Author: jjmarcus

Apple Specialist, Mac Whisperer, Cloud Wrangler - Your Remote CTO

Confirmed: Only install apps via iTunes

The guys on MacBreak Weekly back up what I've experienced: Installing apps via App Store on the iPhone just spells trouble. Do it only through iTunes.

UPDATE: This … umm … feels less true, and since iTunes 8, the process of downloading and updating apps is a lot better. But I’ve got a lot of hope placed in iPhone software 2.1, coming out tomorrow, as my 3rd-party apps just started crashing again, after a full 2 weeks of stability.

Keep your surfing secure

This is a tiny but important tip: When you go to Gmail or Yahoo! Mail or any other personal web-based service, you can make your connection less hackable by changing the “http://” to “https://“. The “s” stands for “secure,” and it means that traffic — the 0s and 1s — between your browser and the online service will be encrypted.

“Using an https: URL indicates that HTTP is to be used, but with a different default TCP port (443) and an additional encryption/authentication layer between the HTTP and TCP. This system was designed by Netscape Communications Corporation to provide authenticationand encrypted communication and is widely used on theWorld Wide Web for security-sensitive communication such as payment transactions and corporate logons.”
Getting in this habit is especially important for laptop and mobile users. It’s easy to store the https:// in your bookmark. When you use a secure link, you’ll see a little lock icon in one corner of your browser window.

I BLOODY HATE SYNCING

Jerked with Google Apps & Calendar today for an hour. Several
roadblocks, making it basically unusable as a collaborative tool. And
today, Google Calendar just got CalDAV. And it shows up in iCal!
And … it doesn't sync from iCal to the iPhone, over MobileMe or
otherwise.

Sonuvafrackin'bloodylichenlickin'skeetersuckin'sackin'frassin'mulletmuncher
!

I don't want 3rd-party, $$$-eating shareware conduits. I don't want
miscegenatin' web services. I just want to have one calendar that me
and a partner can edit and share.

I'm so sick of this, I can't see straight. (SSX Blur snowboarding on
the Wii might have something to do with that.)

ARRRRRRRRRRRRGH!!!!

New product announcement

Apple announced today that it has developed a breast implant that can store and play music. The iTit will cost between $499 to $699,  depending on cup and speaker size. This has been hailed as a major social breakthrough, as women are always complaining about men staring at their breasts and not listening to them.

Original iPhone successfully transformed into iPod touch

I didn't have to jailbreak it, or wipe it, or anything. I just popped out the SIM card (using the ultra-modern, paper clip-emulating Jonathan Ive-designed "extraction tool" supplied with my iPhone 3G), and I've got an iPod touch to give my daughter (and a home remote, and perhaps necessary as a spare lest my 3G suffer a mishap). Freakin' awesome!

iPhone Friday: Epic clusterf**k + happy ending

This from the NY Times:
This from “Sluggo”:
AT&T sucks… so does Apple for forcing them on us, very un-Apple-like behavior if you ask me.

Yeah, they do suck. I’m nonplussed at how badly today has gone. I mean, I’m comfortable and happy sitting at a restaurant with wifi, but that’s blissful ignorance, ‘cos I can’t receive any phone calls and don’t know who might be trying to get ahold of me. The grilled salmon at Luca is helping, too.

I don’t guess Apple had much choice but AT&T. Anyone who pays attention to the mobile communications market, and I mean worldwide, knows that a manufacturer has to choose a partner provider, or they can’t get a deal anywhere. It’s like the guy with the greased hair at the high school dance trying to put his hand on every sophomore girl’s ass, and pretty quick he’s got no one to dance with.
It’s also important to remember that, according to reports, Apple did offer the iPhone deal to Verizon, who said that Apple drove too hard a bargain. I know, you’re shocked. So, I’m gonna posit that Verizon is the second best provider in the States to AT&T. Better coverage, slightly more fascistic, about the same level of customer service. Sprint sucks rhino, and T-Mobile rates high in customer support, and terrible in connectivity.
So maybe if you can’t get Verizon, you go with AT&T. It’s possible, too, that the Verizon deal was itself a myth: AT&T is the only GSM provider worth its weight, and GSM is quickly becoming the world standard. Apple doesn’t want to make two iPhone models, one for GSM and one for CDMA, a whole different chipset.
Whether you’re a consumer or a manufacturer, whichever provider you marry, bring a jar of Vaseline to the nuptial consummation.
Perhaps Apple couldn’t have avoided this fiasco. What carrier on earth is used to thousands of devotées showing up, some a week early, to buy a bloody mobile phone on day of launch? We hoped Apple would have been able put up the infrastructure to handle the traffic. It was iTunes that was reporting the failure, but who knows whose servers were at fault?
Ah well. 6 hours after I got started, I have an new, activated iPhone 3G. 
I was without a connection for maybe 2 hours. 
My voicemail has been deleted, but I did take screenshots just in case. 
My original iPhone remains a wireless iPod, which is awesome. 
I’ve got GPS, good fast internet, and a bunch of cool apps. 
There are also more cool apps that cost more than I feel like paying. 
I don’t have copy & paste. 
I don’t need MMS. 
I haven’t tried the 3rd-party video recorder. 
I’m still with godawful AT&T, but I have an unlimited-minutes plan at a reasonable price (not more than I was paying before).
Today was a good day.

It’s twoo! It’s twoo!

Originally posted last Thursday night, but it didn’t go through:

I just put iPhone software 2.0 on my gen 1 phone. I got a bunch of free apps on, and Cro-Mag Rally. So far so good. The Mail app is  
improved nut I don’t see much else yet. And I have to reset sync history I think before contacts & calendar are going to work right. But in the meantime… Whoop!