How to Browse Cydia On Your Desktop Computer

Looking for jailbreak apps and tweaks in Cydia can be a very slow and painful process. Cydia usually has to load almost every single user action, and browsing for content can take quite a long time.

Cydia Search is a new resource developed by Planet-iPhones that allows you to search and browse for Cydia content from your desktop computer. With a full set of browsing and navigation options, Cydia Search takes the pain out of using the iPhone to browse for jailbreak content.


Cydia Search is a quick and easy way to read all about the apps/tweaks, etc available through Cydia on a jailbroken iPhone.

You can browse by repos, categories, and top rated/newest packages. When you search for something, the package’s information is available right there in your desktop browser. The description, author, hosted repo, file size, homepage, sponsor, etc. are all quickly available for any package through Cydia Search.

A nifty iPhone frame on the right side of each package’s page in Cydia Search displays screenshots from the package’s iPhone-optimized page in Cydia. These screenshots allow you to read the package’s changelog.

Unfortunately, you can’t see screenshots for packages in Cydia Search.

Cydia has needed a desktop companion for a very, very long time. It’s nice to see some method for browsing the jailbreak store on the desktop. We haven’t heard anything new about Cydia for Mac. Hopefully saurik still plans on developing a new version of Cydia for the desktop.

What do you think of Cydia Search? How can desktop computers and Cydia merge effectively? Hopefully one day we’ll see a full-fledged Cydia store for the Mac.

Apple might buy Nuance after all

In a strange slip up last November, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said that Apple had purchased Nuance Communications for its Speech recognition technology. Apple, of course hadn’t, but the reason it was such a big deal was because the deal, on many levels, did make sense.

 Nuance is the recognized global leader in speech recognition technology and importantly provides the speech recognition capabilities behind the Siri Artificial Intelligence application that Apple purchased last year (which likely accounts the confusion in Woz’s statements).  Siri is expected to be a huge part of Apple’s iOS 5 which is due to be previewed at WWDC next month.  One significant advantage of Google’s competing AndroidOS over Apple’s iOS is its OS-level integration of speech technologies and the resulting Voice Actions features.


Apple’s acquisition of Siri is seen as a way to not only match Google’s speech recognition but then leapfrog Google with Siri’s Artificial Intelligence (shown below):

 The problem is that Apple doesn’t own the underlying speech technology and if you’ve followed Apple, you know that it likes to own and control the important technology it uses.  We discovered in December (just a month after the Woz slip up) that Apple was hiring all kinds of speech recognition scientists.  But is Apple building its own Speech recognition engine to take on the likes of Google and Nuance?  Probably not.

According to TechCrunch, Apple is significant negotiations with Nuance to either licence the software or even an acquisition of the company.

    Apple has been negotiating a deal with Nuance in recent months, we’ve heard from multiple sources. What does that mean? Well, it could mean an acquisition, but that is looking fairly unlikely at this point, we hear. More likely, it means a partnership that will be vital to both companies and could shape the future of iOS.
At the time of the Woz slip up, the company was valued at $5B (though shares went a little nuts that day, sorry).  Today, Nuance is worth $6B and an acquisition would likely be much more costly.  Apple however has been building up a cash horde for just such an occasion and now has ten times more than Nuance’s value in the bank.

While TechCrunch says a deal is unlikely, a tie-up still makes a lot of sense.  Speech recognition is a core functionality for mobile devices now and even more in the future.  And apparently Siri is playing hardball.

    Nuance CEO Paul Ricci can be as hard of a negotiator as Apple’s own Steve Jobs, we hear. And so there has been a standoff, and negotiations have been ongoing for months.

    Again, from what we’re hearing, all types of possibilities are still on the table, including an acquisition. But again, that’s not as likely as an expansive licensing agreement at this point. In buying Nuance, Apple would immediately screw over several other competitors that use the technology and it would bolster their position. And given what Google has been building, it seems unlikely that the government would have a big problem with the buy.

We’re pretty sure Apple isn’t worried about screwing over Nuance’s other customers and it fels like Nuance CEO Paul Ricci is gunning for a buyout from this information.  But clearly, Apple

With a likely unveiling of iOS 5 next month, a deal of some sort would appear imminent.

Source:- 9to5mac