Going Stock - A Revelation!

[rkennedy01]

Earlier this year I inherited an iPod Touch 4G (16GB). It was my first iOS device, and as a veteran Windows, Android and Blackberry (Playbook) user, I was eager to explore this unfamiliar (to me at least) landscape. Of course, the first thing I did was jailbreak the unit. I assumed that the best way to appreciate the "charms" of Apple's platform was to dive right in and start learning about its underpinnings. So I installed Cydia, Winterboard, some iOS7-ish themes, and generally tweaked and poked the little fella until I ran out of things to explore.

Along the way, I became increasingly disenchanted with the platform. Performance on my iPod seemed sluggish at best, with core apps (Music, Mail, Safari, App Store) sometimes taking upwards of 10 seconds to load. And the UI, far from being "buttery smooth" as most reviews had reported, felt jerky and jarringly unresponsive. The whole experience was disappointing.

I was about to give up on my Apple experiment when I decided to do something radical (for me at least): I would restore my iPod to the "vanilla" (i.e. unbroken, factory original) software configuration and see if maybe - just maybe - my poor experience was due to the device being jailbroken and full of hacker tweaks. After all, 500 million people can't be wrong!

So I fired-up iTunes, put my iPod into Recovery mode, and let the software download a fresh image of iOS 6.1.6. I then fired-up my now "factory clean" device and hit "slide to unlock."

What a difference! Suddenly, my little iPod sprang to life! Apps that had taken forever to load now opened in an instant! Multitasking (or the limited, task-switching version that iOS provides) was a breeze! I could now jump back and forth between Safari, Mail, Music and 3rd party apps like Skype and Tapatalk, effortlessly, with virtually no delay! It was like an entirely new device!

Needless to say, I now understand why Apple's platform is so popular. And while I'll no doubt tinker again with jailbreaking (I already miss those slick iOS7 theme elements from Winterboard), at least this time I have a baseline against which to measure my UX tweaking efforts.

But for now, I'm fully enjoying iOS 6 in all of its stock, buttery smooth glory - and seriously thinking about grabbing an iPod 5G in the near future (just gotta have that new notification center).

RCK

 

[Acidrop]

Not sure what you did to slow down your device so much but my jailbroken iPhone 5 with loads of tweaks functions perfectly.

 

[kataran]

Welcome to iMore rkennedy01

Stock is smooth and your right about over tweaking any device I experienced this in webOS and it's refreshing going stock

 

[rayz336]

Welcome to iMore! It's pretty easy to overtweak a slower device like the iPod touch 4th Gen, going stock should give you pretty smooth performance.i hope you continue to enjoy your device.

 

[rkennedy01]

Thanks for the warm welcome, guys!

So now that I've stablished a baseline sense of how the device should perform, what is a good jailbreak path to follow if I want to preserve this performance but also gain some of the UX goodness of iOS7 and later?

In the OP I mentioned some of the things I tried in my first jailbreaking attempt. Is winter board a good idea? How about activator? Any of the performance hacks?

Note: I'm looking for a balanced approach that will work within the context of the iPod 4G's limited performance envelope.

Thanks in advance!

RCK



Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

 

[natasftw]

Nobody can tell you what jailbreak tweaks are worthwhile. if you're worried about performance, add one at a time and see how the device changes. Based on that, you can determine if you're willing to accept the tradeoff.

 

[rkennedy01]

Understood. Was simply looking for advice, suggestions, anecdotes, etc., from veteran users who have rooted their own iPods. Are there any "must have" tweaks? Any mods to avoid given the model (4G)?

Somebody must have some wisdom on the subject that they're willing to share.

RCK


Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

 

[fb2]

I really don't know what you did, but I never experienced such bad behavior.

I would recommend to just use really necessary stuff which is known and confirmed as stable.

I would suggest du use the following tweaks (and app), because they're are very handy and never crashed my system and are well-known:
- Activator
- Springtomize
- Action Menu (Plus Pack)
- iFile

I sometimes (rarely) had some slow behavior but just because of using (too much) themes, design stuff, tweaks of different developers which influence each other etc., but if you just use those which I recommended, then you'll have a great device with a lot of small but powerful enhancements.

Hope that helps you

PS: to be really honest, the most important tweak is just "Activator". It's just awesome and offers you nearly infinity opportunities to do stuff, launch apps and actions, even create menus, toggle all system properties, schedule actions an lot more

 

[rkennedy01]

I played with Activator quite a bit in my first jailbreaking attempt. It indeed was quite flexible - so many options! It was almost overwhelming!

Again, I'm not sure which tweaks sent my iPod over the edge. Like I said, I never spent any time with the device under the stock iOS, so I had no point of reference against which to measure each new tweak.

Question: Have you any experience with Winterboard? I ask because, this was the source for most of the iOS7-work-alike UI tweaks that I tried - themes and sets from Winterboard and its repository. I also recall installing some font utilities and a control center of some kind (can't remember the name).

I would love to achieve my original goal of an "iOS7-like" UX on the device, but without the huge performance hits I experienced in my first try. Any additional suggestions you have on how to achieve this are greatly appreciated!

RCK

 

[natasftw]

PS: to be really honest, the most important tweak is just "Activator". It's just awesome and offers you nearly infinity opportunities to do stuff, launch apps and actions, even create menus, toggle all system properties, schedule actions an lot more

rk, this right here is a perfect example of what I was trying to say. You like activator. This other user likes activator. It was mostly useless to me. There isn't any "wisdom" in terms of apps. That's the beauty of them. You personalize them. There are hundreds of "best jailbreak apps" lists on the net including a thread stuck to the top of these forums. None of these lists really mean anything. I only use one of the apps fb2 mentioned. The ones I find most useful, he may never touch. When you let others share their wisdom to greatly influence your decisions, you're boxing yourself into a new sandbox.

There's a thread here somewhere discussing making iOS6 look like iOS7. It would have started to die after 7 was jailbroken. You can use the search to find it. It was something like iOS7 theme. That's a decent start if emulating iOS7 is your thing.

 

[rkennedy01]

Frankly, what I would have liked would be to install ios7 onto my iPod touch 4g. But since that's not possible, I'm trying for the next best thing. I suspect a lot of owners with older devices are looking for the same thing since Apple has left us without an upgrade path.

RCK


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[iOS Gravity]

Welcome to iMore.

 

[iOS Gravity]

Frankly, what I would have liked would be to install ios7 onto my iPod touch 4g. But since that's not possible, I'm trying for the next best thing. I suspect a lot of owners with older devices are looking for the same thing since Apple has left us without an upgrade path.

RCK


Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

It wouldn't have been able to support it. Apple always gives updates to devices that can support them.

 

[nikkisharif]

Welcome to iMore

 

[fb2]

Have you any experience with Winterboard?

haha to cut a long story short, I was addicted to themes of all kind and themed my phone nearly daily. The last design approach was exactly like yours, I did everything to have the iOS 7 feeling without updating, because I couldn't live without Jailbreak (especially LockInfo and Activator). Winterboard itself didn't crash my system and also didn't make the system slow. BUT I mentioned some issues when I used a lot of themes together which actually did the same (overwrite each other) or had some special stuff like HTML widgets etc.

At the end I just updated to iOS7 because I mentioned that I spent every day hours to customize my phone and didn't even enjoy the result more than 5 min. That's why I never installed Winterboard since iOS7, because iOS7 icons and design are just great and you don't need to do something.

To give my answer a meaning for you; you can install Winterboard and it won't make your device slow, if you just use the most necessary themes and don't install other (unnecessary) tweaks from Cydia.

There are hundreds of "best jailbreak apps" lists on the net including a thread stuck to the top of these forums. None of these lists really mean anything. I only use one of the apps fb2 mentioned. The ones I find most useful, he may never touch. When you let others share their wisdom to greatly influence your decisions, you're boxing yourself into a new sandbox.

I can agree that, but not completely. Of course you're absolutely right, at the end every user has to use the applications/tweaks/functions to fit the own needs and so it depends on you what you do with it, BUT top lists of forum also have a right to exist (translation of the german word: Daseinsberechtigung xD). Tweaks like Activator, Springtomize, iFile, Auxo, Zephyr were/are always in the top lists because they offer you either a lot of functionalities or a particular function which most people like. That's why I also sometimes check some lists to see why they got in the top lists. Thousands of people can't be stupid

But you're also right, there are also tweaks which aren't very popular but very very important for me. (At first on my iPod and until now) On my iPhone I use the tweak "Delete Word" since iOS4. It's very very basic and lets you delete the whole last word instead of just the last character by hitting the backspace while holding the shift key (just like on PC). I really can't live without it and it really has to be a part of the system!

On my iPad I use "LastApp". With a assigned Activator gesture you can get directly and quickly to the last app. I use a swipe along the bottom edge of the iPad screen, (which makes perfect sense for me, because the animation does also the same move).

I hope I could help you :3

 

[JONNYG825]

I'd recommend doing some research on reddit. If you're not familiar with it, google "r/jailbreak." There's a ton of information available there, whether you need facts, opinions, or support. A great place to learn everything you need to know to figure out / decide what's best for your particular situation


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[AmpedPotato]

You probably could've solved your issues by uninstalling tweaks then reinstalling them slowly to see which is the culprit. Jailbreaking is about more options, which is both a good and a potentially bad thing. When you're stock, you have very little options in comparison, and thus, less chances for problems.


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[Natalie Martin]

I got rid of my 4th gen touch. With stock I still found it horribly slow and I'd never have dreamed of jail breaking an already slow device. Maybe I had a dodgy one by what everyone saying!


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