Ahman's iR Shell is undoubtedly one of the best applications ever made for the PSP. However, all good things can't last. With a heavy-heart he announced that this is going to be the final release for the iR Shell.

Being the phenomenal application that it is today, you'd never imagine that it was birthed through Ahman's failed search for a PSP homebrew that can serve as a wireless controller to his Pentax camera. He's been hard at work on the project since January and he's transformed the then unnamed and potential Pentax camera controller application into the multi-tasking, can't do without iR Shell that it is now.

The Pentax camera may have triggered everything in motion, but the legions of dedicated supporters have kept it moving. There's AnonymousTipster, who's responsible for the ZIP and RAR plugins plus in charge of redesigning the iR Shell website. The devoted beta testers, most especially to StoneCut, who helps moderate the forum and help out newbies in the ins and outs of the application. His impressive and well written test reports are essential to the project's development. Torpie13 for his generous donation for the domain and free T3 hosting service. And if you're still in awe of the UI graphics' transformation, you have these talented graphics artists to thank - Triable, Skydew, Terdinglage, Numeror, PSPHax0r9 and other skin makers. He also extends his sincerest thanks to the different plugin makers and their original authors that makes full use of the iR Shell plugin system.

As a testament to the application's reputation, Ahman is not going to be leaving us hanging in mid-air. In the coming statements, he goes further into the iR Shell's history and functionality, there's even a mention of a possible come back. "From the way I look at it, iR Shell is a pretty stable & mature software under fw 1.5. Although it may not meet everybody's expectation, it certainly took me a lot of time & effort in development and I personally enjoy using it very much. Besides full support for fw 1.5, iR Shell also provides some basic support for 2.x firmware emulation under devhook with ability to multi-task with 2.x UMD game and play your favorite mp3s. This support has been introduced since 2.0 official release, but I didn't mention it in the official release note due to many of other iR Shell functions haven't been fully working under devhook environment. Since this is a final release, I've attached a copy of instructions "devhook.txt" which I had posted in my forum for those who wants to enjoy playing your favorite mp3s under devhook. Pls be warned iR Shell isn't too stable under devhook and it may crash your PSP if you choose an unsupported function. In order to make iR Shell running perfectly under Devhook, a lot of hackings still need to be done in higher firmware, such as support on kernel mode homebrew. When 2.x firmware is fully hacked, I may return back with a few more iR Shell updates to make it more complete."

Changelog:

* The Homebrew directory can be customized under iR Configurator. You can change it from original /PSP/GAME to anything you like. Pls note if you relocate the homebrew directory, XMB won't be able to launch them.
* You can now organize your homebrews into various sub-folders, such as:

* Emulators
* Games
* General Utilities
* WiFi Applications

* This will help to organize your homebrews and make it easier to locate a specific one easier. It also helps to speed up the APP view. The sub-folder must be in the syntax of "$name$". The 2 dollar signs are used to signify this is a folder which contains various homebrews.
* The File Manipulation has been updated for the APP view, so that you can create, rename, delete directories as usual. Pls note when you create directory under APP view, you don't need to put dollar signs and the system will add them automatically.
* A new PMP Mod AVC plugin by Magelo. In order to avoid conflicts with the original PMP Mod 2.02. This new AVC plugin will use extension name "AVC" which means you'll have to rename your pmp avc files to name.avc. The original PMP movie files will still be name.pmp.
* A new beautiful skin "Vista Clarity" by PSPHax0r9.

Bug Fixes:

* Fix a bug which cause the inability to launch a 1.5 UMD game from iR Shell.
* There was a bug in the previous public release which caused "hide splash screen" under iR Configurator not working. It's now fixed.
* A log file "debug.txt" in the root directory has been accidentally left in the previous public release. You can manually remove it.

There is no denying the iR Shell's contribution for the whole PSP community, without it, the whole gaming experience wouldn't be the same. The QJ crew is in consensus that this application is a rare breed. Needless to say, aspiring iR Shell-esque applications have darn big shoes to fill.