Two:Thirty AM

It has often been said that Apple hardware is a thing of beauty, and I have to agree. Just look at this Apple Xserve RAID array, stunning!

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 35
Camera Body: Nikon D40
Camera Lens: Nikon 18-55

Time to get all conspiracy theory on you! This may be way out in left field, but I am just shooting from the hip here and telling you what it looks like to me on the surface.

It seemed to take forever but a couple weeks ago we finally got Skype for the iPhone! Sure it took longer than it should have but what on the iPhone doesn’t? Well, after the first install, we came up against the app crashing upon starting, consistently. Well long story short, it turned out to be some kind of incompatibility with Jailbroken iPhones and MobileSubstrate. So we were back up and running just fine after a MobileSubstrate update. So it was MobileSubstrate? Well no, take a look at the lengthly article by Saurik on the matter.

So fast forward to today, a new Skype app update, cool, so I install it. Upon launching the app, I get the following message “This version of Skype is only supported on unmodified iPhone OS 2.2″ which you can see in the screen shot.

Bottom line, what is this app doing that no other app is?
Why is this particular app so different in the way it works?
Do they not work with the same SDK that everyone else does?

I really hope this turns out to be no big deal and I have blown it way out of proportion to be honest.

With all the talk of actions being taken to make Jailbreaking “illegal” and so forth, I don’t want this app to turn into a fact finding mission for Apple/AT&T to begin shutting off service for iPhone users that are “breaking the rules”.

Comment below, tell me I am over reacting…please :)

(the app seems to work ok, but is this the beginning? Because obviously if you have Jailbroken your phone, you know that you are not going to get technical support on anything)

The other day I had one of those moments where I realized why I switched to Mac and why I love the platform so much. It is simply put, the nearly perfect apps that are developed for the platform. There are a lot of apps out there for all platforms that do one thing or another “pretty good”. It is however rare, to find an app that is simply perfect. Although after looking through my Applications folder, I find a number of apps that are just that, perfect. This is my chance to take a little time and share some of my favorites. I would also like to give you a little background as to why they are so perfect. I realize that nothing is perfect, and there will be plenty of forum / comment trolls to flame me, calling me a “fan boy” or ready to point out all the “flaws” and bugs these apps have. Well without wasting too much time, let me address those folks, screw off and go back to living your sad and pathetic little life behind your 1337 screen name. Anyhow, for the rest of you, lets get onto the apps shall we? :)

1Password by: Agile Web Solutions. If you are looking for a state of the art password manager, this is your app. 1Password is not only a password vault, but has plugins for all your favorite browsers, and with the simple click of a button, it will recall your logon info and sign you into all your favorite sites. All of this is done safely and securely. A really nice app!

Adium by: Adium X. With all the IM services out there and all your friends and family all on different ones, you don’t want to have 3 or 4 different IM clients running. Not to mention, none of the “official” clients are very nice anyway. Well Adium solves all of that. Adium is a multi client IM app. You can add all your IM accounts into this one app and Adium does the rest. Not to mention Adium is very customizable and has many plug-ins. The absolute best in class app on the mac!

Coda by: Panic Software. Whether you are just learning to code web pages or are a seasoned pro, Coda is the app for you. Dubbed “one window web development”, Coda is laid out brilliantly to ensure you are as productive as possible. They really looked at how the workflow should be, and molded this beautiful app around that. Worth every penny!

HandBrake by: HandBrake. Want to take your DVDs with you on the road but don’t want to lug them around? Want to have all your movies in MP4 format on your media server in your house? This is your app! Handbrake will take your DVDs and rip them into many different file formats and types of compression to fit your needs. I personally rip everything into H.264 MP4s for the Mac mini media center we have. Works like a charm every time and it is beyond simple. Oh and I almost forgot to mention it is open source and FREE!!

MarsEdit by: Red Sweater Software. This app is for anyone and everyone that has a blog. It is a great app that allows you to compose all your posts offline, save drafts, edit and then post them with the click of a button. I used this app to write this post in fact. It works with a multitude of blog engines; I am using it with WordPress. Clean layout, a must have if you want to blog from anywhere.

OmniFocus by: Omni Group. It’s all about GTD (getting things done) these days, and as far as I am concerned, this is the way to do it! If you are familiar with the GTD ideology or just want to stay organized, GET OMNIFOCUS! Get your tasks out of your head, organize them, and do them. Simple as that. This is truly brilliant software.

Quicksilver by: Blacktree. “Act without doing.” Quicksilver is a launcher that allows you to be more productive in launching apps than anyone really should be. To be fair, launching apps is about 1% of what Quicksilver is capable of. All I can say is, get this app and let the addiction begin. Once you start using Quicksilver, you will wonder how you ever managed without it!

Transmission by: Transmission Project. Transmission is by far my favorite BitTorrent client. It has a super clean UI, and is very easy to use. It has a good amount of preferences for setting up your BitTorrent workflow as well. One other feature it has that I love is that is has a webserver in it that will allow you to control your active torrents from any web browser. I find this to be very useful, and use it from my iPhone quite often; really slick.

Transmit by: Panic Software. Transmit is what you need if you do a lot of FTP transfers. Transmit is made by the same folks that make Coda, so right there you know it’s awesome. Transmit is a 2 pane style FTP client. It has “your stuff” on the left and “their stuff” on the right. It has a very simple and intuitive layout, making it easy to use. The layout also makes your FTP jobs much faster and more productive.

Twitterrific by: The Icon Factory. If you use Twitter then check out this little app. There are a ton of Twitter apps out there, but so far on the mac desktop this is the one I like the best. It is very un-intrusive and sits up in your menu bar. It has a ton of ways to customize alerts. The free version works exactly the same as the paid version with the exception of an ad every once in a while, which isn’t bad at all. They also have an iPhone version which works equally well! Oh, and don’t forget to follow me ;) http://twitter.com/heartagram

Aperture by: Apple. If you are an avid photographer or a new amateur photographer (like me), this is the app you need for photo manipulation and management, everything from color management to rating images. It also adds the ability to add rich detailed meta data to your images. There is a tethered shooting option as well, to shoot and add pictures to your projects automatically. It is a little pricey for the amateur at $199, but once you use it and see its power, you will find it to be totally worth it. Free Aperture Trial.

AppZapper by: AppZapper. Need to un-install apps that you don’t need anymore? This is what you want. AppZapper does one thing and it does it very well. Open AppZapper, drag your unwanted apps onto it, and it will find all associated files with that app. At this point you ZAP it, and the app and all associated files will be gone!

Cha-Ching by: Midnight Apps. Managing your finances is not always the easiest thing. But it can become a little more friendly with the help of Cha-Ching. This little financial app is the easy to use alternative to Quicken and the likes. It’s very easy to use and intuitive. If you want something simple to use or want to replace your current software that has too many “features,” check out this little piggy.

Evernote by: Evernote Corporation. This is by far the best application for note taking and storing. It is the most cross platform app I use by far. It works with Mac, Windows, iPhone, Web browser, and Windows Mobile! With this app you can take your notes on anyone of those clients and all your notes are stored in the cloud and synced everywhere, making your notes accessible anywhere, anytime. You can tag your notes, and even add voice and pictures. One of the coolest features is the ability to OCR text from pictures! You have to check this app out for your note taking needs.

Growl by: Growl Team. Growl is a notification system for OS X. Quite simply, Growl lets Mac OS X applications unintrusively tell you when things happen. It is a must have for everyone using OS X. It is free and beyond useful!

Overflow by: Stunt Software. If you are like me then you hate when you have too many things in your dock! Although it would be handy to be able to have more apps in reach like they are in the dock. Enter Overflow: with overflow you have a single icon in your dock, that when clicked, will present you with a fully customizable grid of all your apps. You can set them up in categories or how ever you like. It is a fantastic companion to Quicksilver, when you know what you want but the name isn’t coming to mind to type it. Click the Overflow icon and you are launching your app in 2 clicks!

Perian by: Perian Project. Perian, dubbed “the swiss-army knife for quicktime” is a Quicktime component that adds support for many video file formats. If you have a video file that won’t play because you don’t have the correct codec, install Perian, and chances are you will be good to go.

Simplify Media by: Simplify Media. This app lets you listen to your music from practically anywhere! Simplify Media lets you listen to your home music collection in iTunes over the internet from almost anywhere. I use it to listen to my home iTunes collection while I am at work. It all streams seamlessly through iTunes, it’s like the music is on that computer. There is also an iPhone client that lets you listen on the go. One other really cool feature is the ability to add up to 30 friends’ libraries, so you can listen to their music in the same way. This gives you practically an infinite song library! Breakthrough app.

Visual Hub by: Techspansion. I was a little hesitant to put this one on the list because the developer has stopped work on it and the app is effectively dead :( But because this app is SO great, I am putting it on the list anyway. This app, plain and simple, is THE video transcoder for the mac. It can transcode practically anything into anything else. If there is any way for you to still get a copy of this app, do it, you won’t be disappointed!

Connect360 by: Nullriver. Ok, since you can’t actually get that last pick anymore, here is a bonus pick! This one is for all the Xbox360 owners out there. This little app allows you to use your mac as a media center extension so you can stream music, videos, and photos to your Xbox360 from your mac. It does exactly what it says and does it well.

There you have it, I hope you enjoyed the list and got some good info on what software to get for your mac. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. Also, if you have picks that you like better than any of the ones I have listed here, send those along as well!

I have had an iPhone since version 1.0, and although the iPhone is great, it has been a rough road. The first generation iPhone was absolutely amazing, considering what its competitors were at launch. I was in line for 6 hours on launch day to get mine, and it was completely worth it. After a few months, much of the wow began to wear off after I started noticing what it didn’t have. It didn’t have MMS, video recording, or the ability to install extra applications. Along came Jailbroken applications, which did alleviate much of this. The problem with that is that jailbreaking wasn’t really an option for the “everyman”.

Throughout the 1.x releases Apple added a FEW extra features and fixed bugs, but that was pretty much the extent. It wasn’t really until the 2.0 release that we began to really have the “New Platform” that we had been promised. Problem though, 2.0 had a TON of bugs and flakey apps. Apple hit us with a couple incremental updates: 2.0.1, then 2.0.2.

Some of the biggest issues with the initial 2.x releases were:
- Horrible battery life.
- Insanely long backup times. (hours)
- Very crashy apps

Flash forward, and we have iPhone Firmware Version 2.1

Version 2.1 finally feels like a finished product. It fixed a lot of the battery life issues, reception issues, and overall crashiness.

Along with iPhone 2.1 came iTunes 8. With these 2 updates combined, we are definitely seeing a product that feels finished. I am in no way saying that as customers, we are getting everything we deserve, but it’s getting closer. We still are missing major features that are available in just about every other phone on the market.

I would love to end this article by saying that Apple is heading in the right direction and steering the ship toward the island of happy customers, but this is very much not the case! Apple has been making moves lately concerning the iPhone that frankly scare the hell out of me. This once dream phone is starting to turn into a locked down nightmare. With Apple seeming to block whatever they want for any reason and letting through apps that have little more value than a gimmick, it leads me to wonder, do they want this phone to be what it could be, what it should be, and what we deserve it to be? Or rather have they been in first place in this market just long enough to lose sight of the real goal?

Being a loyal user, I am hoping much of this is going to blow over fairly soon and they will realize the error of their ways. If they don’t, they are going to have a very serious problem of users switching to other options. More importantly perhaps, if they keep screwing their developers, they aren’t going to have enough content to keep the few users that do stick around.

If the problem does continue, or heaven forbid gets worse, it will make getting the word out that much more important. I hope I won’t have to, but just in case, I am starting a project called Apptimism. This project will be for developers to get the word out about their dealings with Apple. It will also be a place for developers to have a pool of beta testers to choose from. Additionally, it will lend itself to promotion of apps. The main reason for this project is to help the end user, the customer, get what they deserve. This in turn will give everyone a better overall iPhone experience.

Best of luck to everyone and here’s to Apple doing the right thing!

UPDATE 10/1/08: Apple has removed the NDA! Looks like things are starting to turn around.

Today we look at an iPhone app called Dynolicious. A Dyno in my phone? what? how does that work?

The idea of an in car dyno is nothing new, G-Tech is a popular product in this arena, but at $200 – $300 it’s kind of pricey for the average person with curiosity. The iPhone is the same price, but hell you already have that. This is only an additional $13. The iPhone has a great set of accelerometers in it, which is what this app uses to measure HP.

This app measures the following and does it pretty damn accurately I must say:
* 0-60 MPH
* Other Speed Tests (0-10 MPH through 0-100 MPH in 10MPH increments)
* Quarter Mile Elapsed Time
* Quarter Mile Trap Speed
* Elapsed Time and Trap Speed for standard intervals (60′, 330′, 1/8 Mi, 1000′)
* Lateral G’s (current and peak)
* Braking G’s (current and peak)
* Wheel Horsepower
* Estimated Engine Horsepower

Below are some screenshots of the app. For 13 bucks it’s a cool little gadget to mess around with if you are a car enthusiast, or just curious about your cars performance.

Also check out Garage419′s video: Dynolicious vs. G-Tech

click images to enlarge.

Rating:

Well I finally broke down and did it.. My iPhone 3G is hacked, well Jailbroken to be more specific. I couldn’t take the BORING, stock, Apple mandated layout of the iPhone anymore! I had my first generation iPhone jailbroken as well and it was fantastic with all the themes and little interface tweaks, it was almost limitless. I then left the dream world when I got my 3G and I was back to Apple lockdown. The newness of the 3G kept me distracted for a little while, but it finally was time to do something about it. I waited a while to jailbreak the 3G because the 2.0 firmware has been so damn buggy; I wanted to wait until it got a little more stable before I started messing around with it and potentially making it crash more than it already did (if that is even possible). Apple did a good enough job on their own making everything crash. So I guess you could say it was a “it can’t get much worse” kind of situation. Pwnage Tool 2.0.3 was finally released which now supported iPhone firmware 2.0.2, so off I went to build the jailbroken 2.0.2 custom restore firmware IPSW file. I then did one last backup before loading the firmware, just in case. I have to say this was the smoothest jailbreak yet. I installed the hacked firmware, restored my backup, and presto I was back up and running as if nothing had changed! With the exception of course that I now was able to load jailbroken apps on my phone. I immediately installed SSH of course so I could transfer files to and from the phone. Then winterboard for theming. Qik for live video streaming. And a few other tweaks. After this process you have the wonderful screenshot below of what my iPhone looks like now. So much better!! The phone really feels like it is mine now. Oh and one last thing, if you have been thinking about jailbreaking your phone or didn’t even know you could, do it! If you don’t know how, find someone to help you or even email me. It makes iPhone life so much more enjoyable.

Extra: weird side effect, as you may know I have had the LONGEST backup times previously (like hours). After the jailbreak my backups take minutes! Quite possibly completely unrelated, but none the less, I’ll take it!

Jailbreaking = loving your iPhone again.

[I did this whole post using the WordPress iPhone app, it's pretty rad!]

Well, I waited a while to do this post because I really don’t feel you can write a good review after only using something for 3 days. So I have had an iPhone since they were first released June 29th, 2007. The phone was amazing then, and is still amazing now. It did of course have its shortcomings. It had little functionality in the beginning, with no third party apps and a dismal selection of included apps. It had no MMS, no cut and paste, slow EDGE data speeds, and so on. They slowly added to the phone making it better and better. Skip ahead 6 months or so and all of the sudden it is no longer a phone but a “platform.” Things were beginning to get interesting, all of the sudden it wasn’t just a $600 phone, but a $600 pocket computer. It still wasn’t quite there, but we held on and hoped for Apple to do the right thing with our new platform. Right around the 1 year anniversary of the iPhone there was talk of third party applications finally coming to the iPhone, as well as a new model. This model dubbed “iPhone 3G” because of it’s new 3G capabilities, also had one other interesting feature to add to the mix, real GPS. Gone were the days of the somewhat inadequate cell tower based location. At first, to be quite honest, this seemed a little gimmicky, and I really didn’t see any use for it. To go one step further, I wasn’t even going to get an iPhone 3G. This was because the new 2.0 Firmware on the 3G was also available on the first generation phone at no cost, so it was 90% the same phone, so why upgrade? The new phone had a different design, plastic back instead of metal, 3G data speeds and GPS. Is that really enough of an upgrade? At first I was glad I didn’t decide to upgrade after seeing the launch day come and go and see that the lines for the 3G were even more insane that the lines for the first iPhone.

My girlfriend did not have a first generation iPhone, but always wanted one after watching me day after day fondling my iPhone. With the launch of the 3G and the price drop, she decided it was her time to have some iPhone action. We attempted to get her one 4-5 times, every time failing. Finally we woke up really early one saturday to go sit in line. Mind you this was about 3 weeks AFTER the launch, and still with the waiting in lines. Anyway, we waited and got a ticket to get a phone, in fact 2 tickets, because why not, we were both there. I won’t bore you with the waiting in line details, but it went fairly smoothly. After completing her transaction, she was the proud owner of a 16GB White iPhone 3G!!

But wait…I though you got an iPhone 3G also? Well, I did. I really didn’t want to upgrade and spend the money on the 3G, but my girlfriend convinced me. How did she convince me? Well, she bought me an iPhone 3G! I know, she is the BEST G/F ever!! :)

So out we walked from the apple store with 2 new shiny White iPhone 3G’s!

Ok, now for the “1 month of solid use” portion of the review. Beware, it might get grim. :(

I will preface this by saying, that yes I am a hardcore Apple user, and not even that will skew this portion.

After first receiving the 2.0 firmware a couple days earlier than launch, all seemed to be well in the land of iPhone. But that was truly just the beginning. I have had more than my fair share of problems with the new software. Let me start with the syncing. This should be an easy task. Plug phone in, clock sync, unplug phone, done. Well that has not been the case. Throughout my use of the phone, the sync times have gotten progressively longer and longer, with the longest sync time to date being almost 4 hours!! Let me clarify, this is not the sync portion, just the backup portion of the sync that takes place before EVERY sync.

Next we have application crashing. Applications seems to crash A LOT on the phone. This has been alleviated somewhat with the 2 firmware updates that have been released. 2.0.1 and 2.0.2, but it is still pretty relevant. I understand that a lot of this could be due to bad coding practices on behalf of the developers, but since apple keeps talking how they are going to fix this “issue” in future updates, I imagine Apple is somewhat to blame.

To date I have done 5 full restores on the phone, and re-insalled iTunes 6 times attempting to fix issues I have had with the phone. To be honest I think it may have had something to do with the number of apps you have installed. I had as many as 62 third party applications installed on my iPhone, and since deleting a good number of them, the phone does seem to run a little smoother. I have to say though, 2-3 days ago I was so fed up with the phone I wanted to chuck it and get something else, because I had had enough! Alas, I still have my iPhone 3G though. why? Because despite the things that piss me off about it, THERE IS NO PHONE THAT EVEN COMES CLOSE TO THE IPHONE! PERIOD! Don’t even try to throw your crappy Nokia N95, or any of that other nonsense at me, because face it, it’s not as good. If it was, I would be using it! The only phone right now (that isn’t even out yet) that might come close is one of the Android iterations, but I will believe those when I actually see them.

So there you have it, the iPhone 3G has some problems, but it still the best phone on the market. That statement alone should really open up the eyes of other handset makers, because they are doing a piss poor job of competition (if you can even call it that).

So the iPhone 3G came out, the 2.0 firmware was released to all iPhone 1.0 users, we are all happy and content now, right? Well, kind of. The 2.0 firmware is a major step forward for the iPhone platform, this is true, however we aren’t quite to that “perfect device” status yet. The single greatest feature of the new firmware update, at least in my opinion, is the introduction of the app store. Those of you that had a hacked firmware running on your original iPhone know how great apps are on the phone. Those of you who didn’t, well now is your chance to find out what everyone was raving about. I am very happy with the app store, so much so that I don’t miss the Installer.app all that much. Hold that, that isn’t completely true. There is one MAJOR feature I do miss from the Installer.app, the ability to have apps that would customize just about every single little part of the phone you can think of. From Changing the carrier logo, to changing system message display text. This is completely missing in the app store, maybe it’s on the way, maybe it’s not, no one knows. I did jailbreak my 2.0 firmware to see if I could get back some of the customization, but I found little benefit and it actually made the phone even more unstable than it already was, plus it wouldn’t let me update some of my purchased apps. Needless to say, back to factory 2.0 I went. I can understand that Apple wouldn’t want this fine grain tweaking of the OS for security and stability reasons, that I get. However, here is the solution; create a packaging method that enables the OS to handle theme packages. These bundled up theme packages could then be created with a plugin to Xcode or even a simple stand alone theme creator for the non techie, to be sold and installed through the app store. Lets face it, the phone is amazing, but when you’re flipping through pages of icons, nothing says “this is my phone.” Below are 2 screen shots, one from my old hacked 1.1.4 firmware and one from my newly installed from the factory 2.0 firmware. The new one is simply boring. I am hoping that eventually Apple will do the right thing, and let there be some forms of customization, because after all, like all the features the iPhone is missing, other phones have had those features for YEARS!

WHERE THE HELL IS MMS!!!!????

So, as you may or may not know, I have just zero cell phone signal in my house. Since this is my only phone line, this poses a pretty large problem. “You can get a landline phone though” no, no I can’t. I refuse. So what does that leave me with? Well, VOIP of course. My goal would be to have the VOIP work on my iPhone when I am at home, and as soon as I leave it goes back to regular cell usage. With the announcement of official third party apps on the iPhone, I was hopeful we would get a Skype or something similar. I was also afraid that AT&T would further screw their customers by forcing apple to block VOIP apps. Well, it looks like VOIP apps are a go. So far there is one, Truphone. This is a native VOIP app on the iPhone. As of this writing it only makes outgoing calls, so it doesn’t solve my problem 100% but its half way there for sure. Once the Apple backend servers are up that allow apps to “run in the background” I am sure this will change. It also has the nice feature where when you make outgoing calls it uses your cell phone number as the callerID so the person you are calling knows it’s you. There is one downside, you do pay per min on the VOIP calls on top of your normal cell phone minutes. It is pretty cheap, but still. Ideally (if they were smart) AT&T should make an iPhone VOIP app that I could use at home, much like the similar t-mobile service. Unfortunately, AT&T is almost sure to screw up and miss the boat / do everything wrong, so I don’t have high hopes.

Anyway, if you are looking for some hot VOIP action on your iPhone right away, this is your only option. But, it definitely does work. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, the call sound quality is soooo much better than cell.

Price:FREE!
Link: Truphone