Big Trapeze

Coda is a lot of great things, including a nice SSH FTP tool. If you’ve got Coda, you know about it’s cool site selection interface. Why not add an icon for your iPhone? If you’ve got SSH installed on your iPhone, you can easily connect with Coda and copy files to / from your phone. I’ve used it to install NES Roms, ringtones, and graphics. The setup below is pretty generic, and my local directory is a “phonedmg” folder created under my user account, per some of the original iPhone hacking tutorials. You’ll need to know your exact IP address and root password but if you’ve gotten as far as installing SSH you probably know how to do that. Leave a comment if you need help:

Here’s an icon I used for the Sites page in Coda…

This won’t apply to everyone, so I’ll begin by saying there are a lot of guides out there to help you “jailbreak” your iPhone to get it to do all sorts of cool things. If you need your iPhone to work on a network other than AT&T, this post probably isn’t for you.

I had a phone on a corporate account with AT&T, and found out that the iPhone wouldn’t transfer to the account–I would have to buy new service. No thanks. This modification is fairly harmless, there are no hardware mods necessary, and if it messes up you can probably do a software restore through iTunes and be just fine. Follow the steps in this tutorial (there are 18 in all) and you’re likely to be on your way (PS you’ll need an Intel Mac for this to work).

http://www.hacktheiphone.com/iphone_using_cingular_for_intel_mac_easy.html

Those instructions start on step 11… but there is a link to steps 1-10, which are essentially steps to download the software you’ll need (it’s all free).

That should be it. Hopefully you have an iPhone using your old AT&T/Cingular SIM. If not, read on…

I didn’t initially have success with the hack, but got it figured out. They’re actually very clear instructions, but as with any technology there are variables to everyones’ situations. Here are some things that got me through:
1. It’s ok if you have the latest version of iPhone’s software (1.0.2 at the time of this post). I didn’t think it was and spent hours trying to install 1.0.1 but I found out it works fine with 1.0.2.

2. Take the iPhone SIM out and replace it with the SIM from your old phone. There is a 16-digit ICCID number on you SIM you’ll need. Write it down before you put it into the iPhone. I went through all the steps and missed that one at first–bad move. I had to start all over.

3. If everything works good until step 17, and you get a “bus error” you may have to restore the iPod and start over from the beginning. “Bus error” usually indicates it had trouble copying a file, so use iActivator (I used version 1.1.4) to put the PEM file to your iPhone. That seemed to get around the bus error. Then hit the button that let’s you activate your phone–and your iPhone should give you that *ding* and an activation message you’ve been patiently waiting for.

4. Don’t forget to copy the Services.plist file on step 18. A lot of people forget this step because they’re so excited to see the “iPhone Activated” message and iTunes thinks your iPod only has a few hundred MBs of freespace left.

5. Final caveat: The iPhone won’t work on EDGE networks Update: It does work on the EDGE network, and surprisingly faster than I anticipated (works great on WiFi too), YouTube content won’t play (update: works now, see script at www.hacktheiphone.com), and I’m having trouble with email Update: I can get POP email fine, I’m having trouble setting up my Gmail account. SMS and everything else seem to be working just fine. This setup is just a crutch for me until Apple / AT&T decide to take care of their corporate customers. I can’t believe that wouldn’t be a priority, but they’ll get to it eventually. I’d rather have a slightly crippled iPhone than my ancient 2006-era RAZR anyway, so I’m fine for now…

Update (9/14/07): New hacks for the iPhone appear daily. Now that a software unlock is stable and freely downloadable (search for iUnlock), the steps to activate your phone are going to be a lot more simple. I think it’ll be possible to get visual voicemail working, too, we’ll just have to wait for them to do it.