Cydia Updated: Now Smaller, Faster, More Stable

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Cydia creator Jay Freeman – also known as ‘Saurik’ – posted an announcement on Twitter yesterday to declare that Cydia 1.1 is now ready for download on jailbroken iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads. This update makes Cydia smaller, faster, and much more stable.

Saurik spoke to the iPhoneDownloadBlog and gave the following details on what Cydia 1.1 can do:

  • Has the ability to run and operate Activator, libstatusbar, and SimulatedKeyEvents while running
  • Overall speed improvements, including the “Loading Changes” dialog
  • Consumes less memory
  • Has a much more advanced search mechanism with a new relevancy algorithm
  • Manages broken repositories better

If your iOS device is jailbroken and you want to get your hands on Cydia 1.1, all you need to do is load up Cydia and tap on the “Changes” tab at the bottom. The latest version of Cydia should be displayed and you can simply click the “Upgrade” button to download and install the application.

Despite its faster speed and much better operation, unfortunately Cydia still doesn’t support multitasking just yet. Saurik revealed to iPhoneDownloadBlog why it’s difficult to get Cydia multitasking at this time:

“This is simply not possible at this time. I realize everyone wants it, and hell: I want it, too; but everyone saying it is important doesn’t make it possible. The reason Cydia doesn’t have iOS 4 compliant multi-tasking is that, to make the modifications it makes to the system, it runs as “root”, a user that has more permissions on the system than anything else, which means that SpringBoard, a lowly process running as “mobile”, cannot suspend/resume it.

Now, this is something that /can/ be remedied, and is something that I’ve been thinking of how to do for a long time, but all the obvious ways people like to bring up for making Cydia’s GUI run as mobile with only small parts running as root would make Cydia run slower, and speed is something that is primary on everyone’s minds when they are using Cydia. Luckily, there are things I’ve figured out that may make this more reasonably possible, but certainly not for this release.”

Find out more about Cydia – including why some things aren’t possible and why others were left out and read the full interview with Saurik over at iPhoneDownloadBlog.

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