5 posts tagged “arstechnica.com”

A few tricks, apps for disabling lengthy iPhone backups

By David Chartier | Published: July 30, 2008 - 01:24PM CT

With great iPhone OS 2.0 power comes great responsibility—in the form of an excruciatingly long backup process that precedes every sync operation. From complaints across blogs, our forums, and Twitter, these backups can last anywhere from 5 to 45 minutes or, in the case of one Apple support discussion, a whopping 15 hours. Thankfully there are a few simple workarounds, but as usual, they have a catch.

The first trick to getting around an epic iPhone backup is simply to hit the (X) button in iTunes' status window during the backup process. This will stop the backup and begin the familiar sync process, but clicker be warned: doing this will leave you with a corrupt backup since iTunes apparently trashes each backup on the fly when beginning a new one. Smart move, Apple. We guess we should be thankful that Time Machine doesn't exhibit the same behavior.

Still, if you're on a crunch for time or simply don't care about having a clean backup to restore from, this simple trick is an easy way to go.

The second method to prevent iPhone backups is simply to remove that step of the process from iTunes' to-do list. This can be done with a Terminal command, as Gizmodo details, or with a simple donationware utility like Backup Disabler. This way, you can perform a backup when you know you have time, then use one of these methods to manually disable the operation until you've finished whooping some Bomberman, Enigmo, or de Blob arse to the point where saving your progress becomes a prudent idea.

Naturally, we join the rest of y'all in hoping that Apple will both improve the iPhone backup process and give us a little more control over how often they're performed. Having a backup of a device like the iPhone is a no-brainer, but like other arguably more significant iPhone OS 2.0 problems, Apple really needs to slap some polish on here.

credit - arstechnica.com

Updating iPhone to 5A347 reduces yellow tinge

By Clint Ecker | Published: July 13, 2008 - 02:20PM CT

Many of our readers have noted that their new iPhone 3Gs purchased this past Friday had screens that were exhibiting a much yellower hue than their original iPhones, even when updated to the latest firmware using iTunes. Some individuals have even gone so far as to use a professional chroma meter to measure the temperature of each screen (no mention of firmware version).

Jason Snell of Macworld wrote an article on the new warmer screens and managed got the following comment from Apple PR:

“We moved the white point in order to make [the display feel] more natural,” Borchers said, suggesting that consumers are more likely to appreciate warmer images, especially when viewing photos.

Ars Technica forum readers have discovered that the reason is because the iPhones purchased in-store shipped with a slightly older firmware revision—2.0 5A345.  Updating your older phone via the built-in mechanism in iTunes will have picked up the newer revision, which resets the screen's color calibration to be a little less yellow and more like the original iPhone. Furthermore, store-purchased iPhones can be set to the 5A347 firmware by attaching the device to your main computer, allowing a backup to be performed, and then clicking the "Restore" button.

This process will take you at least 30 minutes depending on how much content you have on your iPhone, but if that yellow tinge is bothering you, it might be worth it.

Apple's previous comments on this issue makes the situation even more confusing. Did they make the screen too yellow in 5A345 and decide to tone it down in 5A347?

Two iPhone 3Gs running 2.0 firmwares 5A347 (left), and 5A345 (right)

We have confirmed that updating the firmware from 345 to 347 changes the color calibration to be less yellow. We did this by taking an iPhone purchased at an AT&T store on Friday (5A345), restored and updated its firmware, and compared it to other iPhone 3G models running the 5A345 firmware and 5A347. 

We synchronized the screen brightness levels and auto brightness features and confirmed that all iPhone hardware running the 5A347 firmware exhibited a less-yellow calibration than their 5A345 brethren.  The resulting color temperature change can be seen in the above photograph.

Update: 2.0 firmware is prefixed with 5A, not 3A.

Keep an eye on your iPhone's location using Twitter

By Justin Berka | Published: February 22, 2008 - 08:39AM CT

You can get locater service LoJack for a number of different products, including cars and laptops, but there's no such service for iPhones. We've already heard a number of reports of stolen iPhones, though, so there's certainly a need for some type of iPhone tracking technology. In response to requests for such an application, TUAW's Erica Sadun has put together findme, an application (and system) for keeping track of the location of your iPhone.

Erica's findme command-line tool returns the identifier, longitude, and latitude of the cell phone tower closest to your iPhone, but the locater system relies on an unusual component to keep you notified: Twitter. By creating a Twitter account and then making the updates protected, only people you allow can see the information that findme sends to Twitter. You can even use the system to let friends or family keep track of your travels, by changing your Twitter preferences to give them access.

You'll need to install the findme application on your iPhone, so you'll need to have a jailbroken device. You'll also need the curl utility. After that, Erica has provided a handy shell script that you can use to send a tweet via curl. All that's left then is to create a daemon to run the script every so often, and reboot your iPhone. Sure, it may not stop savvy thieves from pilfering your advice, but it is a pretty cool script to have around anyway, so give findme a look.

Yes thats right, we have an unlocked iPhone. The hardware is only used to unlock the iPhone, and can be removed after it's unlocked. Thanks to gray, iProof, geohot, dinopio, lazyc0der, and an anonymous contributor for making this possible. Thanks also to everyone who donated and stuck with us in #iphone.unlock. Our group has agreed to release the method in one week. The current method involves taking apart your phone and doing some complicated soldering, with a high probablity of a bricked phone. Although after the phone is unlocked all the hardware can be removed. We hope to find a software unlock very soon. So in one week exactly from this blog post(thats less than the time it takes to ship a turbosim) we will release simple step by step instructions for unlocking, probably not even involving hardware. Sorry about the wait, but I assure you it will be worth it.

I found this at
http://iphonejtag.blogspot.com/2007/08/full-hardware-unlock-of-iphone-done.html

By Justin Berka | Published: August 21, 2007 - 07:36AM CT