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Caterpillar is now ‘Kate’ – Give your iPhone a new Life!

12 May 2008 20 Comments

kate.jpgCaterpillar is now Kate with few bug fixes and a major feature (Equalizer)! I have been using Caterpillar (Kate) for quite some time now and I have to say that it is one of the best applications that ever happened to the installer-enabled iPhone. Kate is a collection of Customization tools which definitely changes the way your iPhone looks.

Some of the noted features of Kate being :

[singlepic=153,80,60,web20,left]Smart Dialer : A much needed dialer feature is now complete, thanks to ‘Kate’! Just type the name of the contact and you should see the number (suggestions). Pretty neat, to activate it just hold the ‘#’ key and off you go!

[singlepic=130,80,60,web20,right]FaceLift : A slew of features including Wallpaper, Theme Support and my favorite feature – Enabling 5 icon dock! No need of serious tweaking for that 5 icon dock anymore! Any theme made for Summerboard can be applied here too, how easy can it get?

[singlepic=151,80,60,web20,left]MCalendar : Access your calendar and appointments right from the idle lock screen! You can now see upcoming birthdays! Pretty nifty, ain’t it?

Reminder : Sometimes, we tend to miss calls/sms due to either low sound or due to our busy life, this feature actually reminds us by vibrating every now and then making it easier for us to not miss our dear ones 🙂

[singlepic=139,80,60,web20,left]System Font : My favorite feature so far – iPhone default fonts are so uncool! Just use DejaVu and off you go to a new world on your iPhone. It definitely brings about a major change to the look and feel of anything and everything text on your iPhone. You have a wide variety of fonts to choose from!

Privacy : Worried about the sneak peak preview SMS on the lock screen? Check the privacy feature and customize it to your liking!

[singlepic=154,80,60,web20,left]Uninstaller : It is a cool addition too, deleting an application right from the home screen, no more installer.app refreshing to delete an application!The best part of ‘Kate’ is you can try it for free (Full Version) and then decide on purchasing a subscription based model (different pricing strategies to suit you liking – try $20/6 months or $45/unlimited for best savings)!

You can install Kate by adding repository.ripdev.com as source and then installing ‘Kate’ from Rip Dev category. Try the fully functional trial and check ‘Kate’ for yourself!

Try it out today and enjoy a whole new way of using your iPhone! Thanks to the Russian programmers 🙂 Nice name too ‘Kate’! Frankly, this Application is keeping the 1.0 version of the iPhone alive for me!

Check a detailed walkthrough of the Application :

UPDATE : How to Un-screw Kate from your iPhone by ajy :

I know how to fix the issue and get rid of Kate.  Connect your iphone to itunes, open Kate and uncheck everything (the touchscreen should be working by now), click apply, and everything will go away and your phone will work.  Delete Kate from installer after that.  If you delete Kate from installer without unchecking, your iphone will still be messed up with Kate stuff.  Hope this helps!

UPDATE : Kate’s official response for touchscreen and sound issues :

How do I uninstall Kate?
Launch Kate.app (if you have already Uninstalled it in Installer.app, install again), then uncheck all the checkboxes and hit “Apply”. Then you can uninstall Kate from the Installer.app.

After installation of Kate sounds no longer work?
Uninstall “Reminder” component through Kate (remove the checkbox near the Reminder and hit Apply button), then reboot. You should be back to normal (you can install Reminder again afterwards).

After installation of Kate the touchscreen does not work.
Probably you have applications that are not compatible with Kate installed.
Try to remove all files from a folder /Library/LaunchDaemons/, except for files:
com.openssh.sshd.plist and com.ripdev.remindme.plist
It can be made by means of program iBrickr on a computer, or with other file browsers for iPhone or via SSH.
After that reboot your device.
Even though this is caused by improper operation of third-party daemons, we are currently looking for a workaround.

20 Comments »

  • shavelta said:

    I payed for thr program but I can’t get the code its in my old email so I can’t get it my new email is shevy28@hotmail.com. Thank you and old email is shavelta@sympatico.ca

  • Mani said:

    Kate has killed my iphone the touch functionality does not work anymore.
    I can only receive incoming calls.

    CAN this be reversed????

    How?

    thx,
    Mani

  • ben johnson said:

    Kate has also made the touch screen functionality on all application not work. i am trying to figure out a way to unistall it. will this turn off once the 3 day trial is over? Is there a way to uninstall this considering i can’t select anything in any application?

    thanks

  • Kiran said:

    Well I keep hearing about kate interfering with the touch C
    capabilities on your iphone. Interestingly enough it worked great the very first time on 3 different instances. Please post your scenario : firmware on which you installed, iTunes version and xp/mac, unlock status and the unlock tool you used …

    Uninstall Kate : Launch Kate from homescreen and hit the uninstall option, as simple we that!

  • Mr. Bee said:

    Smart dialer is more cumbersome than actually picking your contacts with the touch screen. MCalendar is great, by far the best feature of this suite. Do not understand the need for a subscription. System Font is neat. I would want to buy MCalendar for a onetime fee as a standalone app. If this is possible, please let me know at letterbot69@yahoo.com.

    No problems with touch or capabilities. People that are having problems: Best option is to restore your phone, and start again with ziphone, make sure you only install community sources that you trust. Keep track which ones you install, I had a bad experience with a couple and had to restore.

  • Max said:

    Smart Dialer is not working with french phone numbers ! (06 xx xx xx xx per example). The other apps are ok !

  • ryan said:

    kate messed up my iphone beyond all belief. screen functionality is completely gone, and removing it is next to impossible. do not trust the software manufacturer -AND DO NOT DOWNLOAD THEIR PROGRAMS

  • kiran said:

    Ryan : I am so sorry to hear that, it never messed my phone,never. I have the full version though.

    I should contact the developer regarding the issue. If you can be more descriptive about the problem, that might really help.

  • marc said:

    This lame ass program cannot be uninstalled after the trial period. Now i have this retarded alert after every instant message that will not go away even after accessing the message. The uninstall button does not work and just sends you in circles so you are forced to pay $45 for activation. What a joke…

  • Tony said:

    My screen does also not work once inside any application. To start the application Kate works OK from the screen, once inside the screen does not work and therefore it cannot be uninstalled (the uninstall button does not work!).

    Please help, my iPhone has now been converted to something I can only receive calls, cant make them, cant scroll down contacts, cant send SMS, cant use any applications.

  • Emil said:

    Hello there. I have just installed Kater on my iPhone, I had not read these reviews of the software. So far (5 hours or so) my iPhone works perfectly, and made my phone cooler and smarter. But i got suddenly became very anxious when I read your messages. For how long did you have the software installed before it destroyed you iPhone? Should I uninstall immidiately?

  • Thomas Petersen said:

    If you can yes

  • Thomas Petersen said:

    I have the same problem. You can only launch an application after that you cant click anything. So I cant even uninstall Kate!

  • Ali said:

    I know how to fix the issue and get rid of Kate. Connect your iphone to itunes, open Kate and uncheck everything (the touchscreen should be working by now), click apply, and everything will go away and your phone will work. Delete Kate from installer after that. If you delete Kate from installer without unchecking, your iphone will still be messed up with Kate stuff. Hope this helps!

  • anjali said:

    hi,
    I installed Kate on my phone thru the Installer software and later uninstalled it by ticking all the checkboxes as well.
    However some features like the wallpaper selected and stuff which were applied while the kate app. existed on my phone continues to remain on my phone.
    I tried reinstalling Kate app. on my phone but could not do so due to expiry of its trial period.
    Rebooting did not help amd i dont want to restore the phone.
    How can i get rid of this completely? I do not want to buy Kate.

  • kiran said:

    Anjali : Did you follow my updated steps at the end of this post to completely uninstall Kate? Frimware 2.0 might not be a bad idea either! Working on an easy solution, keep watching this space 🙂

  • BaDOAN said:

    Hi, I’m on 2.0.1, has any one tried installing Kate? I’m worried it’ll mess up my phone.

  • kiran said:

    BaDOAN : Highly not recommended at the moment. It terribly slows down the system. I tried and had to restore!

  • Eth57 said:

    I installed KATE this morning on my iphone having firmware 2.0, and soon realized my dialer crashes and I cannot make phone calls. Installer won’t allow me to uninstall, and I can’t even uninstall the RIPDEV stuff (which I can’t wait to do since those turkeys are the ones that introduced KATE to my phone)… Installer 4 says it uninstalls KATE and RIPDEV, but the ripdev and kate controls are still sitting there smugly in the settings screen… its like a virus! What kind of sadistic people are we dealing with?? What dark days these are that something reminiscent of installing microsoft windows can reside on our iphones. Oh, and a subscription-based license for this crappy software?? Go fly a kite on the freeway! What a RIP, RIPDEV! Off now to restore my iphone…

  • kiran said:

    Eth57 : I am sorry to say that it acted crap on my phone too and I stopped fooling around with Kate after trying it out once though I have an unlimited license. It is just not ready for mainstream usage….

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