Rock Your Phone, the better alternative to Cydia on your jailbroken iPhone [Jailbreak Apps]
Patrick recently wrote a piece on how slow and painful using Cydia can be, so I thought I’d offer a little bit of information on the other major jailbreak app portal, Rock Your Phone. In my experience Cydia is still the top dog in terms of new app releases and popularity, but Rock has been doing some serious catching up – especially with the release of Rock 2.2. Rock Your Phone has access to almost all of the repositories on Cydia, and with the new License Central is able to recognize all of your purchased Rock and Cydia licenses, so Rock really can become the one jailbreak app to rule them all.
Rock Your Phone
Rock works just like Cydia does, but with a different paint job and better performance. You can install it through Cydia or via Blackra1n (I did), and, once installed, Rock can manage all of your currently installed Cydia packages, so you won’t need to manage two different libraries. As mentioned above, Rock can also recognize Cydia licenses (for apps like Overboard, SnowCover Pro, etc.), so even though the apps may not be available for purchase on the Rock app store, you’re free to upgrade, re-download, or re-install your purchased Cydia apps from within Rock once you’ve set up a Rock ID.
Ten day trials on all Rock apps
There isn’t a huge library of Rock apps, but all of the commercial apps offered in the Rock store feature 10-day trials. This has definitely been useful for me, since I’ve tried a couple of Rock apps that really haven’t worked out for me (AnyRing, iSmart Dialer, and MyProfiles are a few) and I never had to pay a cent for them.
Rock Extensions vs Cydia’s Mobile Substrate
I’m not a huge technical expert when it comes to the guts of jailbreak, but as I understand it, Rock has taken some flack on various mobile forums because it runs something called Rock Extensions in the background. This isn’t just a Rock thing, though: Cydia runs something called Mobile Substrate in the background.
I asked the founder of Rock Your Phone, Mario Ciabarra, about the issue and he had this to say:
“Rock Extensions is a port of mobile substrate…Each are simply ‘loaders ‘ of ‘extensions ‘ that hook into iPhone apps (ie, SpringBoard which is also your lock screen), Phone, Mail, etc. These loaders don ‘t do much and their footprint is extremely small (they ‘re literally just a few lines of code). Thus, it doesn ‘t really affect the user/system to have both installed.”
My experience over the past few months seems to ring true with what Mario said: my iPhone 3GS hasn’t taken any noticeable performance hit with Rock Extensions and Mobile Substrate running in the background. My iPhone is also still very stable for the most part, but that’s also because I’m fairly careful about running too many background processes.
Faster, Cleaner, and more streamlined
Loading Rock and refreshing the database of new releases takes about four seconds in total (over wi-fi). This knocks the socks off of my consistent one-minute load times for Cydia, where the interface loads up, something messes up, and the whole UI reloads itself. Installing and uninstalling packages – whether they be themes, mods, or apps – is also much easier in Rock. You still navigate packages by categories or find them via the search bar, but once you tap on the “Install” button Rock will take care of the rest for you. You can even have the installation screen minimize itself automatically so you can continue to browse for packages while your previously selected one installs.
Uninstalling packages is also a simple affair: one tap to head to the Manage tab, scroll to the package you want to go kaboom, and then swipe to delete (or tap on the package and press the uninstall button like in Cydia).
Rock Solid
Unless Cydia suddenly receives a massive speed boost (and I’ve heard rumours of this on Twitter), I’ll be sticking to Rock for all of my jailbreak management. Jailbreaking is supposed to be about unlocking the true potential of the iPhone’s hardware and software, and the speed and effeciency with which Rock operates matches that idea far better than Cydia’s minute-long “reloading data” pop-up does.
Totally agree with you!
Rock sounds great. But If I understand things correctly Cydia has a dual function: It's an app store but it also stores information about your iphone so that you have the possibility to restore to an earlier software version if you take an apple update that you don't like. Does rock do this also? I know this is a bit off topic (not bad for the first post eh) but I'd love to understand how to step back to an earlier software version from Cydia /rock and whether future apple updates might prevent this even if Cydia/rock has SHSHs on file.
great point, iGnome – honestly didn't consider that because I don't do that full restore often. I looked the issue up quickly and yeah, one of the great things about Cydia is that it does keep a signed signature that's personalized for your device so that you can future-proof it against Apple updates (http://www.saurik.com/id/12#howto)
Rock apparently features similar functionality, but I honestly can't find it right now. I looked around on the website and through the app and FAQ but found nothing, but their new warning against 3.1.3 seems to suggest you can create such a backup. So I can't explain how to do that restore right now, but it is apparently possible with either Cydia or Rock.
One other issue I didn't go into was the way that Rock natively supports backups of all your installed jailbreak apps. So with the touch of one button you can re-install all of your apps and hopefully your settings as well (this info is inside of Rock app -> Manage -> Settings)
hrmm, also found this after looking around. Might help with restore:
http://www.ihackintosh.com/2009/09/how-to-downgra…
Hi Thomas. Yes I read that post of Saurick's when I first jail broke but if I'm reading it right to step back to an earlier software version you still use i tunes but i tunes is fooled into thinking that it is restoring from your i tunes back up when really it's restoring from the SHSHs on Cydia. The hackintosh link above is very clear. Just strikes me that it must be vulnerable to apple stopping this but I'll be honest I don't really understand.
But I guess my thoughts were not only about is rock better/worse than Cydia but more about loyalty to Cydia for this service. Maybe I should paypal some money to Saurik to help make cydia as fast as rock rather than just jumping ship?
I know what you mean about loyalty: I felt like that with Evernote. Well I still use both services: Cydia to buy and Rock to manage. And yeah, a donation could help, but I’m not sure that Cydia speed is one of Saurik’s priorities right now. Guy has a lot of projects as I understand it.
The way I meant this article to strike was to point out that Rock is a much better package browser and manager than Cydia is, as that’s how I think most people (including myself) perceive it. However, you did make a good point that it’s also a pillar for jailbreaking in terms of helping people keep their future JB options open.
Sure and I suppose there is no beef between them or Rock would not be available on Cydia. So in away using Rock should free up bandwidth and therefore speed on Cydia which is a good thing. I think I'll give it a wiz and maybe purchase from both. The Rock interface certainly seems nicer. Great article, thankx.