Freeing my iPod Touch

With the help of iJailbreak, a hack put together by a 13-year-old (naturally) and advice from a number of websites I managed to hack my iPod Touch and make it into a much more interesting and useful machine: more like, in fact, the device I think that Apple should have released.

One modification fixed the fact that it wasn’t possible to add or edit calendar appointments on the Touch. I’d actually resorted to pasting post-it notes on the back of my Touch when I’d needed to make a note of a new appointment while out and about.

I was also able to add the functions that Apple had stripped from the Touch, but which are found on its sister product, the iPhone. So I now have the very cool little Mail program that allows me to check and replay to my email using any wireless network.

I also have the Weather program which is handy for seeing what the heavens have in store for me in the coming week.

The Notes program is pretty useless because it doesn’t sync with anything, but I installed it anyway. The new version of Mail.app on Leopard has a notes function, and hopefully Apple will alter iTunes so that it can sync the Touch with Mail.app or someone else will come up with a modification that does the same thing.

I’ve added a third-party dictionary (I’m a dictionary freak).

That’s pretty much it for the modifications.

The Touch now replicates (and improves on, in most respects) all the functions of my old LifeDrive. Once the notes are fixed it’ll be a near-perfect PDA and video iPod. I love it!

I’m a little regretful I went for the 8GB version rather than the 16BG one. The extra space would have been handy for the video. I also sometimes think I should have gone for the iPhone after all, and hacked it to work with my T-Mobile pay-as-you-go SIM card. I use around $60 worth of cell-phone calls a year (yes, a year) and that’s at 10c a minute! I really don’t like using the phone much and only make cell-phone calls when I really have to and for short messages rather than long conversations. So why the lingering desire for an iPhone? Simply because it would reduce the number of gadgets in my pockets from two to one. (I’m down to two from three — iPod, cellphone, and PDA — since getting the Touch).

Anyway, I try to let go of these lusts for technological devices, and I think I do pretty well at it. The iPod touch is only my second iPod in four years and my third PDA in six years, since I got my HandSpring Visor. I’m not exactly dominated by the desire to own material possessions (I don’t even have a TV) and I’m generally able to exercise patience and restraint when I do want to buy a new toy. When I do buy new gadgets it’s not usually an impulse buy.

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