Archive for the 'Apple' Category

The return of jailbreakme.com!

Published on August 3, 2010 in Apple. 0 Comments

jailbreakme.com is back!

Thanks to some serious work by @comex, you can now jailbreak your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad right from MobileSafari — no PC or Mac needed!

Just visit http://jailbreakme.com on your device.

For those needing a carrier unlock, use the existing ultrasn0w in Cydia on your iPhone3G or iPhone3GS.  After a short testing period, we’ll push out the iPhone4 version.

Note: The earlier MMS and Facetime issues have been fixed.  If you already ran the version with those problems, launch Cydia and accept its offer to update.

iPhone 4… My 2 Cents…

Published on July 13, 2010 in Apple and Expensive Stuff. 0 Comments

Right…

Well, its been a couple of weeks (and a 5 hour queue) since i got my hands on the latest and greatest (arguable) mobile technology, the iPhone 4 ! Within the last couple of weeks iv already kinda decided that i prefered my old 3GS based on the following reasons…

1. Reception… Yea, this one has been discussed in length by many many many people, especially lefties… I cant say iv had the worst problems in the world with the antennas, granted if i hold the phone in my left hand and try to cause the issue, then yes it happens, the same way that if i try and drive my car into a wall, i know it will break also… So, not really the biggest issue, but non-the-less im still a little concerened that Apple didnt think of this one in their testing department.

2. Design… Not really a fan, yes it looks a little more sleak, looks more professional, more futuristic… BUT (Yup, there is a hairy but involved), when you handle the item, which is uniform in shape front and back, am i the only one that keeps getting it out my pocket and trying to answer a call on the rear of the phone… id love to know im not the only person doing this :)

3. Bumpers… Has anyone really thought why this piece of cheap-ass rubber costs £25… ouch… and still wont protect the rear of the phone (and does nothing to help with issue number 2 hehe)…

4. Proximity sensor… I, as with many people im guessing use the iPhone as a PHONE!!!! so, why after 2 previous revisions of the iPhone design that worked perfectly well, has apple decided to move the proximity sensor from the top left of the phone to the center (above the speaker)… It was perfectly happy where it was, and successfully, on many occasions managed to determine my head was next to the device. Its new position seems to ignore my head quite a lot, and decides the screen should be on, and hence controls enabled… Thus, in the past 4 days, iv hung up on several people and had to repeat myself to half a dozen because my cheek has muted my conversation… im just waiting for it to conference call me with my parents and and a random stranger from Romania…

5. Background Processing… Does anyone else think it would be nice not to have some apps running in the background, aka tomtom… around 10 or 20 times after completing a journey recently iv parked my car, locked up and walked away, only to hear a familiar voice coming from my trouser pocket telling me to “turn around when possible”… Granted this is most likely a tweak for TomTom to make, but i can think of a few other apps you might not want sitting in that tray-bar… (AKA, some app’s of adult nature, you know who you are)

6. TomTom Dock… Would it kill these people to make some kind of small adapter which fits into the cradle to make the button stick out a little more, this comes back more to point 3, if the shape weren’t broke, dont fix it…

7. Micro-Sim… Explain that one to me… iv seen the inside of one of these things, there is tonnes of space left over for a full size SIM, why get all us “SIM-FREE” buyers to hack our sims to pieces to fit your new bloody sim-tray… Grrrr

BUT… Besides all these little annoyances, Apple got a couple of things right…

1. Battery… FANTASTIC… My old 3GS would have around 20% battery left after a day at work, iPhone4 75% easily after a 9 hour day (based on very little use i have to say, but the comparrison stands, because my 3GS and the 4 both get around the same workout during my daily job).

2. Screen… Gorgeous, makes me wanna cuddle it for hours.

3. Front facing camera… This is a little crap though, given the facetime application only works between iPhone4’s and only works on Wi-Fi… but countless female iPhone4 users are loving the pocket mirror app :)

4. Noise cancellation… nice touch.

5. Background processing… I know i moaned about this earlier a little, but its a dam good feature, it just needs an “off” switch for certain applications.

6. Speed… Dam, what was that….

In conclusion, nice phone, but Apples design process of “Throw away good ideas and start again from scratch” seems to of sneeked a few annoyances into the mix… lets see if Apple can really fix them, or is this a fix for iPhone5…

WWDC – Nothing special, eh !

Published on June 8, 2009 in Apple, Expensive Stuff, Gadgets, Random Rant and Tech World. 0 Comments

Well, another WWDC over and out (is it just me or does that name conjour up images of Hulk Hogan smashing iMacs over someones head in a cage match… okay its just me then :)

well, all things being equal, i cant say i really cared about much that was announced at the WWDC, new macbooks (their just faster, whoop), built in SD card slot (sorry, but i prefer the ExpressCard slot, had some options what i could stick in there, extra firewire, external graphics, Memory card reader, my finger, etc)…

The biggest shout out in my opinion had to goto the official notice of Snow Leopard, looking really nice for a quick release, with its built in exchange support (watch out Windows 7, not even you do that lol, and its your software hehe), and full 64-bit architecture we might finally see a apple kicking into the business workspace for real (cus lets face it, Microsoft entourage is a piece of sh*t… memory sucking sh*t)… and at the price of Snow Leopard, it might even be worth ordering a nice shiney disk instead of the casual download (words of anti-piracy advise for all you nasty pirates out there ;)

and not onto my new pet peeve, iPhone 3G ’s’… yup, this little puppy is kinda annoying, for all the nice features of the new iPhone, lets throw some consideration towards those poor iPhone 3G users (ME) who have just been told that they can have copy and paste, and a rotating keyboard, but if they want the nice new ‘cool’ feature of voice control (which i used to use quite a bit on my old Sony K800i) then i gotta start looking to the bank balence again…. Apple are inevitably gonna say the same thing they did with the gesture pad on the macBooks, ‘its a hardware based chip doing it’, WHY… if my touchpad understands they im giving it the old two fingers, surley it can understand how im moving them, do it in software you shmuc’s, we got RAM and processor cycles lying around doing squat, your telling me we cant spare a couple of hundered to monitor what im doing with my touchpad…

And the same really goes for this new iPhone voice control, i GUARENTEE that within 3 months of the 3.0 iPhone launch, some developer will of made an iPhone app (available within CYDIA) which will allow iPhone 3G users to do exactly that (the same as my MMS app which is doing exactly what apple cant do, for the mere few pounds it cost me)… id bet money on that, it might not look as pretty, or have some apple monkey on stage talking about it, but it will do the job, it will most likely be free and will prob be much more customizable !

Sorry Apple, I have a MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, iPhone 3G and you still consistantly dissapoint me at times, stop trying to reinvent the wheel, if another business who has been doing this for years (Nokia, Sony, Siemens, etc) have features such as MMS, Copy and Paste, good cameras then why was has it taken you this long to think they might be worth incorporating… Rule of development for revolutionary product [Everone elses good ideas] + [Your brilliant ideas] + [Industry standary technology (3G, MMS, Copy/Paste, Camera, Flash, Long Battery)] = YOUR NEW PRODUCT… Apples way of doing things [Our brilliant ideas] = somewhat lacking product !

Well, thats enough ranting, only to add one last thing, has anyone else noticed that the estimated battery life on the new iPhone 3GS is virtually identical to the old one, whats the bet that this one is gonna be just as crap on battery (aka, JuiceBox requirement) or they actually got it right this time… personally i think with the new higher power processor were all still gonna be looking to get some solar pannels stuck on the roof of our cars…

Over and Out….

P.S taking bets now that the tom tom is more expensive than the phone lol… and i love the ‘enhanced GPS’, that is a classic statement… read between the lines ‘tom tom said our GPS was shit, so they made their own’ lol

UPDATE : Looks like their is already an app out there (http://www.adelavoice.com/voicedialer/) so lets just give a shout out to apple for still not letting backgroud apps do the work they wanna charge us more for !

iPhone 3G Stuck Pixel Solution

Published on April 7, 2009 in Apple, Tech Lessons and Tech Review. 10 Comments

Well, we all new this day would come… I have re-invested in another black, sleak and sexy 8GB iPhone…

Thus far this is my 3rd iPhone, dating back to my original purchase back in 2008, where i discovered that the iPhone was a slight dissapointment, part apples fault for extremlypoor software and part O2 (UK) for having such a piss poor network around my area (3G, Yea where !). Well that one went back, i had no intention of paying out £35 a month for a phone which hardly worked and a network which hardly delivered…

Introduce 2nd iPhone, purchased on the 4th April 2008 (yea, i know what you thinking… eh?)… Well, this one was purchased with the 100% intention of cracking the hell out of it and running it on Orange (who my current contract is with and who have a dam fine network everywhere iv ever been)… Alas a wrench was thrown into these works by Apple’s new modem firmware (Baseband) update which was rolled out in 2.2.1, rendering the Yell0wSnow cracking application useless… so this one was reduced to being a very expencive paperweight, but served a good use, in that I could play around with the phone again, see if the original software bugs had been ironed out.

Alas this unit suffered a fate worse than the simple ‘return within 14 days’ i had planned for it, after a bit of a cleaning session with the ‘Apple supplied cleaning rag’ part of the screen has completly stopped working. Apparently this is quite a common problem, and apple are very kind in their replacement of defective units. But, given i was planning on returning it anyways, I cant really say i care hehe !

Well, onto number 3… After being dissapointed with number 2 (I know it wasnt its fault, how could it resist the giant imaging machine giving birth to its 2.2.1 firmware update)… I looked to where I purchase all my goodies these days, eBay !

And what did I find, a kind soul selling unlocked iPhones for £20 less than O2 were selling them instore, the chap had loads ! well, that was settled, ‘BUY IT NOW’ and off I went ! The new unit arrived this morning, orange sim inserted 10 seconds later and away i went hehe !

After about an hour of constant gadget playing and downloading app’s music and other stuff I returned to the springboard to be confrunted with a very annoying red pixel… NOT GOOD…

It was kinda like fate telling me to give up, 3 iPhones, 2 faults in 2 days… not good, but i wasnt gonna give up that easily, after a little google searching i found this little website which promised the earth (alas didnt deliver). Simply load up the site on your iPhone and run the fix screen link… I wouldnt suggest watching it for too long, else you might be tempted to start donating all your money to strange religions.. The idea is that with the pixel only being ‘Stuck’ it might be possible to break it free by brute furce. Give it a run for anout an hour or so, and see if it works for you… from all the reviews found, this works for about 50% of people, the others are stuck with a blue, green or red dot for the rest of time hehe !

But, as said, this approach did not work for me, hence why i took to a more physical option, (Note, be very careful). load up an application which will allow you to touch the part of the screen with the stuck pixel without messing up too much, then gently massage that part of the screen. Its important to apply quite a bit of pressure, but not so much that you increase your stuck pixel into a cracked screen. After doing this for about 10 seconds, i returned to the springboard and noticed that the pixel was fading in and out (black to red to black… etc) so i went back in and kept at it for another 20 seconds… Presto FIXED !

Im pretty sure that this does not fix the problem permanantly, but so far its stayed working perfectly all day without a sign of my little red friend… So, of you got a stuck dot, give it a rub !

UPDATE : The pixel did return about two more times, but another quick rub got rid of it, and it havent seen it now for well over a month !

iPhone on Orange UK

Published on March 30, 2009 in Apple, Mobile, Tech World and Unsubstantiated Rumor. 0 Comments

Just come across a wonderful rumour which made my ears prick up slightly, Orange may have a shot at the iPhone hehe (yea yea, i know.. iv heard this rumour before too, but there is nothing wrong with having hope, and cash standing by lol)

Back in July 2008, there were rumours about a potential deal between Orange and Apple, stating that Orange was trying to persuade Apple it would be able to do a much better job at selling the iPhones than O2 could (not sure about that arguement, but it might be nice to have a choice).

Orange currently is the market leader of iPhone sales in over 27 other countries around the world, including France, it still escapes me, even to this day why O2 managed to sneak their fat noses into this exclusive (extortionate) contract…

Orange is at current on the verge of seeing its arch-rival Bouygues Telecom start selling the iPhone in France (yay, competition) and a UK deal over the iPhone with Apple could potentially alleviate the loss revenues in France and inject a little more interest around the iPhone, with people who would rather not sign up with the overlords of crappy signal (least around my area hehe), O2.

It could also be worth noting that some form of agreement, at least in theory could already of been reached between Orange and Apple, due to O2’s recent decision to start selling off the Palm Pre smartphone, one of the iPhones most credible revals, but this is a flakey analysis at the best of times, due to O2 and most networks ability to just choose their availiable handsets based on which one the untrained monkey in the Consumer Relations team goes to when called…

Well, ill wait and see… its not like its gonna help me anytime soon anyway, due to HTC dissapointing me once again with their HTC Touch Diamond, which had the battery life of a stone and the usability (based on its crawling speed and constant crashing) of a said stone being thrown at your head. Im currently stuck with an 18 month contact, which im hardly into, and still using my old Sony Ericsson K800i, which aint missed a beat in 3 years ! Highly reccomended for people who just wanna call, text and not run up massive Data bills ;)

But for those of you that cant wait that long, check out Play.com, and their ability to somehow be selling Apple approved 3G unlocked iPhones… more news on how this is possible later, though im sure the insane price has something to do with it !