The iPhone Wiki:Community portal

See also: Unsolved problems

iPhone-Elite

I think we should include all this old stuff before it gets lost: code.google.com/p/iphone-elite/. I mean the wiki articles there. Most infos should be already here, but I'm sure a lot of things are missing too. --http 15:02, 26 June 2012 (MDT)

Boot-args cleanup

We need to clean up the boot-args pages. First the technical part: What I understand is that iBoot loads the kernel. And when loading it, it can pass some parameters to select certain behavior. So this only works with an iBoot or bootrom exploit. I understand that in earlier firmware versions there was simply an iBoot variable, but that doesn't exist or work anymore, now passing theses args requires a different or patched iBoot. There are various parameters in different kernel versions. The description for these arguments is scattered over various places:

• Kernel#Boot-Args A section with the latest boot arguments list. This should be a short introduction and having a link "main article".
• Boot-args (iBoot variable) separate page for boot arguments, but mainly for the iBoot variable that doesn't exist any longer
• Boot arguments (redirect)
• Talk:Restore_Mode describing the iBoot variable problem
• Various pages referencing boot-args, like Research: Re-allowing unsigned ramdisks and boot-args with the 2.* iBoot (here we should have a link on the second title)
• My earlier comment Talk:Kernel#boot-args
• This comment here.

So what do we want to do about this mess? I suggest to move the current Kernel content to the redirect page Boot arguments (or to another new page, maybe boot-args). The current content of Boot-args (iBoot variable) and all other content should get merged into there. Then change all references to this new page and on the Kernel page write just something short with "main article there". What do you think? --http (talk) 21:31, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I like Boot Arguments. --5urd (talk) 02:01, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

One addition: Maybe we should use boot-args as the main page, because all links are written like that. --http (talk) 07:37, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

The iPhone Wiki re-design

The design of the iPhone wiki is now quite old and I think it should be updated. I made a concept. --Jaggions (talk) 10:30, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

I disagree. If anything add an iPhone 5 to the logo but everything else is ok. --iAdam1n (talk) 11:05, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

I wouldn't change the logo to an iPhone 5, especially with iOS 7 and a new iPhone (that will probably look the same as the 5, admittedly) around the corner. I contemplated updating the CSS for iOS 7's UI but decided not to because of the UI's supposed volatility (during the beta period) and I don't have a live version to toy around with. (I personally don't like its current state, but that's not a factor in why I'm not changing it yet.) --Dialexio (talk) 16:25, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Can we not do flat? --Haifisch (talk) 21:02, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

This is what I was thinking. When iOS 7 finally comes out, we could change the CSS to look like that instead. --5urd (talk) 21:11, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

iOS 7 looks ugly. We do not want it like that. Maybe a bit more modern but nothing much. --iAdam1n (talk) 21:16, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

You may not want it like that. That's your opinion. --5urd (talk) 01:55, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

We could make a poll, and see if most users agree or disagree. --Jaggions (talk) 10:05, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

The idea looks nice. But before we make any changes, let's wait until iOS7 comes out. And I'd prefer to just add another skin instead (if possible). I'm still using the classic MonoBook skin by the way. You shouldn't impose design changes to everyone. --http (talk) 14:38, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

The problem with skins is that geohot needs to set them up... An idea I have is that we copy the Vector skin verbatim to a new skin (iOS6) and move the modifications (not general stuff) to Mediawiki:iOS6.css. Then we can do another verbatim copy to iOS7 and modify Mediawiki:iOS7.css. We could then set the default skin to either iOS6 or iOS7 so you don't need to be logged in to see them like currently. Then if someone doesn't like them, like you, just change your settings to your preferred skin. The only way around needing geohot is if he opens up the credentials to FTP or whatever to someone. --5urd (talk) 21:17, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

I like 5urd's suggestion. --iAdam1n (talk) 22:29, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

What about just removing the text-shadow element for now? I think pages would be easier to read without it. Here's an example: File:Noshadow.png. Britta (talk) 00:11, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Yeah removing the shadow will make everything seem more flat but like http I'm still using the classic MonoBook skin --Jaggions (talk) 21:19, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Hacker page

I would like to be added to the list of hackers for my work with the Private Dev Team and the Chronic Dev Team in addition to my release of the Phoenix Semi-Untethered. --Ph0enix (talk) 18:36, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Did you find any exploits? --Haifisch (talk) 18:54, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

No. phyrrus9, a team member found the vulnerability. I am the one who exploited it. --Ph0enix (talk)

I can back up this "claim". I was a part of it. --5urd (talk) 20:52, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Whatever happened to this? --phyrrus9

Orphaned articles

This is an interesting search: Special:LonelyPages - "The following pages are not linked from or transcluded into other pages in The iPhone Wiki." I'm not sure where all of those articles should be linked, but figuring that out could be a useful project for somebody. Britta (talk) 05:57, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Easy tasks for new editors

• Finish converting the remaining error codes listed here MobileDevice_Library#Known_Error_Codes into the proper mach_return_t codes they should be displayed as. (convert the negative number listed into hex, strip any leading "FF" so it should be in the format "0xe80000" followed by two numbers) --Dirkg (talk) 22:40, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Key page links for A5+

I was thinking, so we do not clog up wanted pages, I think we should not link to pages for A5+ that have not been created due to it is not possible so we could just use the black text. It is annoying to see all that red when you also click them accidentally. Of course IF ever an exploit is found, this can be changed. --iAdam1n (talk) 15:11, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

For me it doesn't matter if a few page links are red. We want to link and have them anyway some day in the future. But if you feel better when there are no links, I'm fine with that too. Wait for some other opinions before changing it. --http (talk) 23:09, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

I do prefer it. I will wait until the 7 days are up anyway. --iAdam1n (talk) 23:19, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

I personally don't mind seeing them. I vote to leave them. It would be a massive undertaking. As for the wanted pages list, I might be able to cook up some JavaScript to take care of it. --5urd (talk) 18:20, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

That could work. --iAdam1n (talk) 20:57, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Maybe baseband too? Also, what about the key pages for no downloads that we have no info on and no way to create them? --iAdam1n (talk) 12:52, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

If you are referring to the SEP-Firmware thing on the keys template, it just makes it easier should we ever find a way to get keys for them. We won't have to add a crapload of stuff when then because the boilerplate is already there. If you are referring to pages that don't exist because we can't get the keys from the devices, I vote to leave them so we won't need to add the links back should we ever find a way to get the keys. IIRC, unthreaded is a bootrom exploit, but I may be wrong. If it is, then we could get keys for all the devices except the 5c and 5s. --5urd (talk) 00:21, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

No I meant the basebands. --iAdam1n (talk) 17:47, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

A1XXX model numbers vs. "GSM"/"CDMA"/"Global"/whatever

I know that this topic was already discussed earlier this year, but it didn't seem to come to a consensus, and the introduction of the iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s brought a lot of model numbers. Some of them may "overlap" (think models A1429 and A1442 for the iPhone 5), but there's simply too many to give names to. There are at least two that can connect to CDMA networks, and all of them can connect to GSM. In addition, with the sheer amount of models, it doesn't seem likely for one model to be treated as a "global" model. Therefore, I changed the iPhone 5c to use model numbers. I would like to do the same to some of the devices that are already present on the wiki though— the same ones from when I first brought up this idea. The GSM/CDMA names work very well for the iPad 2 and iPhone 4. Things are slightly murkier for the iPad (3rd gen.), iPad (4th gen.), iPad mini 1G, and iPhone 5 though; all of those devices' cellular models can connect to GSM networks, so it seems like nonsense to call some of them the "GSM model." The A1XXX model numbers are also how Apple tells the difference between the different models of these devices. Have any opinions changed? Or perhaps someone new might have something to say about this? --Dialexio (talk) 06:06, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

I actually like the idea as it does get complicated now with the new devices coming like said and we would have to do this for all devices. Although, if we did this, we would have to move all the key pages that have keys on to support this. That would not be a big problem as we could limit the moves to say 20 per day. --iAdam1n (talk) 09:47, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

I suggest we wait a bit until we see what models of the iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s will exist. But in general, I like the idea of using only the A1nnn numbers. The only issue I see right now is that Apple differentiates between A1532 GSM and A1532 CDMA. If there are real hardware differences between these two, then we're screwed again. That's why I suggest to wait until we know these exact model types. On the disambiguation page I added the GSM/CDMA model differentiation already (as Apple does). If they turn out to be the same, we can remove it again, but I wonder why Apple lists two models (with different bands supported) there now. Someone also added the "CDMA" mark to one of the others, but that's not how Apple marks them, so I suggest to remove that mark there again. If everything can be differentiated by these A-model-numbers, then yes, we should change the old pages too. Including all key pages. --http (talk) 14:44, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

I do know there are 2 CDMA and 3-4 GSM for the iPhone 5c alone. --iAdam1n (talk) 16:04, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Ahem… All of the iPhone 5c models can do GSM communications. Hence one of the reasons why I want to ditch the "GSM"/"Global"/etc. labels in favor of A1XXX model numbers. ;P --Dialexio (talk) 16:07, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

One thing is, what about iPod touch 5 as that has two model numbers that are the same device, same with iPhone5,2. How would we get around that? I suppose we could like both separated with a forward slash. --iAdam1n (talk) 18:19, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, we could just use something like "iPhone 5 (Model A1429/A1442)." --Dialexio (talk) 22:45, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Yeah I thought that but what about the iPhone 4 GSM and GSM Rev A? They both seem to be A1432. --iAdam1n (talk) 23:10, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

This is why I'm against using the A1XXX model numbers instead of the current GSM/Global thing. --5urd (talk) 23:25, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

I had no plans to change the way we refer to the iPhone 4 or iPad 2 (Apple does use GSM/CDMA, and for those devices it works fine). If a new iPhone 5S revision comes along, Apple will probably refer to it as a "Rev A" thing, and so will we. --Dialexio (talk) 02:50, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Referencing Adam's reply above, if we had took that to the key pages, it'd be [[{BuildTrain} {Build} (A1432)]] which would mess everything up. What could we do? Use [[{BuildTrain} {Build} (A1432 Rev A)]]? No. That doesn't look good. The current way of referring to everything by their supported network type (GSM/CDMA/Global) helps in going to a different page.

Let's say I'm on BrightonMaps 10B329 (iPhone 4 GSM) and I want to go the CDMA device. What do I do? Go to the URL and replace GSM with CDMA. With the model numbers, I'd have to navigate to Firmware, then find the link, or find out what the model number of the CDMA variant is and replace the model number in the URL with that.

Ok, who navigates by the URL and search bar? I do. And I'm sure there's many people out there that prefer to navigate with the search bar if they know the page name. If we go by model number, the AJAX search results just list pages with a model number in parenthesis. How does that help? I'd either have to know the model number of the device I want, or visit each one until I find the page I need.

Sorry for the rant, but I am strongly against this. --5urd (talk) 23:25, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

I do suppose we could just trash the buildtrain all together to shorten it down too. --iAdam1n (talk) 23:32, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Dropping the Build Train would only increase the workload. Besides, what's the harm with it? We've been using the same page title structure since forever, and it's worked. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". The current system works, so why, other than the fact that Apple refers to them differently, should we change this? In addition, we don't refer to everything the way Apple does. The iPad mini 1G is referred to as the "iPad mini". The iPad 3 is refered to as "The New iPad". The iPad 4 is refered to as "iPad with Retina Display"^[1]. Are the key pages titled BrightonMaps 10B329 (The New iPad, Wi-Fi+3G for AT&T and Verizon)? No. --5urd (talk) 00:37, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

But the reason we want to not use the variants is because the new devices that are coming out are breaking he structure and also CDMA versions can use GSM in the 5c plus we have like 4 for GSM alone. I only meant drop buildtrain to shorten the urls down. For the iPhone 4 GSM Rev A we would have to list it as iPhone 4 A1432 Rev unless another idea is thought of. --iAdam1n (talk) 00:55, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

No. Anything involving moving key pages to change their title I am completely against. As for the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c, we ultimately have to wait. There may be different types, but if they all work with the same firmware, then what do we do then? Use A1456/A1504? I don't want to do that. It can get confusing in the future if that list were to be huge. With 5 different models for the iPhone 5c alone, it's just not practical. For the fact that all support GSM, but not all support CDMA, we just do what we've been doing: "GSM" and "Global". --5urd (talk) 01:22, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with changing the titles of pages that don't even exist though. If *all* of the models use the same firmware, just go with "iPhone 5s." If they happen to be partitioned into two different firmwares again, that will certainly complicate things, but it wouldn't be worse than nonsense like "GSM," "GSM [Global]," "CDMA," "CDMA [Global]," or "GSM [Global Plus TD-LTE]." If it's just one oddball, we could just have "iPhone 5s" and "iPhone 5s A1XXX" (whatever the odd one is), and include a link on the former page to say "keys for model A1XXX are on this page." --Dialexio (talk) 02:50, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I probably didn't phrase that well… I wasn't thinking of how Apple markets the product, but rather more along the lines of how they refer to it in, say, the tech specs page or support documents— the pages that shows the messier side to their simple sugar coating. --Dialexio (talk) 02:50, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

You keep misinterpreting/misrepresenting what I'm proposing. I never said anything about dropping, say, "iPhone 5" so firmware page titles would look like Sundance 10A405 (A1428). I want to change the GSM/Global part to the A1XXX number, so it would probably show like Sundance 10A405 (iPhone 5 A1428). (If a hardware revision were made, it would probably look like Sundance 10A405 (iPhone 5 A1428 Rev A).) From time to time, I edit URLs to browse the wiki too. But the GSM/Global identifiers don't work that well; again, all iPhone 5 models can connect to GSM. That's not really helpful. --Dialexio (talk) 02:50, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I suggest we drop the A and use Rev. As for the idea of changing to A1XXX, I see no issues and am for the idea. I admit it can cause chaos when we move the pages but we could limit the moving per day of course. Overall, I think it will be worth it. --iAdam1n (talk) 10:01, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

No. Don't drop the A from Rev A. Why would you even think to? You want to call them what Apple calls them, and the revised iPhone 4 GSM is referred to with Rev A. In addition, there have been Rev B things before, such as the S5L8947 (A5 Rev B) used in the revised Apple TV 3G. In addition, think of all the redirects we would need to keep for sites that link to key pages directly. I have even seen sites that still link with the URLs as /wiki/index.php?title={Title} instead of the year old change to /wiki/{Title}. The wiki handles that internally for us, but the redirects made in the moves would have to be kept. Currently, only the iPhone 5 and iPad 4 are the only devices referred to by their model numbers. --5urd (talk) 20:53, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

That's why I don't want to change it. It's worked for us, and we have no idea how the new firmwares will be handled. I am betting that there will only be two firmware types - one for the GSM, and one for the Global (GSM+CDMA) model. The only reason they are split, IIRC, is because AT&T uses different LTE bands than rest of the GSM world.

Ultimately, the GSM/CDMA/Global monikors haven't caused any naming conflicts. Ok, you don't want to use the marketing title. What about the way they are referred to on ADC, because that seems to be what you want. I may be misreading what you're saying again, but if we're going to do that, let's use their full title. Something (iPad [4th generation Model A1458]) (iPad 4 Wi-Fi) and (iPad Wi-Fi + Cellular [model for Verizon]) (iPad 3 Global). Does the first one tell you if the device is Wi-Fi or a Wi-Fi+3G model? Does the second one tell you at all that it is an iPad 3, or that it supports GSM? No.

Apple has a history of being inconsistent. For example, the iPad 3 Wi-Fi is referred to on ADC (and iTunes) as "iPad Wi-Fi (3rd generation)" while the iPad 3 GSM is referred to as "iPad Wi-Fi + Cellular [model for AT&T]". What happened to the "3rd generation"? --5urd (talk) 20:53, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

We could always list as iPhone 4 (iPhone3,1) etc instead if that would be better. --iAdam1n (talk) 21:13, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Why is there a need to explicitly keep "Wi-Fi" in a key page's title? All you need is a way to distinguish what model it is from its other variants— the A1XXX model number does just that. It's not like we referred to the AppleTV3,2 as "Apple TV 3G (New Single-Core A5)" or something. And obviously, we can use common sense to address the 3rd generation iPad issue you brought up… Now you're just nitpicking. --Dialexio (talk) 05:28, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I think we should wait until we see the firmware for iPhone 5c/5s and then decide. TBH, as 5urd said, it is ok as it is but of course if once the new firmware is out it is more confusing, then we can think again. --iAdam1n (talk) 14:12, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Come to think of it, we can use a mix of both; we can keep the "Global" moniker, but drop the "GSM" moniker in favor of the A1XXX model number. (The "GSM" moniker is the one that's been bothering me.) I think this works well for the iPad 3 (which is actually split into "CDMA" and "Global—" it probably doesn't need to be done for this), iPad 4, iPad mini 1G, and iPhone 5, but this leaves the question of what to do for the iPhone 5C/5S. --Dialexio (talk) 04:04, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

That would look worse! If we are going to do it, we have to do it for ALL. --iAdam1n (talk) 09:40, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

What is the status on this now? --iAdam1n (talk) 21:18, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Login prompt revision suggestion

I wrote a suggestion here: MediaWiki talk:Loginprompt (since I don't have permission to edit MediaWiki:Loginprompt directly) - I'd be interested in whether it sounds like a good idea to other people. Britta (talk) 01:00, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Homepage suggestions

Under "Application Development", what about linking to iPhoneDevWiki? It's also a community-edited technical resource, and it links to this wiki. It could be helpful to add a little more detail to "Get up to speed in the community.", like this: "Get up to speed in the community - learn about how jailbreaks work." Under "Definitions", it could be helpful to list all the firmware tags in one line or sub-list, similar to how Jailbreak is organized next to Tethered jailbreak and Untethered jailbreak, both to save space and help readers understand the list. --Britta (talk) 23:01, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

A link to the iPhoneDevWiki sounds good. I wonder if we should have an "External Links" or "Other Resources" section to include links to other sites (such as the iPhone Dev Team blog) though. As for the "Up to Speed" page, I feel like the entire page could be reworked a bit— and perhaps even receive a new, clearer name (Introduction? Preface? Or something else?)— the current name makes it sound like it's for people that last paid attention to jailbreaking when the App Store didn't exist. And yeah, moving the IMG3 tags to a sub-list sounds like a really good idea. (Admittedly, I actually don't care for its inclusion in the first place, but that's just a personal preference.) --Dialexio (talk) 00:10, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

There's already Useful Links with some links to other core community resources (which could be updated and rearranged) - I was just thinking that it'd be especially useful to link to iPhoneDevWiki prominently since it's likely for TheiPhoneWiki visitors to also be interested in relatively-organized technical information about development. Changing the name of "Up to Speed" sounds fine to me too - that page didn't get much attention since 2008 until I sort of commandeered it to serve as an "intro to jailbreaking" page. :) It could be renamed "getting started", as in "how to get started on learning about research into iOS devices, especially security research (such as jailbreaks)". Britta (talk) 00:31, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Also I'd love to see a dedicated section for "Good tasks for new editors", where we could maintain a list of relatively easy/straightforward suggested edits that wouldn't require vast technical knowledge, like updating that links page. Where would that go? Add it as a sub-section of The iPhone Wiki:Current events and link that section from the homepage or something? Or make a new page? Britta (talk) 00:40, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

What is 0x5265c384 in the boot process?

Does anybody know where 0x5265c384 points to in the boot process? I haven't been able to find anything on it. --Ph0enix (talk) 20:14, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

License for contributions

This wiki has never had an official license for contributions. Now, IANAL, but IIRC, this means that you can't use anything posted here unless it qualifies as fair-use. What I propose is that we set a license and add a notice that states that any contributions after a set date are to be licensed under that license (that's kindof a mouthful). I think we should use the CC-by-SA 3.0 as Wikipedia uses it, but that's just me. Any ideas? --5urd (talk) 19:53, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, the edit info already says all this:

Please note that all contributions to The iPhone Wiki may be edited, altered, or
removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly,
then do not submit it here.
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public
domain or similar free resource (see The iPhone Wiki:Copyrights for details). Do not
submit copyrighted work without permission!

For me, that's enough. I don't need a 50 page license. But if you want to formalize this more, go ahead. --http (talk) 20:35, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Sounds good. It's good practice to have an official license, just in case any disputes happen someday, and to ensure that it's OK to copy text over to Wikipedia (for example). Britta (talk) 21:32, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Future plans

Now that I have SSH access, I've begun working on making several, somewhat-overdue changes to the wiki. The Renameuser extension was reinstated, so admins can now rename accounts. If you have another account, that can also get merged into your current account. If you happen to get locked out from both your account and the email used is no longer active, I can run a script to reset your password. I've also begun implementing a very noticeable change— as users of the Vector skin have noticed, the iOS 6-based theming is gone. It's a semi-temporary move though; it's going into its own skin, because… you know, choice is cool. People who like the Vector skin may not have liked the iOS theming, especially since IE 9 and lower didn't display it completely accurately. Therefore, it's going into its own theme. Once that's done I also plan on making a separate iOS 7-based skin. If there are any further thoughts or suggestions on how to improve the wiki, do let me know! --Dialexio (talk) 22:18, 9 November 2013 (UTC)