Thursday, October 13, 2011

IOS5 Bricked my device


You bricked your Apple device?

Most developers use a different technique to update their IOS and this generally works even if the device is bricked.

The problem is that you may loose your data if you don't have a backup.

Disclaimer: No warranty that this will work. If you try this on a working device you can brick the device. Do that at your own risk!

1 - Try a Reset

  • Hold the Power button and the Home Button until you see an apple
  • Release and press power to see if the device reboots

2 - Download ipsw file from Apple and flash


Download the iPSW file corresponding to your device. IPSW are the firmware files they are coming from Apple and that's what iTunes does install without telling you.
  • Plug in your "bricked" device via USB to your iTunes Computer
  • In iTunes Option+click on the Check for Update button in iTunes.(To wipe your device and do a clean install, Option+click on Restore.)
  • iTunes will display a file dialog
  • Select the ipsw you downloaded
  • IOS will be installed. You can see a white progress bar, Be patient
  • When it is finished iTunes can prompt you for a device backup to restore
  • Follow the instructions and be patient. This can take an hour if you have a lot of stuff
Other methods

3 - Reset & Restore

  • Hold the Power button and the Home Button until you see an apple
  • Release and press power to see if the device reboots
  • If not plug your device via cable to iTunes
  • Select your device in iTunes left column
  • Click Restore. iTunes should go and fetch the latest IOS from Apple
    You should see a white horizontal progress bar download the setup/install
  • When the IOS update is finished iTunes will ask you for a previous backup to restore
  • You can say no at this time and verify that your device is OK or if you have a backup select and click. If you say no you can always restore later.
  • Sync your device. This will take a good hour if you have a lot of stuff
4 - DFU - Digital Firmware Update

How to enter iPhone DFU mode

  • Turn the device off (hold down the power button at the top of the iPhone) 
  • Hold down the sleep/power button and home button together until device shuts off
  • Continue to hold down the Home button ad release sleep/power
  • While holding Home connect your device to iTunes on your computer used to sync
  • You should see a USB cable and an iTunes icon on your screen
  • Release the Home button
  • Restore as shown above step 4 (select device and restore)

Exit DFU mode on iPhone

Exit out of DFU mode by holding down the Home and sleep/power buttons on the iPhone while connected to iTunes. Then just hit the power button as and this should reboot the device as usual.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

XCode4 problems

Typical messages:
  • At least one valid architecture arm6 must be present
  • No architectures to compile for
  • (ONLY_ACTIVE_ARCH=YES, active arch=i386, VALID_ARCHS=armv6)
  • VALID_ARCHS=   (nil)



In Project Build Settings check Build Active Architecture Only and set to NO

You should also check the settings for Architectures and Valid Architectures
and add if necessary armv6 armv7

I have seen once or twice when creating a new project armv6f and armv7f

$(ARCHS_UNIVERSAL_IPHONE_OS) will build a universal iPhone/iPad app

If you set the architecture in the active target to armv7 and check the "Build Active Architecture Only" XCode will create a non-universal binary and you may end up with the proble above when you submit the app because of conflicting settings.

Monday, October 3, 2011

iPhone5

Wondering about what Tim Cook will present tomorrow in the "Let's talk iPhone"?

Curved glass, personal Assistant, voice recognition all these things are flying around. Wait to see all the nice additions in IOS 5: OTA Firmware updates, Cloud Backups, FaceTime, Messages (carriers will scream) and tons of improvements.

iTunes Match thing where you can dump all your music on the Apple Cloud and share it around all your devices for the small amount of 30$ a year. I didn't test it but you don't even need to upload your music, the name will suffice in most cases if you purchased from the store (and seems it could work even if you didn't). This will save an enormous amount of time and uploads. Version 9 is just being released.

Voice Assistant will be a nice addition, but they did not release it to developers in the IOS Beta7 so I am a bit sceptical, but they could have reserved that as the big surprise for the presentation. Meaning it should be in the IOS GM release due tomorrow October 3.

In any case, Apple fans can dream, because Apple is working on things even more wonderful than their dreams.

Check US patents 20110197147 granted to Apple. A projector built in iPads, iPhones and MacBooks with gesture recognition on the screen, and retransmission to networked devices. Imagine, could have your presentation in your iPhone.

Ref: Apple

United States Patents US20110197147 

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Free XCode lessons




Mac App Store is full of interesting stuff. Found this today:

AppSchoolLite

Learn XCode for total beginner includes 15 lessons and 5 Videos

Covers XCode version 4 which is the latest version  (latest Beta is 4.2)

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Quick post About Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs resigned yesterday from his highly paid job. If I remember well he is working for a $1 (One dollar) salary at Apple. He doesn't need the salary anyway since he own a large chunk of Apple shares and evaluated at 8.3B by Forbes

The NY Times published a list of Apple Patents with Steve Job co-listed as inventor

Check it it is very instructive and you  could see that he was really a creative nerd. He even had an input on those glass stairs in Apple Stores. 


Steve Jobs’s Patents - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

IOS5 allows OTA IOS updates and WiFi Sync


IOS 5 is still in Beta testing but many new features appeared in the latest betas and they are extremely importants for lazy or "technically challenged" users.

IOS5 allows OTA (Over The Air) IOS update, WiFi Sync, iCloud backups and many other very nice features.

This means that you will never have to connect your iPad to a computer for Sync and updates anymore. iPads will become totally free.

With iCloud you can backup your stuff to your iCloud account, reload from the "Cloud", and share stuff between different devices over the air.

Neat stuff! As always Apple is way beyond the competition. All other tablets will have a lot of work to do and spend tons of money to reduce the difference.

There is no date for release but it should be in September. The GM version is still not out and Apple released 6 Betas which is a record. Observers and ... hackers say that it is caused by many additions in IOS5:
  • LTE support (ATT LTE)
  • Support for a low end iPhone8 low cost 8GB but with iCloud you don't need storage anymore
  • Totally new notification system memorizing alerts, showing them as banners etc...
  • iMessage  (Pseudo SMS between Apple devices)
  • FaceTime over 3G
  • etc etc

Friday, August 12, 2011

New release of IOS5 Beta 5

Something tells me that Clouds are not simple to manage. Apple released a few days ago a Beta5 fo IOS5.

This is quite unusual, because we get a GM (Gold Mine oops Master) release generally after 3 Beta, very rarely four, so with five Beta you can be sure that Apple engineers are busy cleaning up bugs and ironing out the last wrinkles in IOS5 before release.

The stress on the engineering team must be multiplied by the fact that Steve Job had a few "words" with the "MobileMe team" in May and it was not ... nice. See article here.

I know I know, some people out there would die for these IOS5 Betas, but to be honest I did not yet load one on my devices. This for multiple reasons....

I own just the bare minimum apple devices, my iPhone is a vintage 3G which I use as my phone, the other devices are iPod is 3rd gen I think, and an iPad 1st gen. Yes, I am a developer, with apps on the store and I don't have even an iPad2 and iPhone4.

Apple doesn't have programs to sell low cost devices to developers like Google has with Android and dishing out $800 for an iPhone4 is way too much, $700 for an iPad2 is also too much.

Most important reason is that Betas are a one way street, means you can't go back easy to previous IOS if there is a serious bug. So if you loaded a buggy IOS (rare but possible) on your phone, bye bye iPhone, bye bye iPad.

Third and last, the developing computer Mac or iMac. If you load the new SDK on your developing machine, you also may have a problem. Apple does not accepts submissions compiled with Betas, so you either should have a second development machine or load two different compilers and SDKs on the same development computer. This is risky.

So that's why I didn't load IOS5 and check the new features, There are tons of them and between Lion and IOS5 wow here wowo there.

If you click on enough publicities on the right side maybe I could get some $$ and buy a new iPad2.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

I see clouds everywhere

iCloud is coming Monday. At least we think it is. The logo at the entry at Moscone Center clearly showing a cloud, a Lion and a big #5. In Chinese culture number five (五) means the Emperor of China, and the Tiananmen gate, door to the Forbidden City has Five arches. By an extraordinary coincidence it is today the anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown.

But what is iCloud really? From what everyone says on Internet, it will allow people to stream music from the cloud. Another buzz word we will hear at nauseam in the next few week. All journalists will talk about that all the time and ask each other "are you on the Cloud?"

OK but what is "The cloud"? It is basically storage outside of your computer. It has been around for years MySpace, Google Apps, Google docs, Google Bookmarks are clouds.

Clouds are nebulous entities which stores and keeps your files, somewhere, in the clouds, instead of carrying them on removable drive or flash drives. This means that you can access your files, and information from anywhere in the world, provided you have an Internet access.

Imagine you loose your iPhone in Paris (they like iPhones over there), you go to Apple, with"Find my iPhone" you block your phone and/or brick it, you get a new iPhone and from the cloud reload all your contacts, calendar, music etc... In an hour or so, you are back on your merry way to the Louvres. The Impressionists are at Musée d'Orsay BTW.

You want to exchange files with colleagues or friends, easy. You upload to the public part of your cloud location and pass the link by SMS or Email and that's it.

Here some interesting pictures of iCloud. No this is not Apple, it is just another cloud in iTunes App Store.

For more clouds go there.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Watch Out Steve! iCloud is crashing on my iPad!

Steve Jobs will come out of retirement for WWDC 2011 and deliver the keynote himself which is quite extraordinary and confirms that something big will be announced! 

Buzz word says he is supposed to announce iCloud, IOS5 and MACOS Lion but this is not very exciting. Unless MacOS has 3D, virtual games devices and iCloud replaces MobileMe and becomes free for all iPad users...

You may not know but iCloud alias CloudMe, is the new MobileMe. Apple bought iCloud from Xcerion, a service company based in Sweeden -Linkoping for $4M. You can get a free account here.

What I don't understand now is that iCloud says that Safari is not supported when I login. Can you believe that? An Apple site that does not fully support Safari? Weird (See left of login button)



I hope Steve Job's demo of iCloud on his iPad works! Here it doesn't!  See what I get when I try to login to my CloudMe account on my iPad. I put the developer debug on and as you can see below iCloud is asking for Java. How many days to WWDC 2011 ? 






Note:    reminded me that this is NOT the Apple site but of a company called ... XCerion. I perfectly know that! The post above is just to point that at -72H iCloud is still in Sweden which I find abnormal and risky.


Let see, Apple took control of iCloud.com and iCloud.org June 1st as proven by NETSOL whois records. An IP trace of iCloud.com says it is still in Sweeden (traceroute to icloud.com IP=83.140.241.12). I find unwise for Apple to keep the Xcerion version of the web still opened. They should have switched to their Cupertino servers. 


We all know Apple, they will pull the drapes just when Steve Jobs enters the stage, only problem is that DNS propagation takes an average of 24H to propagate all over the world. We just hope that the Clouds will dissipate next Monday. 

MRIs prove that Apple is a new religion

BBC Superbrands' show has now demonstrated using MRIs that Apple devotees brain will have a religious experience when watching a new Apple product. As if this was not enough ye Bishop of Buckingham - who reads his Bible on an iPad, sees huge similarities between Apple and a religion. Those who hate Apple should then be called The Null-A (as in Van Vogt)

News from the A religion:

Persistent rumors claim that next IOS will integrate interactive 3D. There is a free app on the store called I3D from University Joseph Fourier Grenoble in France, yes like the series, but Apple has a dozen patents on 3D and augmented reality devices.

Another under the radar feature that could announced is a revolutionary "Virtual Device Interface" API where developers could create a virtual device on screen with all sorts of buttons and behaviors like ... gaming consoles for example.

News from China about Apple buying hundreds new glass cutting machines for manufacturers of iPhones and iPad there. The new front glass could be curved which will be good to eliminate reflections. Only problem is that applying the film sandwitch polarizers etc found in front of LCDs will be very tricky.

Strangely enough Apple is inviting foreign journalists to WWDC June 6, because they will announce something "Big". 

Big?  Sure. A Lion is bigger than a Leopard.

..._._

For those who are too young, or Science Fiction analphabets
The World of Null-A - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 

Sunday, April 17, 2011

New IOS 4.3.2 for iPad, iPad2 and iPhone

Apple has released iOS4.3.2 for iPhone, iPad 2, iPad and iPod – no more FaceTime freezing or iPad 3G issues.

iOS4.3.2 adds the usual security feature enhancements and minor optimisations and bug fixes as well.

The biggest bug fix in iOS4.3.2 is that Apple has solved the FaceTime freeze issue affecting iPad 2 users.

Next improvement is iPad’s 3G performance. It is generally more stable.

iPhone 3G users are left in the dust at IOS4.2.1.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

iPad documentation

Many people who use iPads are not technical and don't know half of the iPad best commands.

They also ignore that there is a world of information at their fingertip and don't really know about blogs, twitter and newsgroups. Most basic users have their apps installed by a son or daughter and use apps. The most advanced read news using the bigs news apps and that's it.

Apple help is difficult and intimidating. I for one, never seen any help when I booted my iPad the first time.

Apple help is difficult to find but it is there, just a few links to get you started.

The basic Apple iPad support page is here:  Apple Support - iPad  Français サポート

Choose your country    Apple choose Country

In general you take the basic URL :  http://www.apple.com/XX/support/

and replace XX by the two letter acronym representing your country.
Example Russia is ru -> http://www.apple.com/ru/support/
China is cn                 -> http://www.apple.com.cn/support/
En Français                -> http://www.apple.com/fr/support/

Manuals in English  Français  etc...

Friday, March 18, 2011

IOS Magic (for developers only)

Short and sweet:

Technical Note TN2239 or iOS Debugging Magic
Technical Note TN2265 or Troubleshooting Push Notifications

Check your app's code signing entitlements with the codesign tool.
(note: the link will open a terminal window. Type the letter q to quit)

The value of the 
aps-environment entitlement should be either development or production. Run this command in Terminal pointing at your App Store distribution build: 

$ codesign -dvvvv --entitlements - <YourAppName>.app


And that elusive mobile debugging profile is here on your developer's disk: APNsLogging.mobileconfig

You can drag the link below and drop it in your safari url to open the directory and locate the file on your disk:

Friday, March 4, 2011

Setup AirPrint on MacOsX or Windows 7/Vista shared printers

AirPrint is a good feature but people still complaining that you need to use special "WiFi" enabled printers. You can print on printers connected to an Apple Airport WiFi router, but not on a Mac or Windows connected printer. We don't know if 4.3 will allow printing on a Shared printer, if not, here is the way to do it.

Mac connected Shared printer

In a previous post I put some hidden hints to a Mac OS hack allowing AirPrint on a Mac connected printer. You won't find it here because it contains an Apple driver, but if you google "AirPrintFix cloudapp" you may find it there. There is a readme file inside the zip and even with limited OS knowledge you can install that.

Windows 7/Vista
  • Set your printer as shared in Control Panel>Printers Right Click Share 
  • Download AirPrint.zip (this file is inside iTunes Install files in AppleMobileDeviceSupport.msi) 
  • Create a folder called AirPrint in Program Files 
  • Unzip AirPrint and put the three files in your AirPrint Program Files folder 
    • airprint.exe 
    • libairprint.dll 
    • XpdfPrint.dll 
  • From the AirPrint directory Run airprint -i  in Admin mode to install the print service.
    airprint -r will remove the service 
  • When you start the AirPrint service, Windows Firewall will prompt you allow or deny AirPrint features to be shared over networks. Click on Allow access button. 
You may need to install and start Bonjour if you never installed iTunes on your computer.
  • The simplest solution is to install the latest iTunes
  • If you dont want to install iTunes you can just install Bonjour by downloading the service from Apple here http://support.apple.com/kb/DL999.
In theory you should be able now to see all shared printers from your iPhone or iPad. Try to print something from the mail program.

In most cases you will be asked at least once for a login & password. Use the login password you use to log on the computer on which the printer is connected. Some people claim (Couldn't do it here) that if you enable the guest account you don't need a login password. I suppose the guest account should be set as one of the printer user in the printer security tab.

Good luck.

--------
Alternate way to start the service is by running sc.exe in a CMD windows in Admin mode. sc.exe /help should print the help and all command. Check this Microsoft link for sc.exe information.

Windows 64bits:
sc.exe create AirPrint binPath= "C:\Program Files (x86)\AirPrint\airprint.exe -s" depend= "Bonjour Service" start= auto
sc.exe start AirPrint


Windows 32bits:
sc.exe create AirPrint binPath= "C:\Program Files\AirPrint\airprint.exe -s" depend= "Bonjour Service" start= auto
sc.exe start AirPrint

Thursday, March 3, 2011

iPad2 is out - Specs

So iPad2 is out. My predictions were not off by a lot, and as I predicted it is not the huge step everybody expected, and Apple will do that in two steps, except they selected a hardware upgrade instead of a firmware one which is NOT wise.

Apple used a dual-core A5 (A5 can be Quad core I predicted underpowered A9 Quad). Front and Back Camera, No retina, No SDCard, improved speaker.


This is typical Apple and will allow them to push another incremental hardware when needed.

Strategically this will disturb and slow down the competition. Apple is using iPad2 to "Stake their claim" and maintain, if not increase, territory. Remind me of Go Game strategy.


iPad2 Specs are here.

In Apple terms "Faster, lighter, thinner. Cameras and gyro. iOS 4.3 and FaceTime. iMovie and GaragrBand for 44.99. 3G on AT&T and Verizon. Same battery life. Same prices. Black and white. Smart Covers."

Competition is still way behind. I see everyday publicity for other tablets, but Apple beats everybody hands down.

Steve Jobs, who looked better, killed any speculation by declaring 2011 as the Apple iPad2 year.

Means no iPad3 in September? Not sure! Apple definition of "year" may be quite different from calendar year. If 50% of people wait for September means around 7-10 Million unsold iPads, $4 Billion and Apple needs to keep things going.

So iPad3 is in the background, ready to pop out in case of competition gaining on Apple. It will certainly be faster again, better graphics and Retina display!

Will Apple use a Minkovskian space time definition of "Year of iPad2" and release an iPad3 in September? I think they will at least announce one. Retina display will be a huge improvement on competition, a quad-core will be a killer and Apple knows how to kill competition.

Competition compare Mashup.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

iPad3 coming in september

iPad2 is coming today. I don't expect anything very exiting. Read what I said in my January 15 post:

"I would go on a limb here and say that Apple will underclock to 1GHz on a first release then if all goes well, turboboost these devices to twice the speed by a firmware update."


I was wrong on firmware update but not by much. Apple seems to prefer a hardware update by releasing in September iPad3.

iPad2 is already classified as just an incremental improvement and that the real exiting thing will come in September as iPad3.

IOS 5, retina display and a full speed Dual Core.

Today's anoucements will be aimed mainly at pushing MobileMe for everyone, Cloud storage and pushing Subscription services.

We will see today and confirm in September.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

GPS "technical difficulties" in South East US

FAA has put an advisory warning pilots that GPS will be unreliable or unavailable from January 20th through February 22nd, 2011 due to Department of Defense tests. 

The CSFTL tag means Commander Strike Force Training Atlantic which is the Navy. 

FAA Advisory CSFTL11-01

During testing DoD could be turning civilian usage OFF on some GPS satellites which will reduce the accuracy of the GPS in concentric circles shrinking with a decrease in altitude as shown above, and explained in the NOTAM.
   
It is unclear on what will happen on the ground but the test will turn GPS OFF for periods of 15mn each hour and some observers on the ground claim their GPS was flashing different values yesterday.

So just in case take a paper map with you, and it is NOT an iPhone new bug.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

SDCard in iPad2? Not!



Saw this morning that everybody is repeating iPad2 will have an SDCard slot, which does not make much sense to me. People keep repeating the same thing over and over without thinking. If you search for "iPad 2 has higher-res screen, SD card" with quotes you get 1200+ hits climbing 20 hits an hour. This morning the number was 1170 hits!


In December I posted in iPad2 Shells that the reported large slot at the bottom did not look like an SDCard slot but more as an extra ventilation, which meant more powerful chipset and graphic chips in iPad2. 

I don't believe Apple is stupid enough to put an SDCard slot in the iPad2. Why? Because SDCards connectors are crappy, they will increase hardware problems especially at the bottom. iPad users are NOT computer geeks and will find ways to insert stuff in reverse and if I was Apple I don't want that. 

In addition Apple makes tons of money on accessories and they sell all sorts of adapters for photo, SDCard, so why would they undercut their own market? The probability of an SDCard socket is low, asymptotically tending to zero.

A new chip set on the other side is certain. Apple current chipset, the A4 is a PA Semi design, the ARM Cortex A8 CPU with Imagination PowerVR
 GPU produced by Samsung. On the graphic side Apple is a large stockholder of Imagination with Intel.

New devices, the iPhone 5 and iPad 2, will most certainly use a 2GHz Capable Cortex-A9 Quad Core Processor Implementation with the latest Imagination PowerVR 
SGX543. That's a quad core CPU.


I would go on a limb here and say that Apple will underclock to 1GHz on a first release then if all goes well, turboboost these devices to twice the speed by a firmware update.

I could be wrong, but I used to design these toys, and that's what I would do. 





Friday, January 14, 2011

IOS Developer Certificate and Profile Nightmare

Each year around this time, I have to renew my developer certificate and Provisioning profile. This is the second time I am renewing and it is always the same nightmare. It is a frustrating experience!

Problems generally begin by the nagging alarm warning message on your iPhone or iPad devices "Provisioning profile so&so is about to expire in XYZ" and two buttons Remind Me (that's my button) and Show Me which I hate because usually you turned your phone to do something else and the warning message is really not welcome at that time.

A few days later you are compiling the latest version of your app, and kaboom, you get an error telling you that you have a signing problem. What? A signing problem?

You click ^⌘O to open the XCode organizer, and holly crap most of your profiles have a yellow triangle in the left column and a large, looming sign below telling you that you are doomed!



Quick search on the Apple developer forum for "A valid signing identity matching this profile could not be found" will return a big zero!


Google is better and will return 1500+ hits of miserable IOS developers, in the same predicament, who also suddenly lost their profiles and are searching for a solution. I like the "What the @$! is a Signing identity?" post. This guy is kaput for a week at least.


Solution

  1. Hope you got a valid developer account and/or renewed your membership. If not Renew!
  2. To check certificates and Profiles Go to IOS provisioning portal 
  3. If your Developer certificate is invalid
    1. Click on Certificate and verify that you have a valid certificate
    2. If not Apple does not tell you how to renew, because there is no renew
    3. You must revoke the certificate using the button on the righ
    4. Recreate a new certificate from zero exactly as you did the first time (Check the How To)
    5. Wait a few seconds and click refresh. Apple does not refresh these pages automatically and the first time I did that I waited like an imbecile ten minutes in front of that screen.
    6. An Email is sent to the big kahuna who manages your account, the "Agent", to accept your demand. If you are the Agent, you see a line appear in the Team Signing Request, click Approve or Reject if there was an error. 
    7. Refresh the view and you certificate should be ready to download!
    8. Download the certificate (A file ending in .cer)
    9. Double click on it to install it in your keychain
    10. Wait a minute here. If you changed your developer certificate, provisioning profiles could be invalid and you may have to do the steps below too. Don't forget to click on Edit to reenable the developers.
  4. Renew your developing profile(s) 
    1. Apple provided a Renew button here but remember to check with Edit>Modify that you are using the new Developer certificate and that your developer identity is checked in the Certificates section.
    2. Select the devices used for debugging
    3. Submit
    4. Wait a few seconds, and refresh the view until you see the download button
    5. Download the developer profile (ending in .mobileprovision)
    6. Drop the file in your organiser

If you didn't do it already download the iPhone Configuration Utility it is a very useful tool to check certificate, profiles etc/

I use it also to quickly install and enable or disable apps in the devices by uninstalling them, instead of running XCode or using iTunes.

You can also quickly install profiles in your device



Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Verizon iPhone 4 will start in February

At the news conference in New York, Verizon said it will start taking pre-orders on Feb. 3 for existing customers and February 10 for new customers. No precise launch date for the device was given. This is for a CDMA device only and not for the 4G.

They did not announce a 4G version, and we suppose Apple will have the upper hand in that. Big Apple news are always Steve Jobs' news.

This announcement is extremely important because unknown to most Google passed last week the iPhone at 26% of the market being Android based for 25% begin iPhone. Research In Motion still holding 33.5% of the market due to the business people reluctance to adopt the iPhone.

AT&T is in trouble. Their customers are quite unhappy with the quality of the service in many areas, 88% of AT&T users are locked in a two year contract, and AT&T is late on its 4G network.

AT&T  Beware the Ides of March!

Monday, January 10, 2011

CES or the rise of the Android!

CES usually was about TVs. This year it was all about smart phones and Tablets. The main event in my opinion was the rise of the Android. Sounds like a bad science fiction movie but Android is on most smart phones already. With just a little push from Google, Android can become a major Tablet OS.

Motorola new XOOM tablet running Android 3.0 Honeycomb demonstrated at CES looked very well designed and very slick. 

Digitimes said that Google was giving full cooperation and priority to Motorola, Samsung and HTC to develop new phones and tablets and 2011 will be the year of the Android.

Big looser was Microsoft! A bit on the sidelines despite the claim that there was a multitude of Windows 7 tablets at CES, most looked like prototypes and very few are available now! Most will die quickly.

To add insult to injury, Tom Kilroy, Chief Marketing at Intel told CNET that they were quite unhappy with Microsoft slowness to release a tablet OS. 

Could be because Microsoft is, let's say, dropping Intel on low power chipsets and going ARM. Can't blame them, latest tests I ran on LV and ULV chipsets, were not good. Either you ran a 100W TDP or you had a 30W TDP and 3DMark ran in molasses. Intel Chipsets are for desktops, and what they call "embedded" are just downgraded desktop chipsets with a serious reduction in RAM and graphics performance. 

Windows 7 is not a tablet OS, and any tablet running Windows 7 is in my opinion doomed because the batteries will not last if you do anything serious. To support 10 hours, you will end up with a very heavy tablet, in the three pounds range.

So CES is in fact the victory of the Tablet, and the coming of Google as a serious competitor. I am looking around for an Android Phone and/or Android Tablet and checking android development tools.

Google needs to look at the Android EcoSystem and do some thinking ...

madmac




Friday, January 7, 2011

Verizon announcing new iPhone January 11?

There is a Verizon Wireless announcement event on Tuesday, January 11 at the Lincoln Center in New York. Apple launch of the device will be start of February according to the buzz word.

We have seen the Verizon iPhone look in a previous post. Some insiders who saw the Verizon iPhone say the internet pages load lighting fast.



There is also a persistent buzz about a Verizon iPad CDMA. We scan chinese sites and they speak of not one, not two but three different iPad versions coming up.


All that is pure speculations and based on info parsed from different sources mostly Chinese.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

iPhone alarm emergency fix

iPhone Alarm clock bug hit in 2011. Alarms don't work anymore.

Apple said the bug will fix itself Monday Jan 3, 2011

but just in case you need that now, you can fix that by adding 

  repeat every day    to the alarm for the day the alarm is set

Sunday for today's alarms
Monday for tomorrow January 3

until you are sure it is fixed.
----
Monday January 3 Update
We are Monday and sadly there are still still thousands of people complaining that iPhone Alarms didn't go. Here we have zero problems on our iPhones. All alarms went as scheduled.
A quick check showed that nobody retweeted our temporary fix!


How can you verify that the alarm works?
  • Set an alarm for ... NOW + 1 or 2 minutes. Save and wait. 
If the alarm doesn't go on time you still have the problem. You can apply the temporary fix by adding a repeat and verify that it will then work.
On our iPhones however the bug is not there anymore and cleared itself as Apple claimed it would. 

We would recommend to reboot your iPhone.


  1. Clear your alarms.
  2. Shutdown your iPhone by pressing 5 seconds on the Sleep button on the top, then slide the red tab
  3. Reboot the iPhone by pressing on Sleep button. iPhone will reboot from clean settings.
  4. Check your time date settings. Our iPhones here worked in all modes, 24H or not and local time, Automatic ON and OFF
  5. Reset your alarms.

Redo the alarm test again.
  1. Set an alarm for your time plus one minute
  2. wait 
  3. If phone rings fine, press Snooze and verify that phone rings again after a snooze. If yes the bug is gone! 
  4. If not you will have to use the temporary fix and set repeat alarm.
Probability that the problem stays is very small, the iPhone reboot should clear the bug however.... Our iPhones are updated to IOS 4.2.1 version.


madmac