My God...I'm in love with my iPad again. Today, while thinking about our upcoming trip to Spokane, my curiosity led me to search Google for a way to control my iPad with a bluetooth mouse. Since a keyboard works, why not a mouse? One would think this (and many other things) would have been part of the iPad from the start...but, alas, are not. I didn't know how many things I could be doing with my iPad until my search popped up with "yes, you can use a mouse with the iPad...as long as you jailbreak it".
I don't know why I never thought of jailbreaking my iPad. It's easy, it's free, and I did it with my old iPhone. When I did it with my iPhone I eventually restored it to the manufacturer's settings because at the time I didn't get much use out of it. It was early on in this process and I'm not a big game person, which is what seemed like most of the jailbreak apps at the time were all about.
I've been playing with my iPad ever since, searching and installing some of the most useful and fun little tweaks to my system. It's amazing what people can come up with if they are given the opportunity to be creative on their own with no limits on what they can and can't do. I understand why a large company like Apple won't ship their products wide open...but it sure is a lot more fun when you have full control over a system. That's long been one of the reasons Apple has been popular in the "underground" - it uses an operating system that has historically been pretty easy (open) to customize.
So, what have I done? Take a look at the screenshot of my iPad below. When you jailbreak an iPad, it installs the Cydia App Store icon on your device. Think of Cydia as the App Store for hackers. I've downloaded things here and there from Cydia to make the desired changes to my iPad. I've done fun little tricks like change my title bar at the top of the screen. It now displays the name (and IP address, if you tap it) of the current network I'm on. The Spurs reference is for fun - the point is, you can change it to whatever you want it to say instead of the standard clock. I've thought about even rotating Bible verses for memorization purposes. At any rate, these things are mere toys when you compare them to some of the major changes.
Essentially, I've turned my iPad into a true portable computer in many senses. I'm not going to list all of the things I've already downloaded to customize my iPad. Just go to You Tube and search for "Top Jailbreak Apps for iPad" or something similar and you'll see what this can do for you. All I'll say is that it's a lot of fun and the possibilities are endless. After all, that's half the point of getting a toy...fiddling around with it to see what it can do. With the device unlocked, all I need is free time to browse the thousands of options.
