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iPhone App Store roundup

John / July 26, 2008 / Hacking / 3 Comments

The iPhone 3G and the Apple App Store has been out for a few weeks now so I figured it would be a good time to talk about what I’ve got on my iPhone and hopefully show you a few things you might want to check out yourself.

First though, an annoyance I have about the App Store and it’s downloads: the icons keep moving around!

I prefer to organize my iPhone’s homescreen(s) around either tasks or app type. So I have a couple of pages reserved for web shortcuts/favorites, one just for social media stuff (Facebook, Twitter, etc) and one for games. Unfortunately, every time you download a new app or upgrade an existing one, it shuffles the deck which I find really annoying. Scrolling through six pages of apps just isn’t the kind of experience we’re used to getting from Apple so I’m hopeful they will tweak this in an upcoming firmware release.

Anyways, on to the apps! There are simply too many to cover them all off so here’s three apps that I actually seem to be using:

Urban Spoon
This is an app based on a restaurant review website. It has a couple of clever features that really benefit from the iPhone. Unfortunately, at least right now, it’s also probably the crashiest app I have and seems to cause a full reboot one out of every three launches. Hopefully this will be addressed soon.

First thing that happens when you launch it, it checks to see where you are using the GPS function or you can simply choose your city from the list. They have a fairly comprehensive list of cities supported. In the case below, I chose Vancouver. It then gives you a more localized list of areas within that city, type of food and cost of food using multiple dollar signs. This is presented just like a slot machine. You can choose to lock in a specific ‘reel’ like I did with Gastown and then if you shake the iPhone (or press the shake button) it will actually choose a random location, food type or cost and then display the resulting restaurant below. The slot machine reel spinning animation is a nice touch.

If you click on that chosen restaurant, it will give you more information about the place including a clickable phone number that will actually dial the restaurant for you, a clickable address that will launch Google Maps and a ‘More Info’ button with reviews for that place from the website.

Exposure
A decent app for directly viewing you and your friend’s Flickr photos. I just have the free one so I get ads and they don’t bother me. It can be a little slow but that could just be the 3G network and not the app.

You can view all your photos, comments and details just like you can on Flickr. Sometimes I want to see things at the source so I use Mobile Flickr as it’s very fast on the iPhone.

You can view images at full screen and it also works nicely in landscape mode too which not all apps do.

There is also a somewhat cool/creepy ‘nearby’ option that will find photos taken near your current location.

Solitaire Top 3
Everybody needs a decent Solitaire game and there are a bunch on the App Store. This one is a game you have to buy (for only $3.99) but is one of the few worth paying for. It’s an updated version to one I used on Installer before and is a very solid version not unlike what ships with Windows – except you can use your fingers to move the cards around.

It features three different games: Klondike, Freecell and Spider. I’m an old school Klondike player so can’t really speak to the other games…I’ll try them at some point but I keep going back to Klondike when I’ve got some time to kill.

Apps I’m waiting for:

a decent Flickr uploader (maybe even one from Flickr themselves!): I really miss SendPics from Erica Sudan. I haven’t come across any app that properly sends iPhone images to Flickr with the EXIF data intact and the image size correct – GPS location data would be great too. Hopefully Erica already has an official version in the App Store approval queue
a video app that lets you record video with the iPhone. A number of these were available on Installer before…where are they now?
PhotoBooth – Apple should port this to the iPhone

There are probably more but I can’t think of any at the moment….post in the comments what you’d like to see on the App Store.

Bonus Video review: Shazam
Shazam is similar to an app that was on Installer before that was kind of cool called Listen but takes it to the next level with the built in iTunes purchase links. Very slick. Here’s Buzz showing how Shazam works:

One last annoyance
I wish the App Store application on the iPhone had a better mechanism for browsing/sorting through the apps. Sure there is a RSS feed of new releases (although not officially from Apple), but I prefer to browse and grab in the same place while on the go. I go through the store at least every other day looking for new apps to check out and it’s a pain to do it on the phone itself since they keep ‘featuring’ the same apps and there isn’t a ‘sort by release date’ option like in iTunes. Again – this is an inconsistent experience from Apple that I’m hopeful they will rectify.

In the paper again

John / July 23, 2008 / Hacking, Media / Comments Off

Buzz was kind enough to include a quote and a link to me regarding the recently released Pwnage software tool for the iPhone.

Here’s what it looked like in today’s edition of 24hrs (PDF link):
and a photo of the real thing:

Here’s a link to Buzz’ blog post about it.

I still think it’s cool to get a mention in ‘the paper’ (especially about hacking the iPhone in mainstream media) and in the great company of Boris, Nick and Rebecca to name a few.

It’s great that Buzz is writing about lots of people and events in the local tech scene.

iPhone 2.0 firmware hacked

John / July 19, 2008 / Hacking / 9 Comments

The iPhone Dev Team just released their Pwnage tool for the 2.0 firmware (Mac only at this point). You may also need some bootloaders to create the customized restore file you’ll need in order to get your 1st gen iPhone onto the new firmware.

The updated 2.0 firmware will give your old iPhone all the features of the 3G model except for the GPS and 3G data speed. The big thing is you get access to the App Store and all it’s application goodness.

The process I went through to upgrade my wife’s iPhone (hence the pink case) from 1.1.3 was this:

do a sync on the iPhone before doing anything which will backup all the settings, contacts, photos, etc.
you’ll need to download the 2.0 restore firmware from Apple. Do this by launching iTunes with the iPhone connected and it should offer a software update for 2.0 – choose download only and it will download the correct version to your /user/library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates folder.
get the bootloaders linked above (3.9 + 4.6)
run the Pwnage tool and select the iPhone (non-3G) option
follow the onscreen instructions…if it doesn’t find the correct *.ipsw file, it should offer to switch to expert mode to allow you to browse for it – the same applies for the bootloaders
let it create the custom restore firmware which it should drop onto your desktop
the Pwnage tool then failed for me – probably because I used Zphone previously to unlock the phone – don’t worry…
close Pwnage and go back to iTunes
with the iPhone connected, command+click the Restore option in iTunes which will allow you to browse to a specific firmware version to restore from – choose the custom one you created with the Pwnage tool
It should take awhile to restore and verify the firmware….you may see a pineapple on the iPhone instead of the Apple logo
it should then upgrade the baseband and bootloader like in the photo
the iPhone will reboot and you should be unlocked with the 2.0 firmware installed including the App Store icon and Cyndia which seems to be an update/alternate to Installer

If you run into any problems, check the comments on the Dev Team’s post.

One last point – I noticed that when I upgraded the iPhone to 2.0 (both the 1st gen and my new 3G), the carrier name is still what it was set to previously via Make it Mine which is cool. It must be stored in the backup file iTunes uses.

One week with the iPhone 3G

John / July 17, 2008 / Hacking, Mobile, Video / 10 Comments

I was going to call this post “It’s been One Week…” but in light of the recent issues Barenaked Ladies frontman, Steven Paige is having, I decided to go for something else instead.

I’m not going to do a ‘full’ review since that’s been done to death already. I thought I’d share some of my thoughts on the differences between the ‘old’ and new iPhone, and some tips and tricks. Excuse the randomness of these observations.

The Screen Bezel
Physically, the two flavors of the iPhone (old and new that is) look very similar…except for the black bezel on the 3G model. It actually bugs me that it’s so wide compared to the 2G model. The original felt like the whole device was your screen. The new one just feels strange to see that wide black bezel. I’m sure I’ll get used to it but it’s just something I’ve noticed.

Battery life
First of all, battery life is quite a bit different than the first generation iPhone. Before, I’d normally get 2-3 days of battery life with wifi on, bluetooth off and Edge enabled. Now, it’s more like 1 to 1.5 days although I’ve charged it everyday. This is with wifi off (who needs wifi when you have 3G data), bluetooth off and ‘location services’ (the GPS function of the new iPhone) turned off – it only turns on when needed, like when you launch Google Maps but more on GPS in a bit. If you’re not using Mobile Me, you should also turn off Push as well as lengthening the amount of time between ‘fetches’ of your email which should improve your battery life a little.

Some of this battery experience can also be contributed to ‘shiny new toy’ syndrome as it gets a lot of show and tell time since it’s so new. We’ll see how this plays out once things die down and normal usage starts happening.

The App Store
As I’ve suggested a number of times before, the App Store has proven to be the killer iPhone app. With over 500 titles available at launch, many of which are free, it’s been an amazing way to extend the usefulness of the iPhone. That’s not to say that all 500 apps are great as there is certainly some crap-ware. There are fortunately more than a few gems in there and I’ll highlight some of my favorites in a future post.

I currently use my US iTunes store account to get access to a bit more content than the Canadian store has to offer. At launch the US store had about 10 more pages of apps on offer. If you have the means, I highly recommend you setup a US account…you just need a gift card from the US to do so and you can put in any US address (choose an address in a state such as Oregon to avoid tax). No credit card needed. I’ve heard that you can’t create a credit card-less Canadian account if you want to buy apps though which is strange.

Keep up on the new releases via RSS – for the US Store at least.

iPhone ‘HotSpot’ access
One of the things that Rogers offered with their ‘value packs’ was unlimited wifi access at all their hotspots. Turns out this seems to work on any iPhone with the Mobile Safari browser (so all iPhones). They only look for the user agent string that Safari serves up. A little birdy told me that if you were to enable the ‘Developer’ menu in any version of Safari (like on your laptop for example via the bottom of the preferences screen), you would be able to choose the iPhone version of Mobile Safari as your user agent. This basically enables free wifi at just about every Canadian Starbucks for starters…haven’t had a chance to test this myself so YMMV and they could pull this at anytime.

Getting the 6gb data plans on 2G iPhones
For various reasons, people haven’t been able to upgrade to the 3G iPhone. Apparently later this month Rogers will have an option for people that aren’t eligible for a hardware upgrade to pay (thru the nose) for an iPhone. In the US, this seems to mean that the $199 8gb iPhone costs $499 and the $299 16gb model goes for $599. Pretty steep penalty for being an existing customer. So if you want to wait until you’re able to upgrade or are still happy with your 2G iPhone, you can simply call up Rogers and ask them to add the $30/6gb data plan to your current phone.

You can’t get Visual Voicemail working on it (at least at the moment on Rogers) but you should be able to get the data plan. The CSR may say that it’s not supported but it should work fine. You just need to put ‘internet.com’ into the APN setting in the Settings/General/Network/Edge screen. Leave the username/password section blank. There is a 3 year contract term if you do this but since this is basically unlimited data for an iPhone (AT&T’s ‘unlimited’ is soft capped at 5gb in the US), it’s a deal. You can cancel early for a $100 penalty. I’d also watch your billing the first few months to make sure they don’t incorrectly bill you for data.

The other nice thing about this particular data plan is that you can throw your sim in another phone and use it…it’s not ‘locked’ for use on an iPhone only. So if Nokia wanted to send me an N96, I’d be happy to play with it using my own sim and data plan.

Need a case?

As usual, one of my favorite shopping destinations is already stocked up with various cases for the 3G model with prices ranging from $8-20 depending on the style you like. Many 2G cases also still work with the 3G due to the very similar size and the give that a silicone case has. I’m also still using my DLO Hipcase with my 3G.

GPS
The GPS function of the iPhone 3G is pretty slick…even if there aren’t any turn by turn driving directions like what you’d find in a TomTom or Garmin GPS system. That’s not to say that it’s not a little buggy. For example, you can geo-tag your photos. When you upload them to Flickr, they automatically get plotted on a map (once you enable the preference in your profile at least). But sometimes the iPhone is a little off in it’s coordinates. Take for example this photo, taken at Spanish Banks, near UBC in Vancouver. Strangely not in Hulunbeier, Nei Mongol as Flickr shows. I’ve read a few things about a bug in the GPS software that Apple will fix in the next firmware update which is due out soon.

2.0 Firmware unlock status
Keep an eye on this site for updates on the jailbreak/unlock status to enable 2G iPhones access to the 2.0 firmware (including App Store) and eventually the ability to jailbreak/unlock the 3G iPhone. I still want to be able to use my iPhone while travelling in the US (using my AT&T Pay as you Go sim card). Somehow I don’t think Apple will allow apps like Customize onto the App Store (hope I’m wrong) so a jailbroken 3G phone will be a nice way to add this.

Money tight?
Don’t want to spend the bucks on an iPhone and a contract? Get a cheap iPod Touch and pretend as Buzz suggested. I want to make an ‘iPhone simulator’ for the Touch as a gag app so you can mess with your friends.

That’s all for now…more later.

Update: Added the App Store RSS feed link

Update 2: The 2.0 Pwnage tool has been released. I just successfully upgraded/jailbroke/unlocked my (now my wife’s) 1st gen iPhone. You need to download the restore/update file from Apple to use this tool. You should get a download only/download+install option – choose download only. You may also need a few bootloaders. More info on my new post about the 2.0 firmware.

My AppleTV just got a lot more useful

John / May 28, 2008 / Hacking, Video / Comments Off

I’ve had my AppleTV for awhile now and it’s great at doing a few things: playing back anything I have in my iTunes libraries on any Mac in my house (I have 4), renting and downloading movies from iTunes, viewing photos off Flickr and playing Youtube videos.

The only thing really missing from it, that I’m able to do with my Xbox 360 is play back divx video, ideally over my network as I have a large media server – I could even do this on my original Xbox using the Xbox Media Center. So close yet so far….until now.

There has been a number of ways to hack the AppleTV to make it more useful. Some are free and others cost money.

One friend tried the free way….but there is a lot of reading and gathering of files to do it. He was never able to get it working properly so he gave up and just restored the Apple TV to it’s factory state and went on his divx-less way.

Then one company got a lot of press because they were selling a usb thumb drive with all the files needed to just plug-in and go. While reading up on this company, I was directed to a site that had a members only forum ($15/year) where all the same software could be found as well as installation guides. Both of these for-pay options have been criticized for charging for work created by others and offered freely. I’ll let you decide what’s right or wrong in this case, after all you are hacking something. It was just easier for me to get a packaged download that was tested than to wade through endless forum/wiki posts trying to track down all that was needed.

Watching this video is what finally sold me (it’s long):

Needless to say if you watched the whole video, I am now able to easily watch nearly any format of video on my AppleTV while still being able to revert it back to factory should I need to. I’m able to stream anything over my local network and so far the playback has been pretty much flawless. I have run into a couple of bad videos but they are flaky on other machines as well so I’m not too concerned about it. The software is a little on the beta side but there are updates available from within the tools installed which will hopefully stabilize things even more.

There are a number of other plugins available for installation on the AppleTV once this hack is up and running and I’m just starting to explore them – like the Couch Surfer web browser (webkit) shown above. You have full ftp/ssh access to the AppleTV. It reminds me of the early days of hacking the iPhone and is just as fun.

I can’t help but think how many more AppleTV’s would be sold if Apple at least offered divx playback natively on it. After all, Microsoft and Sony both allow it on their game consoles (for free), but of course this would crash head-on into their digital media strategy with the iTunes store.

Some new iPhone apps to check out

John / May 1, 2008 / Hacking, Mobile / 4 Comments

Even though the iPhone SDK has been out for awhile now, there are still lots of people cranking out some cool apps for jailbroken iPhones. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in June when things get a lot more official from Apple with the availability of the SDK-developed apps. But until then, here are a couple of ones that I’ve been playing around with lately.

While you could FTP these into your iPhone, the easiest way to get these apps is via the Installer app. If you have a jailbroken iPhone, you probably already have it.

Customize 2.0
Very recently updated and released, Customize is one of my favorite apps. It lets you, um, customize a lot of aspects of the iPhone. Everything from the color of the buttons to the text of “slide to unlock” can be changed via this app. I did have a problem getting it running on my 1.1.3 version iPhone (it would crash on loading) but there is a patch on Installer (under Tweaks for 1.1.3) called SUID Lib Fix that made it work. There is now a theme preview option built in to Customize that lets you view screenshots and individual images for the various themes and filesets before you install them. There are over 800 themes to browse and tons of individual images, sounds and sets to tweak your iPhone with.

Snapture
There has been a couple of different apps that extend the iPhone’s camera but Snapture is my favorite (and it’s freeware). Packed with features, some highlights include a digital zoom slider, color or B&W photos, up to 3 pictures can be taken in a row in multishot mode – perfect for those self portraits where you can’t see the screen and one of my favorite features is that the whole screen becomes a shutter button instead of having to try to hold the iPhone in one hand while you’ve got a finger on the Home button – an accident waiting to happen.

It’s a little buggy but a new version just came out today so it continues to get better.

Twinkle

A location aware Twitter client. It features a slick presentation not unlike the web version of PocketTweats but also locates you and enables you to see who else is using Twinkle near you. Kind cool and kinda creepy….but could be useful to use at a conference like SXSW. You can also add a photo (which doesn’t show in the actual Twitter timeline – just to other users of Twinkle).

It’s also a pretty nice Twitter client but is still subject to the API issues that Twitter is prone to have.

Kinda sorta maybe barely almost internet famous

John / April 22, 2008 / Hacking, Technology / 5 Comments

Okay, not really at all but I couldn’t think of a better title.

While I was lounging on the beach in Hawaii recently, two separate articles in which I was interviewed for appeared online (and possibly in dead tree form too – I actually don’t know).

The first one was for the UBC Thunderbird Newspaper and was about the environmental impacts of all the technology being consumed by folks like yours truly. I guess I come across as a big Apple fanboy (big surprise) that recycles my gadgets but I’m not 42 (37 as of this moment) and I don’t claim to be the first in Canada with an iPhone – just one of the first to bring one into Canada (within days of it’s release in the US) as well as one of the first to unlock it to use as a phone in Canada on Rogers. UPDATE: Allison updated the article.

The second one was about waiting for the iPhone in Canada and hacking it written by fellow geek and iPhone hacker, Warren Frey that appeared in Mac|Life.

I’ll leave it to you decide how I come across in these kinds of things but they are fun to do and I’m honored people are interested in my thoughts on stuff.

iPhone firmware 1.1.4 is out and already broken

John / February 26, 2008 / Hacking, Mobile / 4 Comments

Today Apple released the latest firmware for the iPhone taking it up to 1.1.4. Unfortunately, as usual, their details on what was updated is beyond sparse with ‘bug fixes’ being the only description at this time. Hopefully this also means the SDK is imminent.

It didn’t take long before people upgraded and tried the ZiPhone app (for PC or Mac) and it *appears* to work….it’s too early to say if anything is broken so give it a couple of days before you go and upgrade. Keep an eye on Zibri’s site for updates straight from the source.

Oh and yeah, I like my new wallpaper too. Punch it, Chewie!

Success at 1.1.3

John / February 16, 2008 / Hacking, Mobile / 2 Comments

Just upgraded successfully from 1.1.1 to 1.1.3 using this tutorial.

Modified steps I used:

sync to backup your stuff
download and restore to 1.1.3 using the Option Restore method in the tutorial
after about 10 minutes or so, you are at iTunes saying your SIM isn’t valid. Tutorial says to start the command line steps, I skipped them and just used the GUI version (see #2 post in the tutorial)
check all options (jailbreak, activate and unlock) in the GUI app and wait 2.5 minutes for it to complete
you should have a working iPhone but possibly no cell service – just reboot the iPhone and it should ‘just work’

Note this will UNLOCK any phone. If you walk into an Apple Store today, the method above will unlock it so you can use it on any network without having to buy some kind of SIM hack (ala Turbo/StealthSIM).

Small warning: We tried this method on a Vista machine (obviously using the PC version of the software) and the unlock portion didn’t work but it did activate and jailbreak the phone at 1.1.3. Tried the same iPhone on a Mac with the GUI tool and it worked so if you can, use a Mac (or possibly XP). It could have just been my friend’s Vista install causing the problems so YMMV.

Update: If you already have an older firmware installed (and activated), you can simply upgrade to 1.1.3 via iTunes then run the ZiPhone app. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

Software unlock your 1.1.3 firmware version iPhone

John / February 10, 2008 / Hacking, Mobile / Comments Off

It’s not for the faint of heart, but there is now a method to take a new, 1.1.3 out of the box iPhone (including the new 16gb models) and unlock it via software.

Technically you have to jailbreak, downgrade, unlock, upgrade, and jailbreak but it appears to now be possible. The credit goes to George Hotz, who was originally responsible for figuring out the original hardware unlock last summer.

Be careful out there as there is currently no ‘easy’ tutorial (yet) and the usual caveats apply.

Via MacWorld and TUAW and just about every other iPhone related site on the internet.

UPDATE: Well, that didn’t take long.

UPDATE 2: Looks like ZiPhone is sweeping the internets. PC or Mac tutorials for you! Also check out iphone.unlock.no for a different GUI version. I don’t even care anymore who the original content is on this stuff….so many leech blogs hoover up my posts as well as the tutorials I can’t keep track.