Say Yes To Bossprefs, No To SBSettings

I constantly run into posts online that talk about how SBSettings slows them down or drains their battery life, and usually there are always SBSettings fan boys right there to spread misinformation that SBSettings runs smooth as a whistle and doesn’t effect performance or battery life. Truth is, SBSettings has to run in the background, and because it runs in the background 24/7 , it makes your CPU work harder, which, common sense, makes your system slower, and the more your CPU is used, the faster your battery will drain. Common sense these SBSettings fan boys don’t want you to be aware of.

SBSettings and other Cydia apps that run in the background aren’t designed to make your system slow. But they do. Ford Pintos weren’t design to blow up when hit from behind. But they do.

It’s sad that the makers of Bossprefs have abandoned all development of this simple little program that allows you to open it to turn settings on or off, without if having to run in the background and slow your performance down. Turning wifi on or off doesn’t work on OS 3.0 and the developers laugh at the idea of anyone wanting them to fix it. Their attitude is “You idiot, why are you using Bossprefs, you should be using our SBSettings program you retarded little monkey you.”. So Bossprefs is kinda’ useless for turning things on or off, but there are other uses for it.

So what are some of the benifits to Bossprefs? Well I’d like to start by pointing out the benefits of SBSettings, and to point out that the poor little orphaned Bossprefs does the same things for you.

Bossprefs / SBSettings can;

• Hide icons; gotta’ icon that you don’t want to see anymore (Stock app, Contacts app), you can hide them
• Customize which buttons / toggles are displayed on the app page
• Add the iPhone 3GS’s numeric battery display to your iPhone / iPod Touch (i.e. “47%” next to your battery icon)

There’s a lot Bossprefs does that SBSettings also does, so if you need any of those functions (hiding programs or displaying the battery percentage), get Bossprefs instead of SBSettings.

There’s a funny quote I came across from a forum user from Tokyo named “mavis” in response to the SBSettings fan boys, and where he / she says

I really wish I had one those magical iPhones that doesn’t slow down when it runs out of RAM due to stuff like MobileSubstrate running! You guys are really lucky to have phones with plenty of RAM!

No matter what anyone says, people who are running jailbroken apps in the background, like SBSettings, will have a slower iPhone. Don’t believe me? I have actually been around people who had jailbroken iPhones, like the Neocell 2G was (before I had the Neocell 3GS)… but that’s where the similarities ended. Their iPhones would be slow as dirt compared to mine. When I’d ask’em, “Dude, how can you put up with the lag?”, you know what their answer was? “I didn’t realize it had gotten so slow.”. And you know, these are the same people who are saying “SBSettings doesn’t slow down your iPhone…” and “I run apps like SSH and SBSettings and I’m just as fast.”. …You see what I’m sayin’?? A lot of these SBSettings fan boys people aren’t “liars”, they just don’t realize, or are in denial, of how slow their iPhone / iPod Touches are.

One guy, my age, that I meet at T-mobile while paying my bill, was a jailbroken and unlocked iPhone 2G, like I was, and was clearly embarrased by the lag of his jailbroken iPhone compared to mine (he didn’t have Winterboard installed, but had SBSettings, SSH and who knows what else). His excuse for being slow? “Oh… oh… let me reboot… That’s why I’m slow, I’m faster when I reboot.”, this guy, a self-proclaimed active member of jailbroken forums, was speaking to me in a rude “Yeah, I know what I’m doing, you don’t” tone about SBSettings. I said to him “You’ve gotta’ reboot just to ‘fix’ your speed? Dude, I don’t ever gotta’ reboot my ****, I’ll reboot maybe once a week.”. Once he booted up (after like five minutes, it was nuts), he was faster. “See? SBSettings, SSH, it’s all good… Nice and quick.”. I grinned and said “So yeah? Let me open somethin’ real quick…”. On his iPhone (which was in a cheap, $0.2 rubber case), I opened Safari, loaded a page, then opened his iPod (didn’t play anything, just opened it), then opened his email, then hit the home button (when you reboot, Safari and iPod aren’t running in the background). I told him, grinnin’ again, “Do what you were just doin’ again now…”. He looked at me sheepishly, like he realized I knew a lot more about iPhones than I lead on. When he went to open an app or swipe through home screens, there was that classic lag.

I said to him, “Wow… my iPhone’s been runnin’ for four days now without a reboot, and yours has been running for what… two minutes now, and already there’s lag.”. I said to him “It can’t be because of SSH or SBSettings running, now could it?”. He muttered “Uhh…” and before he could find a response, I said “Na, you probably just need another five minute reboot…” and I, showing how much I appreciated his snobbish rude attitude earlier, said “but I don’t got time to wait around for you to reboot, I gotta’ pay my bill.” and left him be. People like this are the ones responding in forums like this.

In the end, though, don’t take my word for it. If you wanna’ use SBSettings, go for it. It’s important for you to form your own common sense and screw this groupthink mentality most people have.

Peace, J

Necell 3GS: Why I Still Won’t Use SBSettings

So now that I’ve got the Neocell 3GS and I’m able to run jailbroken applications with ease, such as Backgrounder., you’d think I’d now use SBSettings since I have twice the CPU power and twice the memory for my iPhone 3GS 32GB, right? Wrong. Here’s why…

SBSettings is a great little jailbroken app, for those of you who don’t know, that allows you to swipe across the top of your phone to turn off and on very important things, such as your wifi, bluetooth, adjust your brightness, ect. But the problem is that SBSettings has to run in the background 24/7 of your iPhone, whether your using it at the moment or not. As I’ve said before, SBSettings will slow your system down. But this was for 2G and 3G iPhones, which for any’a y’all that didn’t know, are the same exact speed (everything, but internet of course). I’m a public advocate, I guess you could say, for keeping your jailbroken speed as close to non-jailbroken devices. So I tell any and everyone I know not to use SBSettings because of the impact it has on your speed.

But now a select few, including myself, have iPhone 3GS’s. Twice the memory, twice the processor power, yada yada yada… Does this mean “Yay, me gets SBSettings now…” and everything’s fine and dandy? Freak no. It’ll just slow down some of the speed advantage you have of your 3GS. Now, unless you wanted to buy a 3GS just to run apps like these, regardless if your 3GS is slower than other 3GS’s… fine. But I know the majority of you out there rockin’ a 3GS got it for the speed, among other things. SBSettings will, of course, eat into your speed.

And here’s another reason not to get SBSettings, or Bossprefs for that matter… being able to turn wifi on or off don’t work. Nope… didn’t work for the Neocell 2G, and it doesn’t work for the Neocell 3GS. I mean, for me, that’s the whole point of using SBSettings or Bossprefs is to turn bluetooth and wifi off. If I can’t turn off wifi from either app and have to go into the settings section of the Neocell to turn wifi off, I might as well turn bluetooth on or off while I’m there. I mean that’s the point of the apps, so for me, functionality of the apps is straight up broke.

So should you use SBSettings? It’s your choice… but if it ain’t good enough for the Neocell 3GS, how are you dissin’ your own 3GS and saying it’s good enough for you? (And if you’ve got a 2G or 3G iPhone, it’s not even a choice because you will become sluggish). Don’t make your 3GS be like the crappy stick figure below…

Peace, J

SBSettings Slow? Some Tips

‘Ight… Figured now would be a good time to revisit SBSettings and the issue of speed…

I’ve already mentioned before that, because SBSettings has to run in the background along with your system, it slows everything you do a little bit (or a lot, depending on how demanding you are for performance). Most of you should have Backgrounder installed if your jailbroken, and Backgrounder is a program that runs in the background constantly… and running apps in the background will crash if you don’t have enough memory, so you want to avoid anything that runs with the system, such as SBSettings.

The recommendation I have is to install OS 3.0 (so you don’t need to use Clippy for copy and pasting) and have Backgrounder be the only program that runs in the background with the system. Do not install SBSettings, instead, use BossPrefs, it doesn’t run in the background but provides the same features you’d want in SBSettings. (Although, for some people like me, BossPrefs doesn’t work fully on OS 3.0 and is useless broken.)

But the point of this is to provide some tips on how to keep your system running not so slow with SBSettings installed. After all, if BossPrefs isn’t working, then SBSettings may be important to use for some people. (I won’t use it on the Neocell though, even if BossPrefs doesn’t work.)

So, what can you so to keep SBSettings running fast? First, install OS 3.0 (jailbroken, of course). OS 3.0 really helps free up resources and keep apps and the system running faster.

Next, keep as much **** from runnin’ with the system as possible. So what jailbroken apps run in the background that can slow down your system? The number one that seems to cause the most sluggishness is Winterboard. Wow, that ***** can slow your **** down faster than paparazzi on Paris Hilton after a DUI conviction.

Another thing that not only runs in the background, but isn’t needed, is SSH. Don’t install that crap. You can use iPhoneBrowser if you wanna’ transfer files to and from your computer to your iPhone. That, and that SSH runs in the background. Keep that **** off your iPhone is my (strong) advice.

Next it’s a no brainer, but Clippy. You’ve got no reason to use Clippy with OS 3.0. Clippy runs in the bakground.

There are other (mostly crappy) jailbroken apps that run in the background, and I’m not gonna’ go through each and every one of’em… but know that any apps that use “mobile subtract”… well that’s just a nerdy ‘freakin’ term for “runs with your system in the background”. Avoid that crap at all costs. (A reminder, BossPrefs doesn’t run in the background, it’s one of the good guys in terms of sytem performance.)

The next on the chopping block is Backgrounder… yes, not running Backgrounder will make your system and SBSettings run a little faster, but Backgrounder should be the last thing to be removed if you had to remove it for SBSettings. I honestly couldn’t tell the difference having Backgrounder running or not it runs that light.

So, those are about the only tips I can give oh how not’ta have a performance hit with SBSettings. SBSettings isn’t a huge performance hog, but my best reccomendation is to uninstall SBSettings, and any other “mobile subtract” crap and have Backgrounder be the only thing allowed to run with your system.

Peace, J

SBSettings Vs. BossPrefs

So there’s still a lotta’ searchin’ goin’ on on the site about SBSettings, and a popular one is “SBSettings vs. BossPrefs” and also “SBSettings performance”. So let’s get into that.

SBSettings vs. BossPrefs. Which is better and which should you use? First, know that SBSettings is sorta’ like an upgrade of BossPrefs. Think of SB as Windows Vista and Boss as Windows XP. SB and Vista can both do more than Boss and XP, but runs down your system to a point where it’s really not worth it. Windows XP (Boss Prefs) technically does less, but people don’t use Windows Vista (SBSettings) because of how horrible it runs. That’s kinda’ a good way of comparing the two.

Boss Prefs is just an app you quickly open and turn things on and off. What the developers decided to do was make a “better” version that, instead of you having to open an app, they would make a program run in the background where you could swipe your finger across the screen and bring up your little on-off buttons.

The reason the developers think SBSettings is far better than Boss Prefs is the fact it runs in the background, but that’s actually the reason that makes it bad… it runs in the background.

The iPhone OS can only handle so many things running in the background and when you have things running in the background, it of course slows things down some. I talked about it in detail before, and SBSettings does slow your sytem down.

SBSettings and Boss Prefs both have the same things, they can hide icons and a bunch of other stuff. But there’s one thing SBSettings can do that Boss Prefs can’t; brightness. SB can give you quick access to your brightness. Boss Prefs can’t.

With Boss Prefs, you can double tap your home button and bring it up, but it closes out the app you were working on. SBSettings, you can bring it up over your app, turn something on or off or change brightness and go right back into your app. But, SBSettings eats into your performance in order to do this. You’ll actually use SBSettings less than 1% the time your on your iPhone, yet it runs in the background 100% of the time your using your iPhone. See what I’m sayin’?

When comparing the two, I do love SBSettings, but I don’t recommend it to anybody… any-body… over Boss Prefs. We need to find ways to keep our jailbroken iPhones as quick as regular iPhones, not find ways to slow them down.

Peace, J