Developer Spotlight: CoolStar, the “Classic” Tweak Author [Interview]

Developer Spotlight: CoolStar, the “Classic” Tweak Author [Interview]
Getting an early start in developing when he was 8 years old, CoolStar began making simple apps for Windows XP in Visual Basic and later moved on to C++ then eventually onto Obj-C. He only regrets not starting with on-device development as it set him back a year trying to find the right tool-chain for developing for iOS on Linux and Windows (which is not easy). He recommends starting with high level languages like Python or Visual Basic for new developers as there is a lot of abstraction done for you like memory management, enabling one to focus on building a single skill at a time. This seems like really good advice since there is really no easy way to start learning programming languages. He has high hopes and aspirations for the jailbreak community going forward; planning on releasing some recovery utilities to help users who are stuck in infamous bootloop situations. Theses will allow users to perform basic functions to repair whatever damage they might have incurred due to installing a poorly written tweak or modifying the wrong system files. This could help people avoid having to update to the latest un-jailbreakable iOS firmware. This is an incredibly selfless motive and he doesn\'t get enough recognition for it. He\'s already made a name for himself developing something similar called Semi-Restore which is a Windows and Linux utility that performs a soft-restore, while retaining the jailbreak. The main difference is these new utilities will run on device and might not force the user to wipe the device and start from scratch. He (among others) has high hopes that Apple will open up their software to power users and release an "unlocked" firmware for which they don\'t provide official support. Only time till tell if Apple will ever do this, but then again they wouldn\'t get as much free security research. To see the full interview, be sure to click the following link and leave a comment letting us know what your thoughts are.

‘Transynd’ Your Music Experience on Your iPhone

‘Transynd’ Your Music Experience on Your iPhone

Everyone has differing preferences for their music needs on their iDevices; some people are heavy audiophiles and have nothing but FLACs in their iTunes, others do nothing but stream with Pandora or Spotify, and then there are people who are about in the middle like me. If you don\'t need all of the functionality of the Music app then Transcynd is for you! It\'s currently $0.99 on the App Store but the developer, Darran Hall told me that he plans on making it free for the next update after he polishes a few features and squashes a bug or two. He\'s a great guy and deserves the money so I suggest you go buy it! Having a beautiful no nonsense card style interface it allows you to easily select a song and start playing it quickly. The control card colorizes itself with the colors of the currently playing song\'s album artwork, which makes it visually pleasing to play your music. It reminds me of the Control Center but with a more minimalist interface, when you swipe it up the album art slides down from the top as well as sliding back up out of the way when you slide it back down, the animations are quite nice.