Sunday, October 24, 2010

iPhone no longer cool?

Well it's no surprise when you have one of the most popular smartphones, that some people regard it as not "cool". This very sentiment was expressed on the Buzz Out Loud podcast last week (Buzz Out Loud 1333: Introducing the Ginsu Air). Is BOL still "Cool" - I don't care, I listen occasionally anyway.
As for the iPhone, when I decided to get an iPhone, just after the iPhone 3G was released, I didn't do it because I was "cool", I thought it would be a nice gadget. Now I still like the iPhone, despite its flaws, and use it more as a information portal and secondary gaming device than anything else.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Unjailbroken

Last night managed to save the "SHSH Blob" Baseband finger signature of my iPhone 4 to the TinyUmbrella Application on my MacBook. Unfortunately I hadn't thought things through, and when it came to restoring the iPhone I realized that it was going to crash because I had too many Apps.
It does seem like iTunes restores Folders and their contents, but since I was using the Infinifolders Jailbroken App, some of the Apps would have overflowed out if their folders. Anyway, I cancelled the restore, and then spent hours pruning the Apps which I could so without restoring. After I restarted the restore, it didn't go as per the documentation - the restore was supposed to crash with a specific error which would allow the TinyUmbrella Application to restore the baseband for iPhone OS 4.01. Instead, my baseband was upgraded along with the firmware, although I have the "SHSH Blobs" saved so theoretically I can restore to the older baseband. However, I most likely have to Jailbreak the iPhone to do this. My iPhone firmware is now 4.1, the iPhone is no longer Jailbroken, but on the bright side it seems that most if my settings and data for third party Apps was restored, which I'm really glad about.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Just a shout out

Just a shout out to GOG.com, who sell DRM-free "Good Old Games" at good prices.

I have to say that this is an unsolicited "promo" for them.

I've been happy with the games I've bought from them. They sell DOS games (Like Duke Nukem 3D, Redneck Rampage), and Windows games, but I haven't really looked into other platforms. Whats really nice is that the DOS games are wrapped in DOSBox so they run under Windows. Yeah, I know you can do it yourself, but then you have to get the DOS game and the latest official patches and tweak DOSBox.

They also have Myst, Riven, Serious Sam, the earlier Fallout and Unreal games, along with a bunch of others, ready for download.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Hole in my Safari

Yesterday Apple released a patch for the security hole in Safari. This was the same hole which was used for the "Jailbreak Me" Jailbreak which was so easy to use.
The security hole had to do with the way PDF files were handled, and was quite serious. The Jailbreak community released a "PDF patch" of sorts - basically a warning every time a PDF was opened on iPhone a dialog pops up with a warning and an OK and Cancel button. This patch made reading valid PDFs in various applications, including iBooks, unusable. It also made using the Zinio reader - which is a reader for digital magazines like PC Magazine, unusable (four popups for one page). So the patch was updated to allow iBooks to work, but it was a kludge and I wondered if the developer would get round to the Zinio reader.

I was beginning to wonder about either uninstalling the PDF patch - and opening up my iPhone to hacking, or updating the firmware, which would fix the PDF security hole but then I wouldn't be able to Jailbreak my iPhone probably until after iOS firmware 4.1 is released.

Anyway, today Saurik released a patch which basically does what the Apple iOS 4.02 firmware update does - patches the PDF security hole properly, and the Jailbreak stays intact. Thank you Saurik (and whoever else helped to code this patch)!

Thursday, August 05, 2010

Jailbroken again, yeah!

Last night ran a jailbreak on my iPhone 4. I had expected to wait a few months before being able to do this. Anyway, this was the easiest jailbreak I've run so far - simply pointing the Safari browser on the iPhone to a website and sliding a button (nice touch that!). The jailbreak had been out for several days, so I had no problem getting onto the website, and there was enough info about what to expect, and the jailbreak tools had been updated. The first thing I downloaded was SBSettings - that had been the thing I'd missed the most on my iPhone 4. It makes it so quick to toggle Wi-Fi on or off, and also shutting down my iPhone at night is a swipe and two taps - no pressing down a hardware button then swiping. Okay, now the downside. My iPhone was taking about 35 seconds to boot up (From turned off to the login screen). Now it takes about 55 seconds. Apart from Cydia and SBSettings, the only other Jailbroken Apps I've installed are Rock (because I have a few Apps licensed from them) and My3G, which I'm not sure is even working properly. Oh well, the slower boot time is a small price to pay for the freedom of having a jailbroken iPhone again.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Pre-order for iPhone 4 in, I hope

I finally managed to get my iPhone 4 pre-order in after 8pm Eastern Time on Tuesday. It took several attempts. I know two other people who also managed to get their pre-orders in: one of them went to a nearby AT&T store during the day, and the other placed their pre-order using the AT&T like I did.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Apple - we'll be back

This morning at about 7 Eastern Time, I tried to pre-order an iPhone 4 online on the Apple store. The website was a bit slow, and everything went fine until I tried to add the iPhone to the Shopping cart. Then I got an error message "Oops we have a problem, please retry", or something to that effect. Apple's website must have been getting hammered, because I tried a few more times and got the same error message.

Later, after 8 am I could not even get to the Apple store at all, and got the message "We'll be back soon", which also gives an 800 number. I tried the 800 number, and got a "Due to extremely high call volume we are unable to answer your call now, please try again later".

Pre-ordering the iPhone 4 is going to take persistence.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

Saturday, June 05, 2010

Counting down to Monday

It is not often that I look forward to a Monday. Like most people I look forward to Friday or Saturday or the weekend in general.

However, this coming Monday, June 8, is when Steve Jobs is expected to announce the next generation iPhone during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

It will be interesting to see what changes have been made since the pictures of the "Lost iPhone prototype" were published.

On a personal note, I'm hoping to finally upgrade my iPhone 3G. The date on which the next generation iPhone is to go on sale is also expected to be announced. Then it will be a waiting period until the crowds of eager buyers thin enough for me to get one without having to stand in line.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

iPhone killed the MP3 Insider

My favorite podcast, MP3 Insider, has been killed off by the iPhone.
The writing seemed on the wall when Jasmine was reviewing iPhone Apps (ack!) elsewhere on CNET.

I've listened to this podcast since the days of James Kim and Veronica Belmont (every geek's dream girl). I can't say that I've followed the "Buzz Out Load" podcast as closely. MP3 Insider will be sorely missed.

I wish Jasmin France and Donald Bell all the best in their future roles at CNET.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

iPhone multitasking

So multitasking is coming in iPhone OS 4. I must admit being disappointed that it is not coming to the iPhone 3G. After doing some research, I found out the simple reason why - the iPhone 3GS (and iPod Touch 3rd gen) have double the RAM of earlier models, as well as faster processors.

Multitasking has been available on jailbroken iPhones for a while now, with some really sophisticated Apps, a lot of them of them free. Unfortunately for iPhone 3G owners, although these run on the iPhone 3G, they don't run particularly well.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Blogging from my iPhone

My last blog posting to my alternate blog, Technofilez, was done from my iPhone. When I tried to repeat this posting to this blog (Techno Files), I ran into problems. Even though I have 3 blogging Apps on my iPhone, I just wasn't able to do this. I may have just tried two of them though, since I was a bit pressed for time. The biggest irony, was that I was unable to copy and paste into iBlogger, which is the Blogging App for the iPhone (and pricey too). When I started iBlogger up, it seemed to simply clear the iPhone clipboard!

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Don't Want an iPad

In the last few weeks I've seen a number of polls asking whether I was going to get an iPad, or wait for the next iteration. It just doesn't grab me though. My wife saw it's potential, but I didn't. I guess in my mind it is just an oversized iPod Touch, and I'm quite happy with my iPhone thank you.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

iPod, iPhone, iPad

The news has been buzzing today with the much anticipated release of the Apple tablet.
The one thing I like is the name - iPad -it really seems so right. The other names bandied about just didn't sound right - iSlate sounds old-fashioned, iTablet just too obvious and sounding like just another tablet.

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

A Nexus for your Lexus

Today Google started selling their own "Google Phone", the Nexus One. It runs Android OS version 2.1 (Eclair), referred to in Google's blurb as "Android Mobile Technology Platform 2.1 (Eclair)".

The phone costs $529 unlocked, or $179 with a two-year contract from T-Mobile USA.