Suppose you’ve got one iPhone that a couple of other people also use from time to time, much like your computer. Wouldn’t it be great if you could have user accounts on your iPhone, too? So each person who uses it could have a different lot of settings and phone numbers?

Also, on your desktop computer, you sometimes create a new account when you want to try out a new app, so that it doesn’t mess with your existing settings in any way. Once done, you can delete the temporary account.

But the iPhone does almost everything a desktop computer does, so why shouldn’t you have accounts on it?
Well, actually you can. The iPhone OS is built on FreeBSD, a Unix operating system, so the functionality is built right into it. And Cydia app iAccounts leverages this functionality.

Create iPhone User Accounts with iAccounts

Cydia app iAccounts lets you easily create and manage user accounts on your iPhone, just like you would on a desktop computer.
(Installing the app requires you to have a jailbroken iPhone with Cydia installed)

Simply search for iAccounts on Cydia, and purcahse the app for $1.99. That’s right, it isn’t free. But for it’s functionality, we think it’s worth a couple of dollars.

(not to be confused with AppStores’s iAccounts, a password manager)

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Want to fool your friends into thinking you have a 32TB iPhone? And perhaps firmware version 103.03? Well, there’s an app for that…

Fake About Screen Lets you Change iPhone About Screen Values

Fake About Screen is an app on Cydia that allows you to change the data that appears on your iPhone’s “about” screen, including the number of songs, videos, carrier name, firmware version, storage capacity, etc.

Perfect for fooling your friends, or just hiding some info you don’t want people to see there.

Mike McKinnon at Redmond Pie changed his About screen to this:

And here’s the App’s description on Cydia:

With this package you’ll be able to set fake values for your About screen! Very useful if you need to take your device to the Genius Bar and want it to look like as if it’s been restored (especially for the newest devices, which iTunes
would only restore to 3.1.3) or if you want to hide a preserved baseband. Enjoy :]

The app is available on Cydia for free, so go and grab it now! (requires a jailbroken iPhone)

With the upcoming release of Apple’s new iPad, including a model that ships with only Wifi and no 3G, one could expect (or at least hope) that the iPad could share an iPhone’s 3G connection via tethering. But apparently that is not the case.

Swedish DJ Jezper Söderlund shot Steve Jobs an email asking him if this would be possible.

He said

Will the wifi-only version somehow support tethering thru my iPhone?

Two devices, based on the same OS, with already built-in technology to share one data plan suggests a secondary contract could possibly be redundant.

From the look of your keynote, where the iPad sits well between my MacBook Pro and my iPhone, I was hoping the three of them could interact as seamless as possible.

And Steve Jobs’ answer?

No.

Sent from my iPhone

So you’ve got yourself a netbook and you find it ever-so-irritating that you haven’t got that numberpad on the right of the keyboard. Without it, typing in numbers is a downright pain in the neck. And you got so used to having a numpad on your bigger 17″ laptop. What do you do??
You turn your iPhone into a numpad, that’s what you do.

Edovia’s NumPad Lets you Type Numbers on your iPhone

This iPhone app is one that complements your keyboard – by adding a number pad at the end of it. A touchscreen number pad.

Just install the app, lay down your iPhone where the numpad should have been, and type away. It connects to your computer wirelessly and connects via VNC.
And if the USB cable gets in the way, just place the phone upside down!

If you’re running OSX, you don’t have to install any additional software – the built in Screen Sharing Tool makes quick work of setting up the app. If you’re on Microsoft Windows, you’ll have to use a VNC software like RealVNC to get the job done.

Additionally, the NumPad app has layouts for Sibelius and Finale, and is the ideal companion for those who use it.

The biggest problem with NumPad is that the keyboard isn’t tactile, and that half negates the whole business of having a numpad anyway, since one usually relies on feel to type in the numbers, and that’s something that just won’t work with this iPhone app. Oh, and it doesn’t help that the back of the iPhone is curved

If you absolutely must have a numpad, and you like the idea of carrying it around on your phone, then you can buy the app off the AppStore for $2.99

Obama may have cancelled it in real life, but NASA has brought forth an iPhone game that lets you guide a Lunar Rover over the surface of the moon.

Aptly termed “Lunar Electric Rover”, this challenging and interesting game will make youngsters and space veterans alike light up with the joy of playing with a lunar rover.

The app comes packed with information and pictures about the moon. So even if you downloaded the game just for fun, it’s not likely that you’ll go away without learning something.

The app description says

Welcome to the NASA Lunar Electric Rover (LER) Simulator. You don’t need a driver’s license, but you still need to buckle up as the LER Simulator gives you a glimpse of what it might be like to support the activities of a functioning Lunar Outpost. Get busy. You never know if your skills here will become a major part of the NASA Astronaut application process in the future.

So if you’re ready to make up for the government’s lack of interest in the moon mission, you can download the free app from the AppStore and gear up.

Apple is famous for it’s AppStore, and even more famous for all the completely unfair app rejections. But this one is clearly the worst of the lot, showing what a terrible sport Apple is.

[image from here]

Apple Rejects App that Mentions “Android”

Flash of Genius is an app developed by a tiny mobile software company, and it helps students prepare for competitive exams. Their app “Flash of Genius: SAT Vocab” first came out on the iPhone, and then appeared in the Android marketplace at the end of last year.

The App was then named as a finalist in Google’s Android Developer Challenge, and the developers of the app tried to mention this simple fact in the App’s description.

In a blog post entitled “Apple vs. Google, featuring Flash of Genius: SAT Vocab“, the developers have posted the email they received from Apple, which says “During our review of your application, we found that your application contains inappropriate or irrelevant platform information in the Application Description and/or Release Notes sections.”

The email also says: “Providing future platform compatibility plans or other general platform references are not relevant in the context of the iPhone App Store.”

And then they demand that the changes are made, else the app would not be allowed in: ” While your application has not been rejected, it would be appropriate to remove “Finalist in Google’s Android Developer’s Challenge!” from the Application Description.

Please log into iTunes Connect to make appropriate changes to the Application Description now to avoid an interruption in the availability of Flash of Genius: SAT Vocab 2.2 on the iPhone App Store.”

Phones aren’t the devices with the most storage space on them, and the iPhone is no exception. Sure, it can play video, but it’s close to impossible to store your entire video collection on your iPhone.

Also, converting videos for your iPhone/iPod is painful at best. Don’t you wish your iPhone could play videos that were stored on your computer directly? Air Video does just that.

Air Video Streams Vids from Mac/PC to iPhone – No Need to Convert

Air Video is a Mac/PC – iPhone app pair. Simply run the Air Video server on your computer, choose some videos (you can even choose iTunes playlists) and let go.
You can even connect to the server over the internet and watch your videos on the go!

Supported Formats

Air Video supports almost every video format under the sun – mp4, m4v, mov, avi, wmv, asf, mpg, mpeg, mkv, 3gp, dmf, divx, flv – and does not support DRM or proprietary codecs.

When Air Video streams the video to your iPhone, it automatically converts the video on-the-fly. It is an entirely transparent process, and you’ll just see your video. However, this conversion can happen at real time only if you have a powerful enough computer. So if you’re living in the stone age and have a PII, don’t expect things to happen.

Air Video also supports “Offline Conversion” – converting a video completely before playing it. So if your computer is a little to slow to re-encode those high-def movies at real time, you can do an offline conversion.

Download Air Video

You can download the Air Video server from the website. The iPhone app must be obtained separately from the App Store.

[via LifeHacker]