iFunBox Development

The recent release of iTunes 8.2 ship with an updated iTunesMobileDevice.dll which is slightly not compatible with previous one. At least, we found an important function “AFCGetFileInfo” is removed from its exported functions. The function is used to look at the type (file or directory) of the entries of the filesystem as well as the size of the file, which is frequently used in file browsing applications like iFunbox. Now iFunbox got instantly crash after start up because on-demand loading of this function fails. For other applications that is hardly linked with iTunesMobileDevice.dll may refuse to start up.

We are seeking for work around.
The problem is just fixed, we released an updated version 0.8.250.160.

iFunbox V0.8.250.160 is out now [ download ]

What’s New:
1. Uploading Music and Video to iPhone and iPhone 3G (tested on lastest firmware 2.2.1)
2. Supporting multi-language user interface, and calling for translation
3. Fixed compatibility with Apple iTunes 8.2
4. Robust parsing of meida file’s metadata (e.g. album name and titles)

Highlight:
Uploading media file to iPhone with firmware 2.x is now enabled. So that you can uploading music and video to iPhone like i-FunBox V0.6 does. We really appreciate Alba for sharing the DBVersion trick to us for beating Apple again. More details can be found here.

Limitation:
1. DBVersion trick is only applicable to jailbroken iPhones. So jailbroken is required for uploading media files. DBVersion trick is a lucky work around and works fine with 2.x firmware, yet the trick could be very easily disabled by Apple of later updated firmware. Worry about the coming 3.x firmware.
2. Uploaded media file is not acknowledged by iTunes, still. iTunes may refuse to sync. To bring iTunes back, it might be fixed. Yet recectly failure cases are reported, please use the media uploading function at your own risk. In the worst case, the problem will be fixed by restoration of iphone to factory settings using iTunes.

The newly released i-FunBox V0.8 is for the user all over the world instead of only for English speakers. An UI translation plug-in (*.usm) is supported in i-FunBox and is ready for displaying user interface in all different language.

We invite you to participate in translating i-FunBox to your own language and benefit all users around the world. Besides English community, we find i-FunBox is widely spreaded in community of many place in Europe and Asia. Translations of languages in these areas are especially welcomed, such as Russian, French, Dutch and Japanese.

Translation to your native language many take about a few hours just as easy as editing a text file. We acknowledged every contributor in the About dialog like the red box in the below (a Traditional Chinese translation ).

Multi-language Versions have been Translated

Up to now, available version are:

Chinese (SC):		by Baby Jing	2009.3.2
Chinese (TC):		by Baby Jing	2009.3.3
Japanese:		by Woggie	2009.4.17
Russian:		by Yarkovoy	2009.4.23
Dutch:		by Sabaoon Pamir	2009.4.24
Spanish:		by Fernando Dichiera	2009.5.2
Korean:		by Jaedong Kim	2009.5.21
Turkish:		by iPhoneShake.com	2009.5.30

How to Translate

1. download the template_package. It is a Unicode text contains each sentence to be translated in each line. Also a special version of i-FunBox for testing is included.
2. use text editor (e.g. Notepad) to append every translated sentence after comma.
3. Translate the sentence “English Version” into something like ” xxx version by yyyy ” in native language. This entry will be displayed in About Dialog to show your credit.
4. save the template and send it to ifunbox.dev@gmail.com with your name and the name (both in English and in the translated language) of the translated language.

Things might be concerned and useful:
1. the English sentence, before comma, should not be modified. Just append the translated sentence after comma.
2. [!] or [ some url ] may appear at the begining of some sentences. They are some scripts to display an exclamation icon or some URL can be clicked. Please keep they at the begining of the translated sentence.
3. comma is used as a seperator, so please use \’ to represent comma in sentence.
4. %s, %d, %02d are special keywords like placeholders, which will be replace with strings or numbers determined in runtime.
5. \n\r is representing a line break.
6. An example of traditional Chinese translation is here.

Limitations:
Uploading music and movie to iPhone is now disabled on devices with firmware 2.x.

Highlight:
Thumbnail previewing helps a lot for wallpaper management.
It is also integrated in all other folders including camera folder. Now it is more easy to seletively delete photos in the camera and replace resource images in Applications.

We received many complains that iTunes report “Cannot read the content …” and asks for restoring after uploading video or song using iFunbox. The cause of this problem is that Apple has special hashing checking in iTunes which is not well handled by iFunbox. We apologize for that and will fix the problem in the next release.

Situation
0. For all iPhones and iPod Touch, iTunes will report “Cannot read the content …” and asks for restoring after uploading some media file using iFunbox due to the hashing checking in iTunes.
1. For iPhones and iPod Touch with FW 1.1.x, the uploaded songs/movies will be recognized by iPod on the device and can be played. In FW 1.1.x, the device doesn’t check the hashing.
2. For iPhones and iPod Touch with FW 2.x.x, the uploaded songs/movies will NOT be recognized due to the hashing checking on the device.
3. For other models of iPods (Classic, Video, Shuffle and etc), iTunes will not ask for restoring and just simply remove the media files uploaded by iFunbox. For devices produced before 2007 (not exactly), the uploaded media files will be recognized and can be played. However for newest devices, the uploaded media files can NOT be played. I guess, it is also due to hashing checking.

Do NOT follow iTunes
Though iTunes report ”Cannot read the content …” and asks for restoring, I believe no one would like to do that. iTunes force you update the firmware along with restoring and after restoring all user data will be delete including installed 3rd-party apps, data in general storage, contact list, SMS history. Also you will need to jailbreak after restoring.

Rescue the relationship with iTunes.
Here we provide steps to cheat iTunes that the device has been restored by deleting “iTunes_Control” folder. so that iTunes will initialize the media database (iTunesDB). The way we provided here keeps all user data unchanged except songs and movies. 3rd-party apps, data in general storage, contact list, SMS history will be preserved after process. Also you don’t need to jailbreak again.
We test the steps on iPhone 2G, FW1.1.4 and iTunes 8.0. Thanks Gaz, he tested the steps on iPhone 3G and iTunes 7.1.

0. Close iPod application on iPhone, stop music playing.
Close iTunes, You must close iTunes!!! Then open iFunBox.

1. Backup media files. (Optional)
if you don’t care, just skip.

2. Backup contact list and SMS. (Optional)
Though the following steps will not erase those information, I’d like to have those things backuped just in case.
Contact List: //var/mobile/Library/AddressBook
SMS: //var/mobile/Library/SMS

3. Browse the [Raw File System], Delete the folder iTunes_Control Located in “//var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control”

4. Close iFunbox and then open iTunes for setup.
Wait seconds for iTunes searching for the connected iPhone.
Now iTunes will ask you to setup instead of restoring it, after the iTunes_Control folder was deleted.
Choose [Set up as an New Phone] and uncheck all sync options, iTunes will initialize an empty media database. Thus, the iTunes_Control folder and subfolders will be created. Other user data such as 3rd-party apps, data in general storage, contact list and SMS histroy keep unchanged.
Choose [Restore from backup of], the contact list and SMS history will be overwritten to the state as backup.
In this step, my choice is [Set up as an New Phone], then click [Continue]. Uncheck the automatically sync then click [Done].

Then iTunes takes a long time for sync and finally we have iTunes back.

iPods will be connected to computer as a mass-storage disk. However the the mass-storage disk will be disable by iTunes if [Enable Disk Use] option is not checked.

Remember to check the option, so that iFunbox can find the connected iPods.
The option applies to iPod classic, iPod Video and etc. iPod Touch is indeed an iPhone w/o phone module.

iFunBox v0.6.199.35 is released. [ download ]
What’s New:
1. Full Managing Songs and Movies to iPhone and iPod: Uploading, downloading and deleting media clips.
2. Shortcut for Ringtones.
3. Enhanced data transmission engine.
4. Fix compatible problem with iTunes 8.0, no more crash.

Limitations:
1. Media files uploaded by iFunBox will not be recognized by iTunes. iTunes report it cannot read the content and asks to restore.
2. Manually Respring or Reboot is required after uploading media files.
3. Currently iPod Shuffle can not play songs uploaded by iFunBox.
4. For 2.x firmware, media uploading doesn’t work properly. We’re just work on that.

Many users reported iFunBox crashes after iTunes was updated to v8.0. We found the USB communication runtime library (iTunesMobileDevice.dll) was changed which cause iFunBox failure. The problem has been fixed in the newly released iFunBox v0.6.199.35.

More precisely, the memory layout of the structure am_device was extended 105bytes. The structure is used in many fundamental call for communicating with iPhone via USB port. Though the meaning of these addtional bytes is not clear to us, fortunately we don’t need to know that. The structure is created by the runtime library and feeded to other calls.

The updated am_device structure is defined as:
struct am_device {
unsigned char unknown0[16]; /* 0 - zero */
unsigned int device_id; /* 16 */
unsigned int product_id; /* 20 - set to AMD_IPHONE_PRODUCT_ID */
char *serial; /* 24 - set to AMD_IPHONE_SERIAL */
unsigned int unknown1; /* 28 */
unsigned char unknown2[4]; /* 32 */
unsigned int lockdown_conn; /* 36 */
unsigned char unknown3[8]; /* 40 */
unsigned char unknown4[6*16+1]; // + in iTunes 8.0, by iFunbox.dev
unsigned char padding[8]; // + in iTunes 8.0, by iFunbox.dev
};


The most important feature of the newly release iFunBox is uploading songs and movies to iPhone/iPod. This feature now works with iPhone or iPod Touch with FW2.x.x.

Songs and Movies can be uploaded by clicking button [Copy From PC]

After selected media files was transmitted, uploaded songs or movies will be listed in the [File View]

Please remember to Respring the iPhone, so that iPod will refresh the media file list to include the newly uploaded songs and movies, as shown in the program tips. For the first time of transferring, reboot of iPhone is required.

 SysInfo is a nice app to Respring the iPhone or iPod Touch.

After respring, uploaded songs and movies are listed in iPod.

We just got a brand new iPhone 3G and tested. iFunBox works well with the iPhone 3G as a jailed device without any modification of our program. Cheers!! 

The features of file explorer (use iPhone as a portable disk) and backup iTunes managed songs/movies work well with the non-hacked iPhone 3G.

Currently we’re working on uploading songs and movies to iPhone and iPod. We will release the new version soon.