Hackers Don't Wait: Netflix iPad App Hacked To Run On The iPhone

Our scoop about Netflix releasing an iPad app was nothing short of a huge and pleasant surprise. Along with the ABC app, it quickly became very popular and US iPad owners just can't have enough of it. Netflix did announce that an iPhone version will follow, but you know the tech world, patience is not one of our virtues. Modmyi reader Knisitruck proves that once again as he apparently just managed to run the iPad netflix app... on his iPhone. To do this, he simply copied the Netflix iPad app and some iPad frameworks to his iPhone and did some slight changes and it's running. Reportedly, this would be due to the fact that the Netflix iPad app packs an iPhone bundle. Also, this would give us some insights on why the iPhone app is still not official yet:

But, having said that, I see why Netflix hasn't released an iPhone client yet. Reasons why:

Huge battery drain - 25% of battery for around 15min of streaming, drains pretty quick while browsing the app as well.

Crashing - I suspect memory is the issue here, and also probably because it's made for another device. Happened when browsing too fast through the app(lots of clicks).

3G Speed - Takes forever to load the app and to start streaming (does work though)

Wanna try yourself? Sure, it's not very complicated actually as being comfortable with the jailbreak, the command line and transferring files to your iDevice will do. Here is the procedure:

• Get app from iTunes, locate/rename ipa to zip and extract.
• Go into the .app file, located at /appname/Payload/appname.app, (show package contents) and open the info.plist
• Edit all references of OS version to show iphoneos3.1.2 (or your respective version). Save and close, done there.

Now, just copied over SSH (with permissions repair and a respring) this will show up on the phone. With Netflix though, it required the mediaplayer frameworks from the iPad. So:

• SSH, get the mediaplayer frameworks folder from an iPad, located at /System/Library/Frameworks/MediaPlayer.framework
• Copy that to the same location on an iPhone (I'd suggest backing up the original from your phone just in case). Change permissions to 755 recursive for directories, and then go inside the folder and change the individual file permissions to 644. (Or just recursive 755 to all files/folders on the MediaPlayer.framework folder)

Now the mediaplayer frameworks are in place, all that's left is a manual install of the app.

• SSH, go to /private/var/stash/Applications
• Copy the appname.app file there and change permissions. (I used 777 recursive for simplicity's sake, but I'm sure the normal 775 would work).
• Launch and have fun.

That's about it. The way I found out that I needed the frameworks file was from a crash report.

I haven't been able to try this myself as I'm located outside the US, but this sounds like a very neat hack. If you give it a shot, make sure to tell us how it went.

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