[Discussion] A request to guide-makers, dev-teams, individuals, etc.

[wlp5]

This forum has become a mess. It is now very hard to find useful info in between all posts that basically go like this

"I read this on the internet and I run something/updated something/started pulling cables out of the phone and now my phone is bricked" (ok, humor here at the use of brick terminology)

I've been following this forum closely during the past 4 months and I think I have a mild understanding of the iphone "system" but I still admit it's not the easiest thing even though by most people I would be considered computer literate (PhD in Computer Science).

So, here's a request to all you people posting guides and tutorials and jailbreaking processes. First of all, thank you! we all appreciate your work.

But please, take an extra 5 mins to make sure your guide is noob-friendly because rest assured that someone is going to read it without reading anything else in advance and will blindly follow your steps without realizing the risks involved.

Here are some suggestions
- For jailbreaking/unlocking attempts, a lot of noobs are crying over their problems. It seems that some of these problems could be easily avoided if they were to restore first and start from a fresh OS instead of the filled over with crap from whatever app they installed. Put that as a first step, perhaps with an asterisk explaining to the more informed people that this is an optional step and they could skip it if they knew what they were doing.
- Place some checks in your guide. For example, if you have a guide saying "1.1.1 to 1.1.2 jailbreaking" put some steps on how to check baseband, bootloader, etc. and stop people that don't have the knowledge to realize that they shouldn't be following these steps.
- Unfortunately, it seems that disclaimers of the form "run at your own risk" or "you could damage your phone" don't really work for trigger happy owners. Try to make more explicit the risks involved and try to discourage people from following risky or newly released methods that could still have bugs. Don't worry, the knowledgeable user will figure out on his own the risks involved.

It seems the number of iphone users is growing and this forum will continue to turn to a place that causes me sorrow for all the crying owners. Let's try to make everything better please.

Thanks for listening.

PS. A happy unlocked 1.1.2(1.0.2OTB) owner that is going nowhere near 1.1.3 because he learned a long time ago to leave some time for other people to test out the bugs...

[robsterino]

And for all the mods, contributors, dev teamers, etc ... out there ... this is not criticism , I feel the same way. I work in a large organisation where documentation is everything, we even have documentation writers who's job is to do what a technical skilled person can't, and that is to get the message over to the general public.

Maybe its an idea to get some members responsible of writing guides, members who are not involved in the technical issues but whom have enough understanding of the matter. This way even the new members here would find it easier to find the information they are looking for?

As what you see in the corporate world, whenever you start growing , your business process need to grow as well ... and since our beloved forum is growing at a rapid pace we might need to consider some changes in the publication area ...

Just a tought.

Regards,
Robsterino.

[craigp]

I would have to agree. There is too much information spread over too many threads. I've tried to collate as much information as possible in one thread over in the Hitch Hiker's Guide to Hacking the iPhone (http://hackint0sh.org/forum/showthread.php?t=24493).

[al217739]

i also agree

when i goy my iphone in october it took me about ten attempts to unlock it
i had to take pieces from 3 different guides cause i made a mistake the first time

so its still at the 102 anysim unlock stage, and with all the current guides and different possibilties im just not reay to upgrade again, none of the current guides make me feel secure enough to risk my working iphone turning into a brick,

i know that 111/112 are better but for me its just not worth thee risk!

[wlp5]

al217739, you should really upgrade to 1.1.2, I think it's worth the trouble and everything is documented really well by now.

However, you did have the brains and experience to evaluate the risks and make your own decision.

My point in the original post was for everyone giving out valuable info and guides to try to make them more noob-friendly in the sense of explaining better the risks involved and the potential problems. This would cause far less problems and would make this forum much better.

Again, as an example, looking at all this 1.1.3 frenzy, a simple first step to restore the phone in 1.1.2 to get rid of all the apps etc. would have saved the forum and people of all the posts of type "HELP!!!! I can't uninstall my apps and they don't show up in springboard"

[al217739]

i learnt from my first experience not to just jump in, and i can see the 102 to 112 upgrade but not hte 112 to 113,

i just dont see why people just cant wait for a decent guide to come out, especially with such an expensive piece of kit