flop ya mac out

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.

You may or may not have already changed the default phone number format on your iPhone from the default American set to a more international standard.

If you’ve done this by replacing the ‘US’ value in the PhoneFormats file with that of your own country, you may have noticed that Apple’s interpretation of how your local numbers should look isn’t quite what you had in mind!

I certainly did, so instead of copying the default set of Australian values into the US spot, I pasted in the following:

04## ### ###
+6# ### ### ###
(03) #### ####
(08) #### ####
(02) #### ####
9### ####
8### ####
5### ####
1#00 ### ###

Now iPhone can tell the difference between a mobile number and a home number with an area code present!

Of course this list serves me well, for a Victorian, however you may feel free to make changes to suit your own locality. For those international visitors, play around with mixing hash signs with numbers in order to get the desired effect.

Using the Address Book as a testing ground is a great time saver.

Additionally, I ended up keeping all these filters into my Mac’s Address Book for smooth Australian action everywhere!

How to change iPhone’s default number format – a recap

If you need a recap on how to modify the number formats on your iPhone, here’s a quick summary, thanks to the numerous excellent iPhone blogs such as modmyiphone and hackint0sh:

Using SFTP (which you would have installed using iNdependance and instructions like this when you unlocked your iPhone), retrieve from your iPhone the file:

/System/Library/Frameworks/AddressBookUI.framework/ABPhoneFormats.plist in 1.0.x

or, /System/Library/Frameworks/UIKit.f­ramework/Ph­oneFormats/UIPhoneFor­mats.plist in 1.1.1

Pop this file through this handy BINARY to ASCII converter, open with TextEdit and find the ‘US’ country value. Replace the values in it with those from your own country code (AU, for Australia) or even better, using your own customised version of the ones listed above.

Save and replace this file once again via SFTP, then restart your iPhone.

Viola! Now your iPhone speaks good fair dinkum Aussie, or German, or Spanish…

UPDATE: You may have noticed that your iPhone sometimes can’t quite tell the difference between phone numbers with and without area codes. This is because the firmware needs a little more ‘Australian’ tweaking to tell it that big long American phone numbers aren’t cool anymore. Find out about that one here.

See here. Apple are on the prowl for your iPhone love stories.

They even give a phone number to call if typed words just cannot describe your tale!

Maybe you might like to write in and tell them how great it is that your modded iPhone won’t work anymore, or all that time you saved by cutting and pasting your text?

I’ve no doubt they’ll get some great stories out of it, and in many ways, rightly so.

I dare someone to make up a super-fantastic story about how the iPhone saved your grandma or something to see if they follow up on it!

My Dad made a comment the other day about the iPhone’s google maps application.

He commented that it’s all good that it shows you when and where to make turns to get to your destination, but you’re still going to be fiddling around with your phone (no doubt whilst still driving) to check out the next turn you’ve got to make. Such a distraction whilst driving will likely render you and your car dead or at least really really awake, sooner or later (as happened to me the other day!!.. Another story for our next podcast).

So it makes a lot of sense to have your iPhone read your directions out aloud to you. The iPhone runs some form of OS X doesn’t it? And OS X on our computers contains the Speech function doesn’t it?

(more…)

So the iPhone kicks butt as far as pre-saving map data in the cache goes.

When you’re at home on your wifi, you can preload all the map lovin’ that you can handle to save yourself downloading it over EDGE (or GPRS on Australia’s Virgin network! Rock on!) when you’re on the road and need those directions pronto!

What’s equally supurb is the way that the Maps App handles routing directions.

If you plug in two locations to check out where you’re heading off to (I find I’m not so much using the Maps while driving, but more to suss out the journey before I leave home), while you’re on your speedy wifi, then iPhone automatically pre-loads all the intersections into its memory.

Even the iPhone knows how bad EDGE/GPRS speeds are, and tries to save you the download time!

So if you’re planning a trip, be sure to pop all this in before you leave home and the maps will be hot to trot before you’ve even tied your shoes.

Of course this has little bearing for me, as I’ve pretty much already cached-up ever square metre of my state at every detail level anyway! No, I am not a nerd!

I wouldn’t have to do this if the iPhone were 3G. But, well, that’s not till next year.

I’m unashamedly a big reader of Fake Steve. I like his slant on real-life news, and terrific ability to bag people out.

Often on this site, and many others like it, the author will link to numerous relevant and interesting pages as part of a blog entry.

On my Mac, I like to load these in seperate tabs while I continue reading the main thrust of the blog.

Have you tried opening a link in a new window on your iPhone yet? Unless the web developer lends you a helping hand, it can’t be done.

Enter Richard Herrera of Doctyper, with a genius workaround that will have you getting it on like there’s no tomorrow!

Click here to see his solution (not in a new window, I might add)

In a nutshell, you simply add two bookmarklets to the top of your boomkmarks menu (for easy access). One is called ‘Open in New Tab,’ while the other is aptly named ‘Open in Same Tab.’

If you want to load a link in a new ‘tab,’ just pop up the bookmarks menu and tap ‘Open in a New Tab,’ and automatically all the links on the page will be set to target=”_blank.” Tap the corresponding bookmarklet to revert the page to normal if desired.

So so simple! And to make matters even better, Safari keeps you in the loop by automatically putting a ‘new window’ icon beside all of the links.

This certainly has just made my day!

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!