I'm not really sure to what extent the iPhones are being used by the shooting community, but considering the number of programs avaliable for calculating drop tables and ballistics I thought I would offer some little tips about these toys.
Out of the box, the iphone is shiny and noisy. It makes all kinds of noises for everything, and the backlight is pretty intense. If one were to use an iphone during a hunt or a tactical situation, unplanned noises or lights could blow your cover etc. Using the iphone could cast enough glare to illuminate your face, and the noises the unit emulates present other target indicators (ie sound).
So, the 2 biggest factors to address are the backlight and sound effects.
The backlight isn't an issue during the daytime, so its not crucial at that point, but as ambient light decreases the backlight will be proportionately brighter.
On your iphone, tap the settings icon. It looks like a gray icon with a picture of gears. When you are inside that menu, access the Brightness tab. The slider on top allows you to manually select a brightness, the button underneath will automatically adjust the brightness to match the amount of ambient light. For night use I recommened the brightness be manually set to the lowest level and allow your eyes to adjust to it. If it is too dim only increase the brightness a small percentage and allow your eyes to acclimatize.
Now the sounds part is much more involved. The first thing to do is go back to the settings page, and then to the sounds tab.
At the bottom of that page is a switch for 'Keyboard Clicks', you will want to disable that sound by switching it to 'off'. This takes care of the noise you would create by inputting data.
The next 2 sounds we need to address are the iphone lock and unlock sound effects. This is the computer savvy part, its much more involved than the previous 2 steps we took.
Basically, all the iphone sound effects are stored in a folder on your iphone that is not accessible 'out of the box'. In other words, you need to take some special steps to access these files. There are programs avaliable on the web that give you a pretty interface to allow you to drag and drop files to and from your iphone.
The dirty way to do this involves some mild iphone hacking. iPhones come from the retailer 'locked', meaning the file systems are protected from end-user access and this also restricts the phone from being used with other carriers or service. It is an accepted practice already to obtain an iphone, have it unlocked or 'jailbroken', and then get the phone connected to T-Mobile as opposed to AT&T.
Anyway, what you do is google 'BlackRa1n'. This is the software that unlocks your iphone. Plug your iphone into the computer with your usb connector, run the program BlackRa1n. It will automatically install to your iphone. After that is done you will have a BlackRa1n icon in your iphone, run the program and a menu comes up with 3 tabs; Cydia, Rock, and sn0w. sn0w will unlock your iphone, then install Cydia. Cydia is a 3rd party software repository for iphones, it contains software bundles and packages not offered on the AppStore. Through Cydia there are a bunch of useful programs to install onto your iphone, but for now we are concerned with <span style="font-weight: bold">Terminal</span>. Terminal is the program that will allow you to navigate the iphone software directories and make the modifications we need to stealth out the iphone.
Once you have Terminal installed, its time to run the program. It brings you to a text prompt we call a 'console'. In that console you are going to input the commands we need to silence the phone. Note--this is not a permanent tweak, it can always be reverted back to the regular settings.
Your command prompt will look something like this:
user:~ mobile$
we are going to type in: ls
ls means 'list' more or less, it lists the contents of the directory you are currently in, which is /var/mobile/.
You should see a list of folders, Applications, Downloads, Media, Documents, Library.
We need to be in a different folder to make this happen, so you type in: cd /System/Library/Audio/UISounds
That is case sensitive too, should look like this:
user:~ mobile$ cd /System/Library/Audio/UISounds
user:/System/Library/Audio/UISounds mobile$
enter the 'ls' command again, it lists all the system sound files your iphone uses:
Its a big list, including all the DTMF tones of the phone, text message sounds, low battery noises, etc.
The files we want to focus on are: lock.caf, unlock.caf, and perhaps even low_power.caf.
These are perhaps the 3 most unescapable and most inadvertently played sounds on the phone. The low power will come without warning, and play a distinct 'boop boop boop' sound. Lock and unlock are triggered when you slide to unlock your phone and start using it, or when you press the lock button to set your phone aside.
What we are going to do, is simply rename these files so the iPhone no longer references the correct file when its time to play the sounds.
The command in Terminal to rename files is mv, short for 'move'. However to perform these commands we need elevated user privileges, ie System Administrator access. The command for that is 'su' which means 'switch user'. So we type in 'su' and hit enter, it asks us for a password. <span style="font-weight: bold">The default root password for ALL iphones is 'alpine'.</span> This is a security risk on the side, the password should be changed by the end-user to something else. If you want to do that, now is the time. Type 'passwd' and hit enter. It will prompt you with: 'Changing password for root. Enter new password:' enter a new password, minimum 6 letters, confirm it and move on to the next step. You will notice, when you are logged in as 'root' that your prompt now has a # at the end instead of a $, this means you are using the 'root' account.
So, now for the lock sound, we will type this: mv lock.caf lock-old.caf
it will look like this:
user:/System/Library/Audio/UISounds/ root# mv lock.caf lock-old.caf
We do the same thing for the other sounds we want to silence.
mv unlock.caf unlock-old.caf
mv low_power.caf low_power-old.caf
When you are finished renaming all the sound effects you want to silence, it is time to log out of the root account and restart your phone. Type 'exit' to log out of root, it will revert back to the prompt with the $. At that point you can simply press the home button on the iphone to go back to your main screen. Shut down your phone and restart it so the system can re-initialize and load up its default sounds--this is where it will no longer find the files we renamed and thus not play any sounds for those events.
When its all said and done you can use your iphone now and not have to worry about excess sounds or lights compromising your position.
I know what you may be thinking, 'couldnt I just switch my phone to silent mode?' Yes and no, its only going to silence your ringtone and sms sounds but the regular system sound effects will still play. I know this is a bit steep on the learning curve to accomplish, but its certainly do-able and a useful tweak for the phone. Don't forget, by unlocking your phone you allow yourself access to tons of 3rd party software via Cydia and other repositories, very useful stuff even if you do not plan on silencing your phone.
Out of the box, the iphone is shiny and noisy. It makes all kinds of noises for everything, and the backlight is pretty intense. If one were to use an iphone during a hunt or a tactical situation, unplanned noises or lights could blow your cover etc. Using the iphone could cast enough glare to illuminate your face, and the noises the unit emulates present other target indicators (ie sound).
So, the 2 biggest factors to address are the backlight and sound effects.
The backlight isn't an issue during the daytime, so its not crucial at that point, but as ambient light decreases the backlight will be proportionately brighter.
On your iphone, tap the settings icon. It looks like a gray icon with a picture of gears. When you are inside that menu, access the Brightness tab. The slider on top allows you to manually select a brightness, the button underneath will automatically adjust the brightness to match the amount of ambient light. For night use I recommened the brightness be manually set to the lowest level and allow your eyes to adjust to it. If it is too dim only increase the brightness a small percentage and allow your eyes to acclimatize.
Now the sounds part is much more involved. The first thing to do is go back to the settings page, and then to the sounds tab.
At the bottom of that page is a switch for 'Keyboard Clicks', you will want to disable that sound by switching it to 'off'. This takes care of the noise you would create by inputting data.
The next 2 sounds we need to address are the iphone lock and unlock sound effects. This is the computer savvy part, its much more involved than the previous 2 steps we took.
Basically, all the iphone sound effects are stored in a folder on your iphone that is not accessible 'out of the box'. In other words, you need to take some special steps to access these files. There are programs avaliable on the web that give you a pretty interface to allow you to drag and drop files to and from your iphone.
The dirty way to do this involves some mild iphone hacking. iPhones come from the retailer 'locked', meaning the file systems are protected from end-user access and this also restricts the phone from being used with other carriers or service. It is an accepted practice already to obtain an iphone, have it unlocked or 'jailbroken', and then get the phone connected to T-Mobile as opposed to AT&T.
Anyway, what you do is google 'BlackRa1n'. This is the software that unlocks your iphone. Plug your iphone into the computer with your usb connector, run the program BlackRa1n. It will automatically install to your iphone. After that is done you will have a BlackRa1n icon in your iphone, run the program and a menu comes up with 3 tabs; Cydia, Rock, and sn0w. sn0w will unlock your iphone, then install Cydia. Cydia is a 3rd party software repository for iphones, it contains software bundles and packages not offered on the AppStore. Through Cydia there are a bunch of useful programs to install onto your iphone, but for now we are concerned with <span style="font-weight: bold">Terminal</span>. Terminal is the program that will allow you to navigate the iphone software directories and make the modifications we need to stealth out the iphone.
Once you have Terminal installed, its time to run the program. It brings you to a text prompt we call a 'console'. In that console you are going to input the commands we need to silence the phone. Note--this is not a permanent tweak, it can always be reverted back to the regular settings.
Your command prompt will look something like this:
user:~ mobile$
we are going to type in: ls
ls means 'list' more or less, it lists the contents of the directory you are currently in, which is /var/mobile/.
You should see a list of folders, Applications, Downloads, Media, Documents, Library.
We need to be in a different folder to make this happen, so you type in: cd /System/Library/Audio/UISounds
That is case sensitive too, should look like this:
user:~ mobile$ cd /System/Library/Audio/UISounds
user:/System/Library/Audio/UISounds mobile$
enter the 'ls' command again, it lists all the system sound files your iphone uses:
Its a big list, including all the DTMF tones of the phone, text message sounds, low battery noises, etc.
The files we want to focus on are: lock.caf, unlock.caf, and perhaps even low_power.caf.
These are perhaps the 3 most unescapable and most inadvertently played sounds on the phone. The low power will come without warning, and play a distinct 'boop boop boop' sound. Lock and unlock are triggered when you slide to unlock your phone and start using it, or when you press the lock button to set your phone aside.
What we are going to do, is simply rename these files so the iPhone no longer references the correct file when its time to play the sounds.
The command in Terminal to rename files is mv, short for 'move'. However to perform these commands we need elevated user privileges, ie System Administrator access. The command for that is 'su' which means 'switch user'. So we type in 'su' and hit enter, it asks us for a password. <span style="font-weight: bold">The default root password for ALL iphones is 'alpine'.</span> This is a security risk on the side, the password should be changed by the end-user to something else. If you want to do that, now is the time. Type 'passwd' and hit enter. It will prompt you with: 'Changing password for root. Enter new password:' enter a new password, minimum 6 letters, confirm it and move on to the next step. You will notice, when you are logged in as 'root' that your prompt now has a # at the end instead of a $, this means you are using the 'root' account.
So, now for the lock sound, we will type this: mv lock.caf lock-old.caf
it will look like this:
user:/System/Library/Audio/UISounds/ root# mv lock.caf lock-old.caf
We do the same thing for the other sounds we want to silence.
mv unlock.caf unlock-old.caf
mv low_power.caf low_power-old.caf
When you are finished renaming all the sound effects you want to silence, it is time to log out of the root account and restart your phone. Type 'exit' to log out of root, it will revert back to the prompt with the $. At that point you can simply press the home button on the iphone to go back to your main screen. Shut down your phone and restart it so the system can re-initialize and load up its default sounds--this is where it will no longer find the files we renamed and thus not play any sounds for those events.
When its all said and done you can use your iphone now and not have to worry about excess sounds or lights compromising your position.
I know what you may be thinking, 'couldnt I just switch my phone to silent mode?' Yes and no, its only going to silence your ringtone and sms sounds but the regular system sound effects will still play. I know this is a bit steep on the learning curve to accomplish, but its certainly do-able and a useful tweak for the phone. Don't forget, by unlocking your phone you allow yourself access to tons of 3rd party software via Cydia and other repositories, very useful stuff even if you do not plan on silencing your phone.
