Modify an iPad to show only videos

[adjuster]

I would like to be able to give a potential client an iPad that only displays icons for several videos I would like the potential client to view. I don't want the client to use the iPad for any other purpose.

When the potential client is finished, I will give the iPad to another one.

Is there an easy/cheap way to do this?

 

[Night Spring]

I believe the situation is this:

1. There's no way to place videos directly on the home screen. The client has to tap the Video player icon before he/she sees the list of videos.

2. If you jailbreak, you can hide all other icons and leave only the Video player icon showing on the home screen. Provided the client doesn't know how to invoke the command to unhide the other icons, they shouldn't be able to do anything else on the iPad other than watch videos. Well, they could delete the videos if they know how!

 

[adjuster]

Thank you very much for responding so quickly. That is encouraging.

Please excuse my ignorance. While I am pretty computer savvy, I have yet to jailbreak anything. What are the steps to hide the icons? What software do I need? Can you revert the iPad to the original configuration?

 

[Night Spring]

Please excuse my ignorance. While I am pretty computer savvy, I have yet to jailbreak anything. What are the steps to hide the icons? What software do I need? Can you revert the iPad to the original configuration?

Well, you are already in the iPads hacks forum, read through some threads to familiarize yourself with jailbreak methods, concepts and resources. IClarifird.com has good how-to guides on how to jailbreak. Once you are jail broken, install SBSettings, and there's an option to hide/unhide icons under "more." And yes, you can revert to factory settings by restoring your iPad.

 

[adjuster]

Thanks. I did try to read the threads. The more I read, the more I got confused. Problem is people assume you know about jailbreaking beforehand.

I learned more from your response than I did after an hour's worth of research.

There are lots of apps listed in IClarified.com that can jailbreak an iPad. Which one is the easiest, most reliable?

 

[Night Spring]

Thanks. I did try to read the threads. The more I read, the more I got confused. Problem is people assume you know about jailbreaking beforehand.

I learned more from your response than I did after an hour's worth of research.

Well, then, I'm happy to have helped! It might be confusing at first, but jailbreaking does mean you are on your own, doing stuff that's unsupported by Apple, so I think it's best to take the time to learn the basics before you jump in. Also, check out the iPhone hacks forum, it gets more traffic so it has more info, most of which are lso relevant to the iPad. If you have more questions, I'll try to answer if I'm around, but the more specific you can make your questions, the easier it is for me or someone else to answer.

There are lots of apps listed in IClarified.com that can jailbreak an iPad. Which one is the easiest, most reliable?

Look for the dates the guides were posted, and use the most recent ones. Right now I believe that would be Greenpoos0n.

 

[adjuster]

Getting closer....

Thanks again. I managed to jailbreak an Ipad 1 with redsn0w.mac 0.96rc9 after a few hours of trial and error (mostly error). The iPad originally came with version 4.2.1, but my efforts to use greenpois0n were unsuccessful and I had to restore the iPad, which loaded up 4.3.1. Since greenpois0n doesn't support 4.3.1, I tried redsn0w.mac .. and it worked!!!

I then loaded SBSettings, which hid all the icons except for iPod and Photos. Why? Nothing I can find on the SBSettings web site.

Then I changed the wallpaper to show our logo. Took forever to figure out you had to store it in "Photos" and select "save as wallpaper". The ipad manual leaves a lot to be desired.

Bought and downloaded "iconoclasm" which purports to give you a great deal of flexibility in dealing with icons. I want to put the "Videos" icon in the center of the screen by itself, but I could not figure out how to make it work. It took me some time to learn that Iconoclasm does not provide an icon, but resides in the "Settings". What is wrong with providing a manual to these programs?

Got Iconrenamer to change the name of the icon to include our firm's name.

I sent emails to the developers of these programs to ask the following:
1) How do you remove the "Photos" and "Ipod" icons?
2) How do you get Iconizer to position the Video icon in the center of the screen under my logo?

A long learning curve, but hopefully I will get to where I want to be.

 

[FireSokar]

Thanks again. I managed to jailbreak an Ipad 1 with redsn0w.mac 0.96rc9 after a few hours of trial and error (mostly error). The iPad originally came with version 4.2.1, but my efforts to use greenpois0n were unsuccessful and I had to restore the iPad, which loaded up 4.3.1. Since greenpois0n doesn't support 4.3.1, I tried redsn0w.mac .. and it worked!!!

I then loaded SBSettings, which hid all the icons except for iPod and Photos. Why? Nothing I can find on the SBSettings web site.

Then I changed the wallpaper to show our logo. Took forever to figure out you had to store it in "Photos" and select "save as wallpaper". The ipad manual leaves a lot to be desired.

Bought and downloaded "iconoclasm" which purports to give you a great deal of flexibility in dealing with icons. I want to put the "Videos" icon in the center of the screen by itself, but I could not figure out how to make it work. It took me some time to learn that Iconoclasm does not provide an icon, but resides in the "Settings". What is wrong with providing a manual to these programs?

Got Iconrenamer to change the name of the icon to include our firm's name.

I sent emails to the developers of these programs to ask the following:
1) How do you remove the "Photos" and "Ipod" icons?
2) How do you get Iconizer to position the Video icon in the center of the screen under my logo?

A long learning curve, but hopefully I will get to where I want to be.

Use gridlock to move the icon anywhere. Perhaps you could set the photos and ipod icons in the corresponding .app to invisible ones? or even go in and manually delete them through ssh or just rename them. ._app instead of .app

 

[Jigga]

This sounds like a great idea but what is to stop the client from just plugging into iTunes and restoring?