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

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

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. 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

“i cant uninstall sbsettings”

I’m assuming most of you know how to uninstall jailbroken apps. You do it through Cydia. You load it up, wait for it to go through all it’s “Loading Data” crap, then go to “Manage”, “Packages”, find “SBSettings”, then hit “Modify” then “Remove”.

But let’s assume there’s some of you out there that are havin’ issues uninstallin’ it. Sucks you be you man… I had used a theme for SBSettings. Now when I uninstalled it, it said it was going to remove the theme files too. Great. But if some of you are havin’ uninstall issues, try removing the theme files first, then try removing SBSettings.

What about if you’re still havin’ issues beyond that? I hate people who say “Restore your iPhone”. Screw that, that’s not an option, that’s a last resort. If you ever have to do that (never once had to do it myself), then you pretty much give up. What you can do is contact the makers, Bigboss, themselves. Their email is bigboss@thebigboss.org. There aren’t any known issues uninstalling SBSettings, so that’s why you’d have to hit them up.

Peace, J

So yo, I’ve noticed a major improvement on system speed without SBSettings. I’ve mentioned this before, but I really didn’t see exactly how much it really helped the speed until I used Backgrounder.

Oh, and I just had a bunch if needles in my gums and, um… **** my mouth!! Ahh… mother ****** piece of ****…

Any ways… The biggest improvement was when I tried listening to music in the background, like with the app WunderRadio. With SBSettings installed, ****, I could barely run it in the background to access anything before it would crash. It wouldn’t run more than 10 seconds.

But having it uninstalled, ****, I’m able to write up an entire theneocell.com post with music in the background, and this includes workin’ with photos in the post. Last night, I was able to play net radio while doing an entire post and then do some Tweetie (Twitter), some Safari and even Notes, about 45 minutes of listening to music before WunderRadio crashed.

Think about that… goin’ from up to 5 minutes to up to 45 minutes. That’s crazy. It’s all from not havin’ SBSettings runnin’ in the background.

I used to listen to music in the background with Backgrounder, before I had SBSettings installed. I was able to play music in the background no problem. So clearly, SBSettings was causing a big slow down.

Now, am I sayin’ not’ta use SBSettings? No… Am I sayin’ that SBSettings is a system hog? No… What I am sayin’, though, is that if you want to use Backgrounder, Backgrounder is a program that runs in the background constantly, just like SBSettings. Having both running in the background will slow your system down to a very noticeable point. And using Backgrounder with SBSettings will make the system too slow to really make Backgrounder work effectively.

So, it’s either run SBSettings without Backgrounder, or use Backgrounder without SBSettings. What do I think is more valuable? Backgrounder by a long shot.

Peace, J

Well after not havin’ SBSettings installed, I’m sad to say the system is faster without it. Not by too much, but by enough to make to OS perform more like an unmodifyed iPhone.

It’s barely noticeable, but at those times when the system might lag opening an app or somethin’, it’s noticeable not havin’ SBSettings installed and having Boss Prefs instead.

I’m bummed that’s the case though because I love SBSettings and I hate Boss Prefs. I did configure Boss Prefs as my new double click home button action, so that I just click my home button twice and instead of my phone favorites coming up, Boss Prefs comes up. That part’s better than SBSettings’ swipe method (because SBSettings would always come up when it wasn’t needed). But Boss Prefs doesn’t include a brightness option, one of the most accessed things. And when playing music from iPod, double clicking the home button still brings up the iPod control, so that’s good. But for brightness, I have to go into settings in normal. Oh, and Boss Prefs does have the same hid icon control as SBSettings.

I may use SBSettings again sometime, because it’s so useful… but for now speed’s more important.

Peace, J

Bossmods was ok, but it was a page you had to load up and you choose what you wanted or didn’t want. With SBSettings, you swipe your finger across the top of the screen, like unlocking your phone, just from the top. You can do this in almost every program. Once ya do, you see a menu over the screen with simple buttons.

I’m not gonna’ explain it to death, I just wanted to say how useful it is. Most people are all ******* about how iPhones don’t have good battery life. Hey dip *****, turn off some of the things your not using.

This is how I use it. When I’m at home, only wi-fi is on. When I leave for work, I turn wi-fi off and turn Bluetooth on (so the NeoCell can connect to my TomTom 930 gps). When I get to work, I turn Bluetooth off and wi-fi back on. And the same thing for the ride home. Today on the ride home, only Bluetooth was on (car phone), but there was some traffic on N Dale Mabry Hwy, so I turned Edge on also to get online for a few minutes. After I was done being’ online (once traffic cleared), I turned Edge off. Once I got home, Bluetooth off, wi-fi on. I do all this because it gives you so much more battery time because all three devices are radio devices, using’ power to broadcast crap, whether your connected or not.

This would be a pain, but with SBSettings it’s so nice ‘n’ easy like Georga Weezy…

But another really important feature is the ability to hide icons. Hiding icons is great because it frees up space on your springboard. You can do that with SBSettings.

A little advice though, when you open SBSettings, press the home button to exit it (the home button won’t close an app you have open by the way). When you wanna turn off let’s say Edge and Bluetooth, turn Edge off last as it takes longer to turn on and off.

SBSettings is just another reason to jailbreak. You can find SBSettings in Cydia.

Peace, J