Chapter 12. HARDWARE HACKS

In the future, everyone will have a personal computer with all their information on it, and they will carry it around in their pocket. That future is now, and the computer is called the iPhone.

But just because all our data is on a little pocket computer doesn’t mean we can access it the way we want to. To a large degree, we’re relying on cloud connectivity—our data pushes up from our PCs or Macs, to the cloud, and down to our iPhone. We’re untethered, but still dependent upon the network and our home PC. What we need is a way to finish the transformation, and make it so we don’t even need a personal computer—make it so that everything is in the phone.

That’s what the future holds—if you look.

This chapter will go over the dozens of things you can do to enhance your iPhone-centric lifestyle with hardware and accessories. You’ll learn how to view your iPhone media on your home TV, in the car, and in the hotel room when you’re traveling, and how to keep it charged as you go. If you’re handy with a screwdriver and a spudger, this chapter will show you how to disassemble and reassemble all the iPhones and iPod touches. And if you’re the circuit builder type, you’ll learn methods for connecting and controlling almost any device—serial or otherwise—to your iPhone, without having to jailbreak it!

Adapt Existing Headphones to Work with the Original iPhone

You can easily adapt hard-to-fit 3.5 mm plugs into a first-generation iPhone.

If you’re using an original iPhone, ...

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