flop ya mac out

When iTunes 7.5 came out i eagerly downloaded it, as i have so many times before with all other Mac software updates. But for the first time, this one bit me in the arse.

I probably shouldn’t have thrown caution to the wind and updated, simply ’cause i’m running an unlocked, jail-breaked 1.1.1 iPhone as my main phone and organiser.

It turnes out iTunes 7.5 didn’t like to play with my iPhone, as when i connected them together in marriage, i got an error message (pictured) and was not able to access my iPhone - it simply didn’t come up in the side bar of iTunes.

So i searched for a way to downgrade back to iTunes 7.4.2 (which i was able to download), but couldn’t find a definitive guide or an answer to other people asking the same thing in threads.

So i decided to venture into risky territory and fix this via trial and error, as it was getting really irritating not being able to sync up new podcasts or contacts etc..

Firstly i sync-ed my iPhone’s contacts and calendar to my old PowerBook which was thankfully still running 7.4.2, just in case anything went wrong (so i could retain all the new info i’d entered into my iPhone’s calendar!)

I then copied iTunes.app to my desktop, as well as my “iTunes Library” and “iTunes Music Library.xml” so i could stick them back, in case they got written over with new old/new installation.

I then installed the 7.4.2 version and it went totally smoothly and totally worked! Fantastic.

Now i’ve just gotta remember not to update iTunes, as could easily be done via the software update without really realising, if you’re a little absent minded at the time.

But now what for the future? No iTunes updates for me and my hacked iPhone, forever? Perhaps!

Does 7.5 accidentally/on purpose now deny syncing with hacked iPhones, just like 1.1.1 stopped some jail-broken iPhones running at all?

Is this problem i had widespread enough that hackers are working on an iTunes fix?

Something else i wonder is if i was to update to 1.1.2, would iTunes 7.5 play nice with my iPhone?

Let us know your experiences or comments below.

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!

After spending a good slab of my life loading the entire state of Victoria into my iPhone’s Google Map cache, iPhone turns around a bitch-slaps me.

Turns out that the cache has a time limit on it that removes the data when it is considered old. Awesome.

There must be a more intelligent way to manage the cache, surely? If I were an iPhone, I’d at least have the courtesy to compare my plethora of pre-loaded map data with the server to see if a more recent version had eclipsed it, rather than pulling it all down again over EDGE.

Well, it looks like we’ll just have to wait until that 3G iPhone hits the streets in 08 and makes caches in this capacity, redundant.

So, if you want to know the easiest way to look like a tool: scan through all available maps at all detail levels in your general area, brag about how youhave done this, then sit back, relax, and wait for iPhone to remove your handywork.

One of Australia’s well known live “tonight” style tv shows, Rove, had a little guest tonight that no other Australian show has yet to have; that little guest being an iPhone!

The iPhone has yet to be released in Australia, so this was a total shock. It was totally random, man.

Rove had just interviewed Jana Wendt, and asked who she would turn gay for as part of his “20 questions for $20″ segment. Jana gave the name of some Italian bird who Rove vaguely knew, so after the following commercial break, he showed the camera a picture of the Italian lady he had supposedly Googled, and right there on an iPhone.

Rove left the iPhone sitting on the “poof” in front of him for the remainder the segment. As they went to another break, Rove picked up the phone and showed it (or the screens contents) to the other guests on the couch and starting chatting the picture or perhaps also, the phone.

Is this the iPhone’s first public appearance on national television in both Australia and New-Zealand? Perhaps not the most exciting news all round, but questions now have to asked - who’s exactly is it? What plan is he/she using with it? How long have they had it and how did they get it? Perhaps he bought it when “Rove” did two shows in the US.

It was just one of the “cool” moments i had to share with y’all.

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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Checking out the features of the upcoming OS X Leopard on my iPhone this morning whilst still in bed. Went to open up another page from a link using the great Open In New Tab bookmark and got an unexpected alert message.

It went something like, “You cannot open more than eight pages in Safari. Go use a proper computer to get the most full Internet browsing experience”.

Well i didn’t know there was such a restriction. And why?

Does it slow down Safari if you have too many pages open at once? Does it make Safari or even the whole iPhone unstable?

Perhaps the number eight is simply Steve Jobs favourite number. Or the number of days one of Steve Jobs weeks contains.

How cool is this! What could be called our ’sister site’, (if you think long and hard about their title) HardMac has pointed out a little ‘feature’ of sorts on the iPhone, that most phones have, too.

At the bottom of the jack plug you can see a white disc that will irreversibly change color when entering in contact with water. So one would not need to open an iPhone or an iPod Touch to ensure it stopped working due to an unexpected bath.

The reason i thought this is cool is ’cause… Well i’m a bit of a geek i guess. But recently i had a bit of ‘plant’ stuck in the headphone jack (i take my iPhone outdoors when working). And whilst poking around in the headphone jack with a pin to get out the foreign plant, i was intrigued by the little white thing at the bottom of the headphone jack.

It didn’t look like part of a typical headphone jack - it wasn’t copper or even metal coloured, so it didn’t look like a typical electrical conductor of any sort, and now i know what the hell it is.

Now if my iPhone was under an Australian warrantee, i’d probably be a little frightened by the positioning of the water indicator. In other phones the indicator is typically near the battery or on the battery, tucked away inside the case of the phone. Partially removed from light rain or urine.

But given i have my iPhone sitting in a little side pocket on my pants (which can be a little open to the weather) i’d be paranoid about keeping my iPhone headphone jack down in that pocket. I wouldn’t want to void the chance of my iPhone being serviced by an Apple technician if the water indicator had been triggered by a lousy drop of rain (or an accidental splash!).

I am so righteous and free right now about having an unsupported iPhone…

Okay. I’m starting an iPhone wish-list. To get my iPhone gripes off my chest. We’ll keep adding to this. Put your wishes in the comments, below.

1. The ability to send “business cards” to other phone via sms.

2. Save sms drafts.

3. To be able to choose other routes when mapping from A to B in google maps on the iPhone.

In an interview this morning on Victorian community radio station, 3MDR, Telstra’s Victorian Corporate Affairs manager, Patrick O’Beirne passed some comments on Apple’s new iPhone.

Although being interviewed more specifically on the now controversial shutdown of Australia’s CDMA mobile network in favour of faster ‘Next-G’ technologies, the inevitable iPhone question was raised.

O’Beirne willingly confirmed for listeners that Telstra were in fact “looking at it (the iPhone)” and did not expect to know who (which network) would host it “for a few months.”

Surprising news, considering the last we heard from Telstra on the iPhone was that they thought Apple should “stick to their knitting,” as Telstra’s 2ic, Greg Winn so eloquently put it just a month after the device was announced in January this year.

O’Beirne spoke very positively of the applications of the device, but raised the lack of 3G support as a concern. A statement like this indicates that either O’Beirne isn’t quite in the iPhone loop, or was just trying take the attention off it. Steve Jobs announced in January and again at the iPhone’s Europe launch that the iPhone would eventually support 3G. Virgin Mobile are in fact already testing a limited number of 3G iPhone units in Sydney.

Does this mean that Apple are merely ‘dating’ a number of mobile carriers in Australia, testing the iPhone on various networks and frequencies. Or is Telstra trying to still sound like a key player, even though the deal may be signed elsewhere.

Knowing the nature of Apple’s mobile carrier negotiations in both the US and Europe, it becomes impossible to draw any hard conclusions about which network will host the iPhone in 2008. No doubt Telstra are interested in the device, now that they’ve actually seen it, and no doubt Apple are making them jump through hoops to prove their devotion.

What we can take from this is that the Australian iPhone may only be a matter of months away, regardless of whether it’s on Telstra’s 2.5 (EDGE) network, its Next-G network or Virgin Mobile’s 3G network as the iPhone is being tested currently.

You know what i’d like? Icecream. I’d also like the ability in the iPhone (or any phone!!!) to edit the dictionary of words the iPhone stores and tries to recognises when one is typing an email or message, to help one out.

I accidentally type a word spelt totally wrong, hit space, and Boom - straight into the dictionary. Meaning that the next time i try to type that word again, the spastic version of the word i added to the dictionary accidentally is suggested as what i might want to type, instead of the proper spelling of the word!

Is there a file on the iPhone that stores that info that could be edited?? I think i’m gonna go huntin’ for wabbits.

Update:

Mother fucker! Just got a text message on my iPhone asking for someone elses phone number. But i couldn’t see an immediate way to text back with that info, without writing the number in question down with a pen first, or viewing it on my laptop which happens to be in front of me. On every  phone i’ve used, this is

With every other dumb-arse phone i’ve used i could just send a contact’s ph number via sms texting as a “Business Card” or the like.

If you, dear reader, were making a new phone, wouldn’t you look at the current line of phone’s and think, “Hey! That’s a great idea that i’d want in the ‘ideal phone’. Let’s put that small but handy feature in our new cool awesome phone.” But no.

iPhone number two’s or even just a new software update has a lot it could be.