flop ya mac out

Come Christmas of 2013, we may be delving into our Santa sacs and pulling out an entirely new (and completely revolutionary) toy from Apple Inc.

Rumours of a device (being dub-stepped the iWatch) are coming out thick and fast, just like father’s creamy sauce he used to make for our roast dinners, each Sunday night. Mmm!

Macrumors posted details of a newly-submitted Apple patent in their article, New Apple ‘iWatch’ Patent Application Reveals Slap Bracelet with Wraparound Touch-Sensitive Display. What a freakin’ long title; and that’s after being edited down by Perry White.

Do you remember those slap-bands from the 90′s? For some they were a gateway tool into S&M. For others, they were a gateway tool into S&M.

Within the bowels of this Macrumors article, the forumistas start picking apart the functionality of this potential product. And two Internet web pages into this vibrant discussion, post #44 (made by forum doyen, wrkactjob) simultaneously delivers some practical solutions to how this iWatch could be worn, as well as the sublime Mother Lode of the entire thread:

“Click to “”enlarge”".”

And wrkactjob, Steve bless.

As someone who is gearing up to head overseas, I’ve put my laptop into somewhat of a lock-down mode, password protecting everything to make sure that it can’t be molested if it falls into the wrong hands abroad.

However, the drawback of such tight security is that (with the omission of physical labelling), if my laptop falls into the right hands, there’s no way the finder can figure out who the laptop actually belongs to.

Enter this handy hint, sourced from Apple’s own Leopard Security Configuration Guide. The hack allows you to place a custom phrase in the OS X Leopard Login Screen, just above the user name and password.

Crank up the terminal, and enter the following:

su [your admin username]
sudo -s
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow LoginwindowText “This laptop belongs to Jason Deacon, and you don’t.”

Of course, you may want to garnish your welcome message with maybe a contact phone number, email address or more impressive message than the example here.

The beauty of this hack is that as your contact details change when you travel, updating them is a simple as re-entering this into terminal. No more re-printing labels on the road, and you’re able to enter much more information here, too.

The Apple Security Guide is a good read, which I thoroughly recommend if you’ve got an eye for that sort of thing. We’ll explore more security tips in time!

After much deliberating, my manager and I who work as resellers in Melbourne (Australia) decided to be the first to break photos of 2.0. But can you really blame us??!

We can’t be penalised – we didn’t sign NDA’s anyway! Ha!

Enjoy!

Needless to say, the anticipation was killing us!

Oh, wow. Steve’s really done it this time…

iPhone 2.0 really does scroll like butter. Quick, somebody call me on it!

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The dealio is this: iPhone only knows how handle numbers of a certain length without an area code, and seeing as most of us are using iPhones with a US firmware, that length is the minimum American phone number length (much longer than that in Australia – 8 digits).

That means that when someone calls your iPhone from a home phone (or mobile) that doesn’t send the area code down the line (9### ####), and you have the number listed in your contacts with an area code (03 9### ####), then iPhone doesn’t quite cotton on to the fact that they’s the same thing.

Too many times I’ve received calls from friends, but iPhone didn’t clue on that they were in my Address Book, so I had to spend the first part of the conversation trying to figure out who they were without sounding like too much of a tool.

So you’ve done your Australian Phone Number Mod, what now?

Som people had reverted to adding both the area code version and the normal version of numbers to their contacts, but a better alternative is at hand! The chaps on the iPhone Dev Team have a workaround, by means of replacing the Springboard app. with a modified one. The modified one whispers sweet nothings into the iPhone’s ear about phone numbers being able to be only 8 numbers long and still cool.

Read up on the mod here.

For me this was an absolutely crippling problem, but there is surprisingly little info on the net about how to fix it.

Help share the love, and donate to the Dev Team if you find it of use!

I’m one of those 1.0.2 users who’ve been waiting waiting waiting for a ‘re-virginise’ method to come up, so i could re-lock my sim-unlocked 1.0.2 iPhone, to allow me to upgrade to 1.1.1 safely. And then sim-lock again.

And thank the lord for the iPhone Elite team! This week they came up with a method to re-virginise sim-unlocked 1.0.2, and further more, rather than users having to screw ’round in the terminal they put together an automated process(es) which makes the whole ordeal rather damn simple!

And even better, i can attest to the fact that it works! So if you indulge in some re-virginising goodness, be sure to donate some moola to these fine folks, allowing international peoples like mwa to enjoy the benefits of 1.1.1, and use of the iPhone as just that, a phone.

After i’d revirginised, i then followed this guide where it details upgrading from a re-virginised 1.0.2 iPhone to 1.1.1, and further more unlocking your updated iPhone. Thanks so much to the iPhone Dev Team for that beautiful solution, anySIM.

For those interested, i’ve posted some photo’s from my re-virginising escapades…

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A bench clamp, a hacksaw and a 3.5 mm audio cable combined with a taste for adventure, delivered me my brand new iPhone certified cable!

Now my iPhone can enjoy the spendorous accoustics of my Daewoo Lanos, as I cruise the badass streets.

I think the cable has poignant beauty to rival the iPhone itself.

But seriously, seeing the amount of redundant excess plastic on something like this really does make you appreciate the minimalism of Apple design. We’ve all seen a lot fatter 3.5 mm adapters than this one, too!

Along with Jason, i too changed the scrolling carrier logo YES OPTUS.

Whilst he replaced his with “iPhone”, i went the slightly more ghetto approach to gain some street cred with all me homeboys and girls. And mum and dad. See below…

Since I’ve been able to compare my SIM unlocked iPhone to Dan’s virgin iPhone, I’ve noticed a few remarkable differences!

• the menu animation on my iPhone is noticably sluggish
• the screen brightness on my iPhone is dimmer than Dan’s
• my iPod and Safari crash a lot

A lot of other people have also reported that after a SIM unlock, the speaker volume drops as well.

What on earth?

It’s certainly looking like ye olde SIM unlock isn’t as pristine as we once thought!

The screen brightness drop isn’t something I have any idea about, but the chunky animation seemed like something fun to try and nut out.

After many wasted restore attempts and other efforts, I started to wonder if the lacking performance has anything to do with the absurdly long and equally ugly ‘YES OPTUS’ gracing the top of my screen.

Turns out that it did…

It seemed to make sense – unlike AT&T, or O2, iPhone is reading the Optus logo from the network each time it loads, rather than from a PNG image on the phone. Additionally, the software is then forced to scroll the carrier name because it doesn’t fit the gap (which occasionally caused some bizarre stretching and the like).

So at least in my mind, it looked like I’d found a possible way of getting performance back to how mother Jobs had first intended it to be, while satisfying my anal retentive tendencies.

Dan came across a great tutorial on how to rename the Optus carrier logo on the iPhone, which we set to work on pronto!

As iPhone does read from the network, it’s not as simple as swapping an image file over… Though you do get to put your own image in there once you’ve used a Hex editor to re-jig the springboard.

The result? After loads and loads of testing, I am confident to say that I think I have at least finally gotten rid of the sluggish animation! It is like a brand new iPhone once more!

Some people have still reported sluggishness even after a restore, however it is not stated whether they were using it on AT&T (image logo) or another network without an image.

So I’m happy. My saga of shitty animation looks to have come to an end.

Mind you, I should point out that I don’t have App Tapp installed on my iPhone, only custom number formats, You Tube and the SIM unlock. I think Dan went through a similar process without quite as much love, but he’s fully pimping it with the 3rd party apps, so that is perhaps a bit of a trade-off.

For what it’s worth, Safari hasn’t crashed on me as much either. Placebo?

I’m not sure if I could say the screen’s any brighter, however! I guess I’ll save that for another day!

So as you know, I ran into strife when I first SIM unlocked my iPhone, and OS animations gradually became jerky.

After restoring the firmware (not by choice) and activating using iNdependence without installing anything remotely 3rd party, everything was as smooth as a baby’s bottom once more.

That was until just recently when the whole jerky thing started all over again! Aahh!

I wasn’t about to do another restore (and loose all my precious saved Google Map data? Ha!), so I started looking for what else could be causing the problem.

I’d already removed all my songs last time without success, after reading that someone thought this caused the thing to slow down. So I turned my attention to the Safari cache!

Voila! After a good Safari colonoscopy and a restart, everything was cool once again!

I’m not sure whether this was exactly what was to blame, but right now there’s not a lot else to put the performance lag and then sudden improvement down to… Hmm!

EDIT: Crapola! After some light use it’s back to it’s usual sluggish behaviour.

EDIT 2: I finally managed to fix it for good here. Solution: Removing the YES OPTUS carrier logo.

Ok great. When Apple start making statements, forshadowing some kind of iPhone Jonestown, I throw up in my mouth just a little bit.

The low-down is thus: when SIM-unlocked iPhones shake hands with soon-to-released iPhone firmware 1.1.1 (one sixth of the sign of the devil, you might add), it puts your sexy new friend into a state that Apple are terming “permanently inoperable.”

Of course the statement is written in such a way that it is not Apple’s update that is bricking the phones, but rather the way in which the SIM unlocks have already “caused irreparable damage” to the phone’s software.

Rubbish!

Tell me AT&T didn’t put the hard word on Apple to bend over and relax!

With the SIM unlock software being freeware, there was now no way for a desperate AT&T to grab back lost profits or follow through with legal action. A software update is the only opportunity that AT&T has to get back their iPhone exclusivity deal, and you can bet they’re pushing hard for it. So hard that they want Apple to go to drastic measures to get their point accross.

What on earth has to change in the new firmware that is so drastic that it will actually kill an unlocked phone? Not just re-lock it. Kill it.

It doesn’t seem to be adding up.

I suspect this is a considered move by Apple, and the media release is just grooming the public for the ‘I told you so’ effect.

Dan’s new toy arrived just this arvo after a lengthy flight, and fortunately he got onto the rumour sites before the unlocking ones. So, he’ll be keeping you posted on efforts to successfuly SIM unlock v1.1.1 and how that all pans out.

Fortunately the issues are rumoured to only affect SIM unlocked iPhones, and he can at least scroll like butter through his music in the meantime.
Being the manly man that I am, I will keep my SIM-free iPhone away from all USB ports until further notice, waiting wimpishly to see what happens when everyone else with hacked iPhones updates to the new firmware.

Surely all these (however many thousands) of unlocked iPhones can’t just go toi-toi?