Apple's podcast app ruined my morning!

Today is Friday. That means, I should be able to listen to the new episode of PC Perspective podcast. Hoping to do exactly that, I opened the Podcasts app in my iPhone 5S as I woke up. I usually get ready for work listening to a podcast.

Sure, the episode was there. But as soon as I started playback, the app crashed. I reopened the app several times and with each iteration, it seemed to crash even faster.

Naturally, what you would do in this situation is try rebooting the device. But it didn't fix the issue.

Next option was to sync with iTunes and see. I connected the phone to iTunes and removed all of the podcasts that were there in the phone and synced the ones from the PC to the phone. I thought that a mismatch between the podcasts on the phone and the ones on the PC might have caused these crashes. I also cleaned the podcasts in iTunes before syncing them with the iPhone. No, that didn't fix the problem.

[Rant] Couldn't resist upgrading to iOS 7.1

Only days after I jail-broke my iPhone 5S, Apple came out with the much anticipated iOS 7.1. The update is supposed to solve two big issues - fixing the sudden crashes of the OS and brining some perceptual speed improvements. (I hope they are real speed improvements though.)

Even though I didn't mention this before, I've been having frequent crashes with my iPhone 5S. It would crash about twice a week. Apps also crash - Safari being the most frequent.

The speed improvements are always welcome. All of them cannot be fixed by a jailbreak tweak. With NoSlowAnimations, it would speed up the animation but sometimes take the same time for the app to refresh its view. In other words, there is a lag between the time the animation ends and the UI is usable. Not all the time, but it's pretty frequent.

[Article] Using SwiftKey "app" on the iPhone 5S

Apple doesn't let you replace the default keyboard on iOS devices. That is a big bummer. While the keyboard's auto correction has improved in the last few iterations of the OS, there are still ways to improve the accuracy and typing speed of these virtual keyboards. The issue with stock iOS virtual keyboard is that there is no feedback from the keys. You are just hitting different places of the screen. But I'm sure, with time you can improve on your typing even with the default keyboard - as I have.

When I bought my first touch screen device, the Samsung Omnia i900 running Windows Mobile 6.0, I had trouble typing quickly. Well, I've never been good with the keyboards on my old phones either. Maybe that was because I didn't have a girlfriend to frequently send SMS to. With the Omnia, there was haptic feedback to give you some kind of feedback when typing. But it wasn't good. I felt the keyboard was laggy with it enabled so I always disabled it.

That was when I watched a video on Swype, a new keyboard that worked by swiping on top of the keys, instead of hitting them. You didn't have to swipe perfectly on top of the letters nor had to be very accurate with the order of the letters. It was truly "intelligent". You could insert new words by going them in. Luckily, there was a compatible port for the Omnia. Not an official one though. I installed it and was impressed with it. Very impressed!!!

But I got rid of the Omnia before I came to Japan and switched the iPhone. IPhone 3GS was my first iPhone. Then the iPhone 4S and now the iPhone 5S. So I had been using the stock iPhone keyboard since 2010. But if you could Jailbreak your iPhone, there is a version of Swype (but it's just a mockup and not very functional) on Cydia store.

[Rant] I've had enough with the Apple EarPods

Some time back, my Zagg Smart Buds broke. I didn't buy a new set of ear buds because I was going to get the iPhone 5S a couple of months after, and they should come with Apple's redesigned EarPods which were first announced with the iPhone 5. Until then, I used the old ear buds that came with my iPhone 4S.

When the iPhone 5S came out, I upgraded as early as possible. I've had the iPhone 5S for about 2 months now. That means, I've been using the Apple EarPods for about 2 months. And they suck!

There were two big issues with the old ear buds. They don't stay fit and the audio quality is bad.

The new ones are better in terms of the audio quality (but worse than a proper set of ear buds). However, although they are designed to fit in the ears better than the old one, for me, that hasn’t been the case. They fall so easily when I walk and ride the bike. I cannot turn the head without them coming off. Sucks!

Which means, I need a new set of ear buds!

There are two options for me.

One, get a new pair of Zagg Smart buds. I should wait for the Black Friday deals though. That’s only one more week to go, if I am not mistaken. Zagg is known to come up with nice Black Friday deals. The only issue is that I will still have to pay for shipping. And I would have a hard time claiming warranty in case they broke because I will have to send them back which costs money! Sadness. Too bad they don't sell Zagg products in Japan There was a Japanese store a while back, but not anymore. Amazon is selling a handful of products, but they don't have the SmartBuds.

[Rant] The iPad Mini got better and the regular iPad got lighter

Yesterday Apple unveiled their nee products for the holiday season. The new MacBook  Pros, Mac Pro, iPads and some software that very few people tune into watch at the keynote. I'm not interested in their MacBooks or Mac Pros because none of them matter to me. I'm all into DIY PCs. But I wanted to see what they will bring to the new iPads. 

The big one now has a new name: iPad Air

It must be because it is about 30% lighter than the old iPad with Retina display. We all knew that the new iPad was getting a new chassis. There was so much wasted space in side the old chassis. But other than that, there isn't a huge improvement in features.

It lacks the fingerprint reader that the iPhone 5S has. We expected at least the big guy to come with it. Sadness!

It has the same A7 chip the iPhone 5S has. Not an A7X chip which has pumped up graphics compared to the A7 though. iPad 3 and 4 had A5X and A6X SoCs to give it a speed boost in terms of graphics performance. And the CPU in those models were running at a slightly higher clock speed. But there weren't any talk about the new one having faster clocks than the iPhone 5S though it probably could. Anand will be able to confirm it in his review. 

It has the same 10hr battery life too. No improvement there.

Finally iPad Air comes with Wireless 802.11ac. That's a nice speed bump. If only you had a Wireless 802.11ac supported router that is. But because the CPU is faster, you will feel the speed boost even when browsing the internet.

Basically, the only thing they brought to the table was the weightlessness. (Sure, there is the speed boost too, but that's a given.) You readaholics will find it is less tiresome to keep holding the new tablet for an extended period of time. But it is still quite large which means that you cannot carry it everywhere and pull it out at everyplace.

The price is hasn't changed as well. It's still $499 for the base model with no LTE.

iPad Mini on the other hand has some noticeable changes

It's got Retina! The same resolution as the big guy, which means higher pixel density as well because of the smaller display size. We didn't expect the small guy to have higher pixel density than the big guy. But apple didn't have a choice. If they brought yet another resolution to be supported by apps, it could ruin the app ecosystem as the developers will have to support yet another resoltuion. But they could always do some scaling as they do in the MacBook Pro with Retina displays. I feel bad for the people who bought the old iPad Mini thinking that the new one won't have Retina display as well.

[Rant] Should I get a mobile charger or a second lightning cable for myiPhone 5S?

I'm very happy with the battery life of the iPhone 5S. With regular usage, it can easily last a day with my usage behavior. But that is not to say that there won't be a day I'll manage to drain the battery out. Like day before yesterday, I managed to drop it to 10% before I came back home from work. But yesterday it didn't drop below 50%. That's a new record for me.

I used to charge the old iPhone 4S while I was at work. I had a spare 30 pin USB cable made by a 3rd party that did the job. But the iPhone 5S uses the new lightning cable and Apple doesn't seem to let 3rd parties manufacture them. But if I browse through Amazon, I can see that a lot of people are selling the lightning cable for couple of hundred yen. That's 10 times cheaper than the price Apple is charging for the original cables. Some say they work, some say they don't.

Even if I manage to find a working lightning cable at a low price, it won't be as versatile as a mobile charger. Versatile in the sense, I can use it anywhere. I need to have a PC to charge it. On the plus side, I can get the files out of the phone (for example, the photos) if I have the cable alone. However, I'm sure there are chargers that come with a lightning cable as well, so you get the best of both worlds. But it is definitely not as cheap as getting just the cable.

What do you guys say? Which one should I opt for? Should I get a mobile charger or just the lightning cable. Maybe I should get both?

[Rant] Not impressed about the Ear pods

Remember I told you that I broke my Zagg Smart Buds few months ago. I decided to wait and see how the Ear Pods that come with the iPhone 5S would perform. Now that I have had the phone with me for about a week, I have come to a conclusion that they are even worse that the old Ear Buds.

Well, they are sort of more confortable in the ear that the previous design. But they fall off much easily. Maybe it is because I had gotten used to the old design after using it for couple of months. I could even run wearing them. Of course neither design is well thought after like the Zagg Smart Buds. But I thought they would at least stick in the ear better than the old design.

Now I am wondering if I should buy a new pair of earphones. I am still leaning towards the Smart Buds. Zagg has better quality ear buds called ZR-6, but they don’t carry the around the neck design. Nonsense!!!

Should I give the Ear Pods more time?

[Article] Say hi to the new iPhone 5S

Yesterday (10th of September) Apple had their new high-end iPhone unveiling - the iPhone 5S. We all knew what it would look like - simply like the iPhone 5. But there are a couple of difference that makes it shine apart from the iPhone 5. They also had the iPhone 5C unveiling, but I don't give a damn about that cheap phone.

There are three different colors to choose from - Gold, Silver and Space Grey. Then, there is a dual LED flash, but contrary to what others use dual LEDs for (i.e. increased intensity), these are used to generate different flash colors to match the scene. Maybe intensity is also increased, but they are two different colors. The other notable difference is the  ring surrounding the traditional home button. There is finger print detection technology built into iPhone 5S and that ring is to detect that you've placed the finger on the sensor. The sensor is underneath the home button. 

That's all the external differences but there are a couple of speed enhancements too. The new A7 SOC is much faster than the A6 chip in the iPhone 5S. CPU supports 64bit. Graphics is two times faster. Now there is a co-processor to process all the signals from the sensors. That saves the CPU cycles for much more useful work. I was hoping to see the amount of RAM increased too, but looks like that is not there. It's alright. 1GB is still double the amount of RAM I have in this iPhone 4S. 

So what do I think about it? It's a sweet upgrade. I really wanna see how well the finger print reader works. I hate typing passwords on my phone. And I'm a speedaholic. I would be in heaven with the A7 chip. But usually once I get used to the speed, I feel the need for more speed. That's what happened with the 4S. I am not much of a photographer, but if this gets me one step closer to not needing to carry my rather light point and shoot Canon S95, I'm happy with that.

You can watch yesterday's Apple Event from this link.

Apple Special Event - September 10, 2013

I'm thinking about going for the Silver for myself and Gold for my wife. He upgrade is due in February. Unless there is an offer that we cannot say no to, she'll be upgrading to the iPhone 5S too. 

Now the question is, will I be able to get one for me on launch? My contract is only coming to a conclusion in December I think. We have to keep it for 26 months contrary to the popular period of 24 months. When I upgraded to the iPhone 4S, they simply allowed me to upgrade from 3GS without paying any additional charges. I'm hoping that they do the same this time around as well.

iPhone 5S is coming to Docomo as well, so it increases competition. Docomo is Japan's largest carrier and I am expecting to see a lot of people switching from SoftBank to Docomo using MNP (Mobile Number Portability). SoftBank better come up with some amazing campaigns to keep their subscribers in their pocket. Previously, they wanted to make new customers. Now they have to do a lot more to keep them from switching. Good times for us, I hope.

September 20th is the day that we can all buy the iPhone 5S. Looking forward to that day. Weeee!

[Article] Decided to stick with the iPhone's Earbuds

My 3 year old Zagg SmartBuds broke couple of months ago. I was going to order a new pair of SmartBuds but I wanted to wait and see what Apple would release with the iPhone 5S.

First, the SmartBuds are pretty expensive once you add the cost of shipping. Then, I hear that a lot of people telling that they broke after few days' use. And, then I'm going to get the new iPhone as soon as it is released. 

The iPhone 5 comes with the new ear pods. They are much better than the crappy ones that ships with the iPhone 4S. But they are definitely not the best. But if they do a good enough job, I don't have to spend money on something that I get for free. 

Currently I have two issues with the iPhone 4S' earbuds. First, it doesn't stay fit in the ears. The shape of it is horrible. It would fall off even when you walk. But after using it for two months, now I can keep it in the ears even when running. It is not as easy as the SmartBuds because with those I don't have to worry about them falling off because they will always hang from the neck if they fall from ears. 

The second issue is that they leak sound to pretty badly. Because of that, I have to turn up the volume when there is a lot of noise in the background and then people nearby will also hear what I'm listening to. I have nothing to hide but it's a nuisance to others. 

These are major issues really, but I guess I can live with those hardships another month or so until the new iPhone is released. I can of course buy ear pods for my iPhone 4S, but I'm cheap! XD The ear pods will fit better in the ears and because of that it won't easily fall, plus, less sound will be leaked to the out. Wish they had rubber buds for better grip and sealing. But Apple doesn't seem to like sealed ones telling that it can damage the ear. That only happens if you turned up the volume to the max. But that can happen every now and then without you knowing. Apple doesn't want to be liable to any damages caused by human carelessness. Who does?

Apple finally increases prices in Japan due to crappy exchange rates

The inevitable finally happened. Apple has finally increased the prices of Apple products, no thanks to the 25% drop in value of Japanese Yen. Previously the iPad Mini 16GB was ¥28,800 and the iPad 16GB was ¥42,800. Those are the only prices that I remember because rest of it doesn't matter anyway. 

What do you think the current prices are?    ¥32,800 for the iPad Mini 16GB and ¥49,800 for the iPad 16GB. Great! I didn't want their crap then, definitely not now. I'm sure the prices of MacBooks and iMacs have gone up as well. 

When I browsed from my home PC, the prices showed up in US$ even though I was correctly browsing the Japanese Appel Store. I double checked to see if I was browsing the US store by mistake. I was not. But when I checked it from a PC running the Japanese OS, I got the prices in Japanese Yen. I'm not sure if those prices got updates during that half a day period or if it indeed was because the PC was running a Japanese OS or locale was set to Japanese or the browser was Japanese. Doesn't matter, because I have no interest in Apple products. (Except the iPhone that is)

I only hope for one thing. iPhone prices not to go up. While I don't really like the iPhone that much, I don't have any other option. If Windows Phone was here, I would have bought one. (Not a low-end model though.) Sucks to be in Japan. 

P.S.

If you want to grab an Apple product for cheaper than the prices imposed by Apple Store, hurry up and grab yours from kakaku.com (iPad Mini: ¥29,900, iPad: ¥46,800) before the prices don't go up. There is no time to lose. 

So it is really the fault of SoftBank'a crappy 3G speeds!!!

Today I went to the SoftBank shop in the ground floor of my office building to see if the extremely slow network speeds that I've been experiencing on my iPhone 4S are caused by a problem with then handset or a problem with the 3G connection. What I did was simple. 

1. Compare the performance between 3G on my handset and LTE on the iPhone 5. 

2. Next compare the performance between 3G on my handset and 3G on the iPhone 5. 

I browsed a few websites and tried to stream YouTube videos as the actual tests. I didn't try to measure the performance quantitatively. I cannot do that there. I just got a feeling to how much of a performance difference there was. 

As expected, the iPhone 5 flew with LTE. It was an awesome experience. But with 3G, it was barely faster my iPhone 4S. The difference would account  to the overall improved processing power of the iPhone 5. The 3G performance was still as crappy as on my iPhone 4S. YouTube videos still waited to be buffered all the time. That hardly happened with LTE. But it wasn't completely without any waits. Still it was a 100 times better experience.

So I concluded that the problem is not with my handset (hardware or software), but is with SoftBank's crappy 3G network. I cannot wait for the iPhone 5S or whatever that is coming out next. That is my chance to get LTE. I won't upgrade to the iPhone 5, not when the new version is right around the corner. That would be completely insane. 

But I have one worry. What if the quality of LTE drops with increase in user base? Because we all know that 3G is very fast, it's probably the congestion that is making it no better than dial-up. Let's hope not. I've not looked into the technicalities of LTE so I don't know if that can happen or of it can, how soon. I just hope that won't happen anytime soon, at least not before I leave Japan for good.

iOS 6.1.2 released and can be jailbroken using evasi0n 1.4

Apple released iOS 6.1.1 just a week or do ago to fix 3G connectivity related issues specifically on the iPhone 4S, but it did fix the Exchange bug nor the battery drain issue that iOS 6.1 introduced. Instead, 6.1.1 brought back a serious flaw that was present in the old days that allowed anyone to bypass the password lock screen without entering the password. 

The trick is a bit hard to do, and I haven't tried it. But here's how you do it.

Today Apple released iOS 6.1.2 which fixes all these 3 issues. That's all good and all, but what about the state of jail breaking? Does 6.1.2 patch the vulnerability that allowed evasi0n jailbreak to pwn iOS 6.1?

Not so. The evasi0n jailbreak tool has been already upgraded to version 1.4 which allows you to jailbreak 6.1.2. Head to this link if you already don't know the procedure.

Jailbreak iOS 6.1.2 Untethered On iPhone 5, 4S, iPod touch And All Other Devices Using Evasi0n [Tutorial]

Edit:

Some say the password bypass bug is fixed, some say it is not. I hope it is fixed because I don't want Apple to release updates every week which might eventually block evasi0n tool. :/

Send as SMS if you know iMessage is going to fail.

I love iMessage on the iPhone. I get instant delivery notifications, not as a new SMS alert but right besides the message. I can see if the person I sent the message has started replying to the message. An above all, it is free is you are sending messages to iPhones - since your data bill is - well, generally - fixed.

But there is one problem. If I got a message from a contact that uses an iPhone (i.e. the phone associated with that number is set as an "iPhone" instead of generic "mobile") it would always try to send the message as an iMessage. The recipient might not have data connectivity (there are people who buy iPhones without unlimited fixed data plan to save big bucks on their monthly subscription fee) and iMessage might not actually work. There is a timeout period in iMessage, after which the message will be sent as a regular SMS. The timeout period can be too long.

If you know that the recipient doesn't have Internet connectivity, you can simply send the message as a regular message by tapping and holding the message and selecting "Send as SMS".

It's such a small thing, but I didn't know you could do this until recently. Shame on me. But shame on you if you say that didn't know about this after reading this post. ;)

[Guide] Launching iTunes minimized in Windows

I use the Home Sharing feature of iTunes to watch movies and TV shows I’ve added to the media library. Thus it is important for me to have iTunes running in the background all the time. You can add iTunes to your Windows startup, but it is better to have iTunes start minimized.

So how do you normally add an application to Windows startup and launch it minimized? You create a shortcut to the application you want and set the startup mode (or “Run” mode) to “Minimized”. Then you copy the shortcut to the Startup folder in your user profile and boom.

I have to agree that Microsoft is dumb when it comes to certain things. They have made it so hard to access this Startup folder in Windows 8. With previous OSes, you can simply access it from the Start Menu. But that’s not the case anymore. Your Startup folder is located here:

%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

 

But we all know that iTunes sucks on Windows. It is darn slow and bloated, and in this case, it wouldn’t launch minimized by using the above trick. In fact, it doesn’t launch at all! You cannot even open it by double clicking the icon, until you kill the process from Task Manager.

But there is a trick. Using the following VB Script, you can open iTunes Minimized. Actually, it launches iTunes maximized or to whatever size it opens by default, and then minimize it momentarily. You just copy it to the Startup folder and boom.

MinimiTunes

Yes, it is not an elegant workaround (I mean, it opens and then minimizes, instead of starting minimized). But it works.

Upgraded to iOS 6.1.1 which fixed 3G connectivity issues (and already jail-broken)

We all knew that iOS 6.1.1 was just around the corner as Apple released a beta version to the developers few days ago. Yesterday, all of a sudden, the final version of iOS 6.1.1 came out - just for the iPhone 4S. I didn't expect it to come out this soon but it seems like there was a major problem with the iPhone 4S. Even Vodafone in the UK told people not to upgrade to 6.1.

Looks like the problem was with 3G connectivity. I too had problems where the webpages would take forever to load and calls taking a long time to connect. But I never suspected the problem was with the OS. I blamed SoftBank for their ever-so-worsening quality of connectivity.

OK, so this sounds like a critical update, but what about jailbreaking? Will it break the evasi0n jailbreak? Will I not be able to jailbreak again? Haha! Apparently there was nothing to worry about. Evasi0n jailbreak tool had been upgraded to version 1.3 which can be used with iOS 6.1.1. How awesome is that?

The iOS 6.1 upgrade afterthoughts

So, it's been a week since I upgraded to iOS 6.1 and I have few things to share. Thus this is the part 2 of the article.

 

Apple can come up with 200 new features, but I had trouble finding even 10 things that I might call a new "feature".

 

Maps

The biggest change that came with the upgrade was the new maps app from Apple. But like most people, I don't use it. In fact, I didn't have to use the maps app the whole week. But if I want to use maps in the future, I will use Google Maps. Basically, I wish I could simply get rid of the Apple Maps app and replace it with the Google Maps app. Apple Maps look prettier though.

Apple maps app

 

 

 

Google maps app

 

 

No YouTube?

 

Just like the old maps app, they also removed the old YouTube app. But they didn’t substitute it with a new app of their own. Instead, now you have to download and use Google’s newly designed “full-featured “ YouTube app, which is more functional anyways. So this is really a non-issue.

 

Best Jailbreak Tweaks for iOS 6.1

Now that Cydia has become almost fully functional after the issues it faced thanks to overloaded servers caused by surge of usage after the evasi0n jailbreak was released, I have managed to get my phone back to where it was. (That was along sentence to start with!) I guess you all are waiting for me to keep my promise. I should reveal my list of best jailbreak tweaks.

1. Zephyr (Repo: BigBoss)

This nifty tool adds gesture based multitasking to your iPhone. You hardly need to use the home button on your iPhone anymore. I wrote about Zephyr few months back. The only caveat is that this is not free.

 

Zephyr in action

 

2. Accelerate (Repo: BigBoss)

Bored of how slow and womanly the animations of stock iOS is? Wanna give it some adrenaline boost? This is the tool for the job. Compared to the apps such as fakeclockup, you can enable speed boost part wise. For example, if you don't want to speed up the busy animation (because it looks stupid), you can keep it at its regular speed.

 

Guess I would stick with Apple after all

In the last couple of weeks, we were having trouble with my wife’s iPhone 4S’s earpiece. We did everything we could from out end, but it didn’t heal. It didn’t heal by itself either. So finally we decided to get the Genius Bar involved.

I called the Apple Support center and they came to the conclusion that they may have to replace the handset. There were two options. I could either tell them to pick the phone up free of charge (pretty cool, ha?) or I could head to an Apple Store. If they picked it up, it would take up to a week to get things resolved. I could not take that option. My wife has to go to work. There are a million things that can go wrong in an event of a big incident. So she had to have her phone with her at all times she was out of the house.

So it was decided that we went to an Apple Store. There were two Apple Stores close to our apartment. One in Shibuya and one in Ginza. Both were within an hour of travel time. Shibuya was closer and in addition to that, we were planning to attend the Sri Lankan Festival 2012 which was only a walking distance from the Shibuya station. So without further ado, we decided to pay a visit to the Apple Store in Shibuya.

Jail breaking the iPhone 4S (and others) on firmware ver. 5.1.1 using Absinthe 2.0

Few weeks ago, I saw this cool video.

100 Reasons to JailBreak your iPhone [2012]

After watching the video, I felt I was missing a lot by not JailBreaking my iPhone 4S . Absinthe 2.0 was released few days later, which made JailBreaking 5.1.1 possible. (I never intended to JailBreak iPhone 4S, but I wanted to unlock it. I found out that GeveyUltraS supported 5.1.1, so that was why I had mine updated to 5.1.1. I also have a GeveyUltraS on the way.)

 

New laptop

I moved to a new apartment. It doesn't have Internet so I went to apply for a new connection. You usually get great discounts if you buy a new PC with the new connection. So in my case, I was thinking of replacing my slow UL20A with something that suited 2011.

There were only options really. Either get an Asus UX31 or a MacBook Air 13". Both were available so I tried both of them before deciding which one to go for.

The Asus felt so much snappier and it was much easier to use. I felt right at home with Windows 7. However, the track pad was impossible to use. It was jumpy and this was with the updated driver.

Then I compared it to the track pad of the MacBook Air. It was great but kind of slow. But that could be adjusted. However, when I tried to use the laptop, it was so difficult. I didn't know the keyboard shortcuts. (apparently they are long cuts if you look at the default key combinations.) Anyways, when I tried typing on it, it was so much easier. The mouse pad didn't distract my typing.