Dec 25, 2007
How Apple convinced me to hack my iPod Touch
So before I get too deep into this, I love my iPod Touch. I think Apple is swell. I used my Touch for about two or three months before I hacked it. This post explains why.
So I have some specific situations that matter when evaluating whether this post will be of interest to you.
First off, I bought the iPod Touch when it was first announced.
Second, I live in a non-ATT region (I would have bought the phone if I could have but didn’t want to deal with all the heavy bricking that was going down at the time).
Third, I have an 12″ PowerBook G4. This last point is important as this particular machine doesn’t have USB2 ports. I didn’t read the specs close enough before buying. I love this machine for its portability. I will probably upgrade at some point. But I keep my big iron in my desktop and prefer my laptop to be a portable communication device with light production duties. The 12″ G4 Powerbook was perfect.
If you have USB2 ports and you’re happy with your unhacked iPod Touch then no need to continue.
Ok so now that we got that out of the way… to the meat of this.
After buying my Touch I immediately loved it. Nice large screen. Plenty of storage for me (I sync it every few days or so and rarely listen to more than 3 or 4 gigs of music each day).
Then I upgraded my iTunes to 7.5 and my iPod Touch firmware to 1.1.2. Big mistake. After the upgrade (which I was looking forward to because it gave me one of the few things that had real tangible utility: adding calendar events in the iPod Touch) I kept getting the following error when trying to sync my iPod: 0xE8000025.
So I tried some restore action to try and get the iPod straight again.
But still I kept getting that damn 0xE8000025 error.
I finally figured out that it had to do with the iTunes 7.5 and/or the 1.1.2 firmware upgrade for the iPod Touch. Apple doesn’t currently offer a portable that entices me to leave my 12″ Powerbook behind. So I took the next best alternative: downgrade iTunes so my iPod Touch would work again.
Just to be safe I also downgraded the iPod Touch to 1.1.1 (if you google for iPhone1,1_1.1.1_3A109a_Restore.ipsw you will find instructions on how to do that, sorry for not having an easy link for you).
But in order to patch the security flaw that 1.1.2 brought, I had to resort to hacking my iPod Touch. It’s hairy. But it was worth it.
Anyone else hack their iPod Touch? What are your favorite resources for getting the job done?
[...] iTunes 7.4 without disabling the ability to connect my iPod to my PowerMac. I wrote previously one why I hacked the iPod Touch if you need more gory [...]