Posted By Lincoln on Monday, July 28, 2008 under General | 5 Comments
28
Jul
A while ago, we wrote about a way to shorten the time that your iPhone running the 2.0 software takes to sync. In this method, you cancelled the part of the sync in which your iPhone was backed up. While this most certainly does improve sync times, you won’t be happy with yourself when you’re forced to restore your iPhone and you don’t have that backup.
However, iPhoneFreak has discovered another way to improve your times. By default, diagnostic data from your iPhone is sent to Apple every time you sync. (This data does not contain any personal information, only crash logs and the like.) Apparently, this takes a good bit of time as well. Follow the steps after the break to disable this.
Posted By Lincoln on Wednesday, July 23, 2008 under General | 2 Comments
23
Jul
One of the nifty features of the 2.0 software is taking screenshots by pressing the Home and Lock buttons at the same time. There are lots of ways to make use of the feature: screenshots for an app review, capturing your home screen to show to your friends, or grabbing a page in Safari to look at later.
However, there’s one quite useful feature of it discovered by James1292 on the Apple Discussions board. It’s a way to crop photos on your iPhone, a feature that has been frequently asked for. It’s simple to do; just zoom in on the portion of the image you want to crop, and take a screenshot. There will then be a new image of the area you selected. Of course, this won’t result in the highest quality image, (quality will decrease as you zoom further) but it’s a start.
When you Google “iPhone apps”, this website comes up as the top hit. When you view, the page, you see an offer that reminds you of MacHeist; a bundle of the “top 10 iPhone apps”, that all go for a price of $24.95, which the website calls “a steal”
However, there are quite a few interesting things about it, if you look deeper. First of all, you are required to jailbreak your iPhone to use these application, and the website does not state this on the home page or state that you cannot install the apps with the consent of Apple. Also, in order to jailbreak the iPhone, the website sells ZiPhone, a freeware jailbreaking app. Also, there are two interesting apps in the bundle; a screenshot app and a VNC app. Taking screenshots is supported in the 2.0 firmware, and there is a free VNC app in the AppStore. Hmmm.
The website also contains a lot of improper grammar, and the link to the “Live Chat” does not work. There have been customers of the website that have lost their money and not received the bundle. I advise you not to buy these applications and to avoid the website.
Posted By PatrickJ on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 under General | No Comments
22
Jul
But under the hood, MobileSafari 2.0’s performance is hugely improved over 1.1.4. Everything related to web surfing feels faster, and in side-by-side comparisons using my wife’s iPhone running 1.1.4, web pages consistently load faster on 2.0, both via Wi-Fi and EDGE. This has nothing to do with the new iPhone 3G hardware — this is about dramatic performance improvements on original iPhones upgraded to the 2.0 OS …
The results are obvious. WebKit JavaScript performance has improved steadily and significantly in just one year, with a huge jump between 1.1.4 and the new 2.0.0.
John Gruber at the excellent Daring Fireball site has done some benchmark testing of the MobileSafari browser on the iPhone, comparing the performance under the latest 2.0 software to previous firmware - and seeing major speed improvements under 2.0.
John’s article also points out that this speed gain is not only felt in the Safari browser on the iPhone, but also in many other apps that make use of their own built-in WebKit browsers - like NetNewsWire, Twitterific, and many others.
My own feeling so far is in line with these tests - browsing and page loading does seem a fair bit faster under the new firmware. What do you all think? How are you finding the browsing experience / performance on 2.0?
Posted By PatrickJ on Monday, July 21, 2008 under General | 2 Comments
21
Jul
Nate True - creator of Tap Tap Revenge and old-school iPhone hacking guru - has posted a set of detailed instructions for tethering with the iPhone 3G - so that you can make use of its 3G speeds as a modem for a laptop or similar.
The process requires a jailbroken iPhone 3G, involves a relatively lengthy set of steps on both the iPhone and a desktop browser, and is not for the faint of heart for sure. It is also absolutely against the terms of your AT&T contract and doing it could leave you exposed to data overage charges!
If you’re cool with all of the above warnings and keen to give tethering a crack, check out Nate’s step-by-step guide HERE …
I’m in the middle of a road trip from Florida to New York and have finally had a chance to put the 3G iPhone’s GPS and Google Maps combination to the test. And I’ve got to say - considering that this was not designed or promoted as a "GPS Navigation Tool" - it’s not terrible at it — if you give it a chance. No, it won’t tell you when to turn, and no, it won’t re-route you when you make a wrong turn - but it does do the majority of what you’d want a GPS Navigation system for, and a few things that a proper GPS system doesn’t.
Posted By Lincoln on Friday, July 18, 2008 under General | 1 Comment
18
Jul
WeatherBug is an application that gives more location-based weather information that the standard weather app found on iPhones and iPod touches. To get weather for your current location, you can either enter your zip code or have WeatherBug use the GPS or Triangulation features to locate you.
Once you have set the location, WeatherBug displays lots of information, including the current temperature, wind >speed, weather alerts, and High and Low temperatures for three days (these can be tapped for even more information). There is also a tab at the bottom of the screen that shows radar for your area, using Google Maps as the background. You can also browse through pictures that were taken in or near your selected area.
There are a few improvements to the app that could be made with future updates, such as displaying information for more days than three. Also, the photo browser could include more photos, as well as ones that were taken closer to your location; some of the ones that I was shown in were in Virginia and Ohio, and I live in West Virginia. However, the app has not crashed once or rebooted my iPhone, so stability gets a good rating. All in all, WeatherBug is a very nice, useful little app.
Caution - Mini-Rant coming. And Advice given/needed.
Now - I know I’m not the only one who’s seen these screens lately. And I’d be willing to bet even more of you have see the screen that tells you that you can’t charge your iPhone 3G …
Now here’s the really crappy part: I’m getting these even with accessories like the USBFever.com iPhone FM Modulator that I’ve been using for a while now with my first gen iPhone. So What the heck are we supposed to do? APPLE? HELLO? I mean I know you had good reason to disable the FireWire charging pin like you did, but this is a bit ridiculous. Many of the non-charging accessories are just as screwed as the charging ones. And given the current state of crap-tastic the 3G iPhone battery is … accessories are about the only thing that keeps my iPhone running.
So far I’ve tried a couple different accessories from Belkin and others only to find that most are dead in the water. And no offense Apple store employees … but I KNOW that most of the accessories don’t work and WHY they don’t work. How is it that YOU don’t? No joke, I called the Flatirons Apple store on Tuesday and spoke to a nice girl there that cheerfully told me that if it didn’t work with the 3G they wouldn’t be selling it. Got to the store only to find out from a Mac Genius that she was wrong and the only way to know (since they aren’t labeled) is to try. 1 hour wasted. Thanks.
So … I figured I just throw this out there …
Anyone know of a good FM Modulator that charges the iPhone 3G and doesn’t sound horrible? Right now I’m living with the warning that the USBFever.com FM Mod doesn’t work (because it does work) but it sounds terrible.
And finally just in case anyone is shopping for 3G power - I’ve found that the Griffin Power Duo sold at the Apple store works like a charm and is especially handy since it lets you charge in the car and provides a plug for you to use at work too. Now I’m never far from power … still stuck in accessory hell though.
Posted By PatrickJ on Thursday, July 17, 2008 under General | 8 Comments
17
Jul
What’s the opposite of rock solid? Paper flimsy or something? Maybe glass-jawed to borrow a boxing sort of phrase? Whatever it is, that term should be applied to the latest 2.0 iPhone software. Fantastic leap forward in its functionality and features, but a big step backwards on the solid, stable perfromance side of things, in my experience (and many others judging by tons of web reports on this).
That’s not a pretty iPhone screen above. Blank and hung up after a random, spontaneous crash of an application back to the obviously buggered home screen. I’ve seen this sort of screen a handful of times over recent days, along with other odd, hung-up screens when the previously rock solid iPhone just can’t seem to cope with life.
Posted By PatrickJ on Thursday, July 17, 2008 under General | No Comments
17
Jul
If you’re still on the lookout for the closest (or any!) place to get yourself and iPhone 3G, there’s now a slick new tool to help you find your nearest location quickly.
The iPhone Finder tool was coded up by Adam DuVander and uses information from Apple’s retail availability site, but lets you search it in faster / easier ways. Use the radio buttons at the top of the page to select a model and color, or just say ‘Just find me an iPhone’ to find any color or model, then enter tour zip code or address detail, and hit ‘Find’.
The Finder will happily bring you back details on the closest store - including the distance it is away from you in miles. It also provides a link to each store’s website. Tonight it shows me that if I needed *any* iPHone 3G model at the moment, I’d be looking at a 158 mile trek for one!
So far, Twinkle is very nice to use, and has some unique, fun features. It is missing some more basic ones that are found, for instance, in the Hahlo web app Twitter client, which it would be nice to see added, but I have to say this is already my favorite iPhone Twitter app. — Patrick’s Twinkle review
"iPhone" is a trademark of Apple, Inc. and Cisco Systems. This website is not affiliated with Apple, Inc. or Cisco Systems.
Copyright 2007 by justanotheriphoneblog.com All rights are reserved and retained regarding the use of text and/or graphic content on this site.
These rights include but are not limited to the use of our Intellectual Property on other web sites, or other forms of distribution, duplication, or publishing by any means.
Republishing full content from feeds is not allowed without explicit permission of the blog owner and post author.
Loading ...
WeatherBug is an application that gives more location-based weather information that the standard weather app found on iPhones and iPod touches. To get weather for your current location, you can either enter your zip code or have WeatherBug use the GPS or Triangulation features to locate you.
