Tag Archives: Apple

iPhone 4 won’t update to iOS 5.1

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UPDATE: It’s been fixed! Thanks to my friendly and always helpful Twitter friends @jdyates, @mrfrank505, @ropiko, @richmackey, @josephjaramillo, @Apple9511and @shuether for their suggestions.

Turns out the fix was as easy as using a different computer. Turns out (and I only sort of know what I’m talking about here) the issue came from when I used an iOS jailbreak tool to unlock an iPhone for my trip to Europe and Saudi Arabia. It redirected the activation from Apple to Cydia which is why I got the error message below.

There are two fixes, either edit the host file through Terminal or just do the update on a different computer. Since the command I had to fix through terminal didn’t work, I tried the update on my MacBook Pro and it worked like a charm!

iPhone 4 will not update to iOS 5.1

So I have this iPhone 4 which is in absolute perfect physical shape, only has three months of use yet after around iOS 5 Beta 3, the phone stopped working correctly, the digitizer stopped working reliably. That is, sometimes after unlocking the phone, you could not swipe to unlock, the screen was remapped and a swipe to the bottom didn’t do anything, sliding across other parts of the screen would move the unlock button to a degree but never enough to unlock.

I had to keep this phone unlocked 24/7 or risk having a phone that was unusable. I eventually was forced to buy the iPhone 4S. Since I was running a beta version of iOS and couldn’t undo that after Beta 4, Apple would not honor the warranty.

Do you have any suggestions? DFU restore and regular iTunes restores do not work. I’ve tried numerous times to upgrade this phone to the latest version of iOS 5 and 5.1 with no luck. I have even wiped it from its built in restore feature but that hasn’t worked.

Hopefully someone reading this will have an idea as I am all out of them!

Kanto Yaro speaker review

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So you took advantage of Black Friday and picked up a sweet 50 inch HDTV, a Angry Birds-toting Roku 2 XS and a great Xbox bundle. But what good are all these new toys if the audio coming out of them is flat, boring and anemic?

In November, I received an email from the people at Kanto Speakers asking me if I would be interested in reviewing their new speaker system. It’s called the Kanto Yaro, a two-channel audio system, made especially for owners of streaming setup boxes like the Apple TV, utilizing audio technology by the venerable Bang & Olufsen (the makers of beautiful speaker systems I could never dream of affording). I of course said “YES!”

Kanto Yaro digital stereo system
Kanto Yaro digital stereo system

The Yaro is a breeze to setup, dramatically improves on the stock audio from your television and does it with panache. But does its performance match the $330 price tag?

Continue reading →

Facebook for iPad is Finally Here

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Hats off to my friend Jimmy [Twitter | Tumblr] for catching the article from the New York Times, At Long Last, Facebook Releases an iPad App, announcing the release of Facebook’s native application for the iPad.

Why it took so long to get Facebook to release an iPad app is up for debate. Some say it was Apple wanting content agreements with Facebook (remember iTunes Ping?), some say it was Zuckerberg contending that the Facebook website was already iPad friendly and then there was the leak that turned your regular iPhone Facebook app into the iPad app, which Facebook patched up lickidy split.

There was even a Facebook programmer, Jeff Verkoeyen, the lead developer for the Facebook iPad app, that ended up quitting the company due to frustration over the delays. He is now at Google. Their first iPhone developer went through the same thing a few years ago and quit. Continue reading →

Steve Jobs, Innovator 1955-2011

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After years of battling cancer and recovering from a liver transplant, Steve Jobs, the innovator of my time, has passed away. The news hit me like a freight train in the form of a tweet from @BreakingNews.

Breaking News Tweet, Steve Jobs has diedAt first I was certain it was another cruel joke. Just last month CBS mistakenly reported Steve’s death and rumors of this kind have been going around for years. He actually made fun of it at his 2008 WWDC keynote address saying, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” A nod to literary genius, Mark Twain.

It wasn’t until I read the report on Apple‘s own website that it really sank in. Steve is gone.

Steve Jobs Obituary - Apple

I know there are many people who follow me on Twitter or are friends with me on Facebook, and even those that just stumbled upon this post, that might be reading this and thinking, “He was just a dude” or “He wasn’t an innovator, he was a borrower” etc.

All I can say to you guys is that this post probably isn’t for you. Continue reading →

Why I won’t be using iTunes Match

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When Steve Jobs hit the stage to announce all the goodness Apple was rolling out with their new iOS 5, the feature that had me most excited was iTunes Match. This service would cost you $25 each year but provide you with one of the coolest things to hit the music industry since Napster. Only this time it’s sort of on their terms.

iTunes Match

Here’s how it works. iTunes goes through all of your music and matches it with the iTunes Music Store library. All that music you bought on CD back in 1998, Shania Twain, Paula Cole, Savage Garden (you know who you are), and ripped at 128kbps for your computer are now available for you to download from iTunes. Only now you’ll be able to replace that sad 128kbps MP3 with a 256kbps AAC audio file, far superior if you ask me.

This even works with all that ill-gotten music you might have on your computer… As long as iTunes can find its match, you are good to go! Sounds great doesn’t it? A $25 get out of jail card that also improves quality of music in your library. Worth every penny if you ask me.

So why won’t I be using it?  Continue reading →