More than 4GB on their way

A good mood-setter for the reading is this line from Syracusa’s conclusion:

…the content of the operating system itself clearly marks the start of a new journey. Seemingly emboldened by the success of iOS, Apple has taken a hatchet to decades of conventional wisdom about desktop operating systems.

File system: Bad things, nice improvements and hopes

• What’s wrong with HFS+
• File system changes in Lion
• File system future

Files / documents recovery

• Document revisions
• Mobile Time Machine

System configuration

• System Preferences
• About This Mac (I love the iTunes-esque Storage tab).

User interface

• Here’s to the crazy ones

So after the release of iPhone OS 3.0 I found this guide about enabling tethering in countries where it is disabled by the carrier’s default configuration, and it has worked really well (I have an unlimited data plan, by the way).

With the release of iPhone OS 3.1 yesterday, rumors and early adopters say the firmware update would disable Internet Tethering on iPhones where the carrier doesn’t officially supports it.

I updated to iPhone OS 3.1 with certain precautions, and Internet Tethering is still functional for me.

So if you want to update to 3.1 without loosing the tethering capacity, this is what you should do:

DISCLAIMER FIRST: This worked for me, but I don’t have any way to know if it will work for you. Proceed at your own risk. If you already have enabled Internet Tethering and it is critical for you, I would recommend you to not follow any unsupported method like this.

Before updating to iTunes 9 make sure you have the last version of your carrier’s provisioning bundle:

1. On your iPhone go to Settings / General / About, and look for Carrier version. Take note of the version number. Mine was Telcel 4.4.
2. Download the list of iPhone OS updates from here, and find your carrier’s latest provisioning bundle available.
   My Carrier is Telcel México, so I found their last provisioning bundle is this:
   Telcel_mx 3.0 BuildVersion 4.4 BundleURL http://appldnld.apple.com.edgesuite.net/content.info.apple.com/iPhone/CarrierBundles/061-6937.20090803.3er5t/Telcel_mx.ipcc

   So, I’m up to date.

If you have the latest version of your carrier’s provisioning bundle you’re free to go; if not, you should first update it while you have iTunes 8.2, and possibly re-enable tethering using the aforementioned guide.

To install the iPhone OS 3.1 update:

1. Download and install iTunes 9.
2. Connect your iPhone, so iTunes 9 can search for updates. When iTunes says there’s an update for your iPhone DON’T UPDATE, choose to ONLY download the new firmware, but don’t install it just yet.
3. Sync your iPhone, so it is ready for upgrading (the backup can take several minutes sometimes). Then disconnect it from your computer.
4. Wait for iTunes to finish downloading your firmware update.
5. When the download finishes, enable Airplane Mode on your iPhone (first option of Settings). This will disconnect your iPhone from your cellphone network and WiFi.
6. Reconnect your iPhone and update your firmware (the one iTunes just downloaded). The operating system will be upgraded and your iPhone will restart. Don’t disconnect your iPhone until it shows up in iTunes, and you are sure it has upgraded to 3.1.
7. Disconnect your iPhone from your computer, disable Airplane mode and wait for your iPhone to reconnect to network.
8. Go and check in Settings if you still have Internet Tethering available as an option.

I have done this in two iPhones: First in my wife’s (she doesn’t use tethering, so I taught it was a good idea to test first on her iPhone) and later in mine.

Both iPhones showed the same carrier version after the firmware upgrade, but after a restart mine shows a different one (5.0). Anyway, tethering is still functional.

I suppose Internet Tethering option may disappear one of these days (when Telcel sends a new carrier configuration file to Apple), or they will start charging extra money, but in the mean time it is working well.

Good luck if you decide to upgrade.

DISCLAIMER: This information is provided AS IS, use it under your own risk. I’m not responsible if you broke your iPhone, or if your carrier charges you a lot of money, or if someone sues you.

Microsoft’s new software will eventually be bundled on every new PC sold, outside of Apple’s, so there’s no need to worry about leaking features or showing off the flaws of an unfinished product. Microsoft doesn’t have to sell Windows 7, it only has to worry about market rejection. Due to the volumes of PCs it will eventually be installed on, it’s bound to be successful even if it is a marginal product.

You should read the full note; the approach taken by Apple to 64 bit processing in the upcoming operating system, Snow Leopard, is clearly explained.

Via Windows 7 vs. Mac OS X Snow Leopard: Apple ups the ante (AppleInsider)

It all ends today, as Apple states 2009 will be the last Macworld they will attend, and Steve Jobs won’t address the keynote this time.

The end of an era.

Via Engadget.

The switch from WiFi to cellular network data is automatic, as long as you have WiFi activated. In the default behavior, the iPhone will constantly look for new WiFi networks while the device is not in standby, and will ask if you want to join when it finds one. You can easily turn off this feature to save battery (and to avoid nagging dialogs about unfamiliar WiFi spots).

When you get home (or your office, or any other place with a familiar WiFi network) the iPhone will join the WiFi and turn off the cellular data connection. You will only notice the iPhone is using WiFi and not GPRS/EDGE/3G by the icon next to the carrier name; there’s no notification dialog to confirm. If you daily visit 4, 10 or 20 distinct places and you have joined the WiFi networks of all of them, the iPhone will jump from cellular data to WiFi to cellular data to WiFi again each time you get to a different location (Try this, Windows Mobile!).

You can also turn WiFi off completely to save battery, and turn it on only when you know you are near an accessible WiFi spot; in that case, when you turn on WiFi the iPhone will look for familiar networks and if found, it will connect automatically (and turn off cellular data). Turning on/off WiFi is not so problematic, as the switch control is just 2 taps away from the home screen.

Another concern of Victor are the iPhone capabilities as a music player and voice recorder.

The iPhone is also an iPod, and the best iPod: I could say it is more an iTunes mobile (an extension to your iTunes library that goes with you). It can host your albums, music videos, movies, tv shows and classify everything in playlists, the same way iTunes does it.

There’s a downside for the iPod functions here, and is that you must control the play/pause/previous/next functions from the touchscreen (as any other application on the iPhone). That means when you are walking in the street and want to skip the current track, you must take the iPhone out of your pocket, unlock the screen and tap the “next” icon, then push the standby hard button (to lock the iPhone again) and return the device to your pocket.

However, the volume control of the iPhone is managed by a pair of hard buttons on the left border of the device; you change the volume here for a call, the ringer or the music, earphones or speaker. No unlock needed.

As for the voice recorder: There is no such thing on the iPhone. I remember a 3rd party application released last year for jailbroken/unlocked iPhones, but I don’t think I would try this. Maybe in the meantime somebody will release a voice recorder application developed with the official iPhone SDK. (UPDATE) Actually, there are various voice recorder / voice memo applications in the App Store; some of them are free (Thanks for clarification, Christian).

Hope this helps.

First the bad stuff:

1. The Contacts application is kind of… slow when starting up. Maybe this is because of my 367 contacts.
2. The keyboard is not much reliable at the first impression. You need to use this keyboard some time before you feel comfortable with it and start typing at a decent speed. One good thing is the keyboard learns from what you type, so theoretically after some weeks of use, it will start suggesting me every word as soon as I type the first 2 letters. We’ll see.
3. Really miss Copy & Paste. There’s no copy & paste. I understand it is not an easy thing to do, mainly because of the user interface paradigm (How would you select text with one finger? And how would you send it to the clipboard when selected with one finger too? Now the same, but without breaking the UI?).
4. There’s no week view in the iPhone Calendar. It would be great to have a 5-day week view when in landscape mode.
5. The iPhone can’t show subscribed calendars. This is a big problem; some partners and I share our calendars by publishing them as “.ics” in some web hosting, or by setting the calendars as public in Google Calendar. At home, my wife and I are sharing our personal calendars to know about future compromises with the family more dynamically. By now this is available only at the computer, and not in the handheld device.
6. The birthdays calendar doesn’t show in the iPhone. The fact that it is not synced via Mobile Me is not a bad thing, as the Birthdays calendar on iCal and on the web calendar of Mobile Me is just a view generated “on the fly” with the information taken from the birthday field in Address Book. This it is just a feature that has not been implemented in the Calendar application of the iPhone OS.

The good news is, the good things about the iPhone are by far more important than the mentioned bad things, so I can live with them. The good stuff:

1. It feels solid and trusty. The phone has the right size and the right weight. It feels well in your hand, you never think it will slip. The back is made of plastic, but it is hard and doesn’t scratch. The glass of the front face (and the screen) feels smooth to your fingers.
2. It is glossy. Yeah, the entire device is some kind of fingerprint magnet, but when it’s clean, looks awesome.
3. It just works. The software is very responsive, very fast; whit the exception of the Contacts application (a bit slow on startup, as mentioned earlier) the entire OS reacts at your command. Everything behaves as advertised; every button and link takes you to the expected place. The scrolling, zooming and panning works very natural. The A-GPS is very precise, and Google Maps updates in real time.
4. It feels so familiar. Sometimes I just think the iPhone is an extension of my MacBook. I have my appointments on my calendar, which feels just like iCal, the Address Book makes me think is the same program, NetNewsWire shows the same information in the phone and in the computer, not to mention Safari is a great browser with the only limitation of the screen size; the overall interface is very Leopard. This is what a PDA or a mobile computer must be.

There is one more bad thing: In Mobile Me, you are forced to use the “@me.com” email account; there’s no way to configure your own domain (as in Google Applications for Domains). This is very bad for us who want to keep our email address. This is what keeps the overall experience not to be perfect; a 9 of 10.

This is by far the best phone I’ve ever had, and no doubt is the most powerful mobile computer in the market today.

Today I have a very heterogenous setup:

• iCal, Address Book and Mail (Using IMAP) on OS X Leopard.
• A Treo 750, running Windows Mobile 6 and ActiveSync-ing my mail (sometimes active-stinking, like Phil Schiller just said some minutes ago).
• Zimbra Collaboration Suite account, hosted at 01.com (for the push-email).
• MarkSpace Missing Sync, for:
  1. Transferring my multiple calendars to the Treo, because Zimbra can send only one calendar due to ActiveSync technical restrictions. Most of the time, updating my calendars shoud be done on the Mac, and not on the Treo to avoid uncertain results.
  2. Syncing my address book. Zimbra does not transfer pictures, and sometimes it randomly changes the tag of the phone fields, say “business” to “home”, “other” to “fax”.

  Missing Sync works well, but you should keep an eye on it… it’s not good to leave this guy unattended.

• A Google Apps account hosting my domain, and my mailbox forwarding all email to the Zimbra account. Google has the best antispam filters I have seen.

In the past I have tried Exchange Server (It was a good solution while I was using Microsoft Entourage on the Mac side), Kerio Mail Server, and of course .Mac, and all of them had been far (very very far) from perfect.

Now with the “pre-launch” of Apple’s new Mobile Me I can see some light… I hope all the promised features are true and transparent. It would be perfect if they allowed you to use your own domain name (A-la Google Applications for Domains), but I don’t think it will be possible (just as they did with .Mac).

Of course, I will need an iPhone to evaluate the service, so… Anybody interested on giving a new home to a young Treo?

IBM sold it’s personal computing division to Lenovo back in 2005, and it’s main business today is in the enterprise sector.

The full story is in Roughly Drafted Magazine.

Via AppleInsider.

There are some users (myself included) on the consumer side with necessities from the corporate world: Instant push email and instant calendar and address book sync, who surely would be jumping to the iPhone and leaving Windows Mobile devices and Blackberries back.

The only missing piece for the corporate ecosystem on the Mac side, is truly and reliable iCal and Exchange integration. Some dreamers think Apple could bring Exchange support to iCal, just as they did with iPhone, but I think this is less than improbable because:

1. There’s already an Exchange client on the Mac: Microsoft Entourage.
2. Apple said they licensed ActiveSync technology from Microsoft, and that makes me think they are paying a royalty to Microsoft on each iPhone sold. I don’t think they want to do the same for every Mac.

So we’ll have to stick to our current solutions and wait (Groupcal: Will you work someday on Leopard? Will you do it right?), and who knows, maybe I’m wrong; some days ago nobody thought the iPhone would replicate Windows Mobile devices’ friendship with Exchange.

Maybe it’s about time for my Treo 750 to prepare for an early retirement. Well, of course I have to wait for the iPhone to come to México in a legitimate way… and with 3G… and with bluetooth network sharing… and… bah.