60 USD (for two iPhones). The $800-1200 outlay for two replacement phones is a very nice motivator to stretch them as far as we can, too.
mathgeek 12y ago
I think this is actually the epitome of hacker culture, for the same reason that some folks still create games for the NES and a few people still run dial-in BBS's. The feeling of taking old tech to its limits and seeing what's truly possible... that's a strong desire for some folks. I don't personally have the time to play around with such things anymore, but I still think it's awesome.

zapshu 12y ago

Although it's pretty cool by itself, they modify and distribute copyrighted IPSWs (iOS firmware), which is basically illegal.

abritishguy 12y ago
Do you see Apple doing something about it? Because I don't.
- hahainternet 12y ago
  This is reckless.
  - freehunter 12y ago
    It's reckless to base a business around it or depend on it for production use, yes. For fun, it's just hacking.
    - hahainternet 12y ago
      Which is a federal offence where even just issuing a bunch of GETs can get you sentenced to years in jail.
      - abritishguy 12y ago
        Not that definition of hacking! I mean seriously given the title of this website I didn't expect that.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

Yizahi 12y ago

I'd prefer if somebody would make an iOS7/8 reskin as in iOS6, while retaining all new functionality. I don't mind flat and clear interfaces, and I like Windows Phone UI for example, but iOS7 design is not so good. New folders, dock, newsstand, app icons, some button icons. Some people said that I'll get used to it, but no - I didn't. Still looks bad for me.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

gergles 12y ago

> "Push Fixer is a premium service. The generation of unique sets for push notification is power and time consuming. The price for a set is really cheap and it allow us to continue offering this service." what. This firmware breaks your existing push support then demands a fee ($1, but still.) to restore it because, literally, "generating certs is hard". Really?

goatforce5 12y ago
Imagine that instead of the code being free and the Push Fixer service costing a dollar that the code costs $1 and the Push Fixer service is included in the cost. Feel better?
- sp332 12y ago
  Right, it breaks push "for free".
tacotime 12y ago
I think it's less about generating a certificate and more about managing and serving push notifications which assumedly takes resources to serve and manage. Not to mention the cost of setting up the servers in the first place. They have to make money somewhere, right? I mean you can't expect this much work for a pure passion project can you? Honestly I'm more concerned that it's so damn cheap. It's hard for me to believe that a $1 fee on software that only works with devices >6 years old is much of an economic incentive for a project of this scope. It becomes a lot easier to believe when you look at their sourceforge download stats and realize that they've been at this for years now and they have some pretty amazing numbers on their side: http://sourceforge.net/projects/whited00r/files/stats/timeline?dates=2012-09-01+to+2014-09-16 http://sourceforge.net/projects/whited00r/files/stats/timeli... We all know that Apple is obviously under-serving older generations of devices in the interest of getting people to buy the new one. This project appears to be proof that there is a sizable segment of the market that still cares about their 6+ year old Apple devices.

yalogin 12y ago

So they spent so much time and effort on making older iOS devices to look like iOS7? Why? What is the return on investment there? And it only works on jailbroken devices (I am assuming). So how are they getting their money on this? I am being really cynical here but the first thing that came to mind is, are they peddling malware or syphoning off user information under the hood?

wingerlang 12y ago
This is a modified iOS you install, so it doesn't "require" a jailbroken device.

5414h 12y ago

Great work guys , it would be cool if it was for the 3gs too :D

josteink 12y ago

While I admire the hacker spirit behind this, and can definitely respect that people want working firmwares on perfectly good hardware... What these people will eventually discover is that, unlike Android, which was based on open-source from the get-go, they will meet the wall where they will find issues they simply cannot solve. They should look into porting Android to iPhones instead.