I am a first time user of the 'i' family {ipod, iphone, itunes}. I own an iphone. Before iphone, I used other phones like Sony Erricson W800 and Nokia N80. One of the most common requirement is to store music on the phone. In those phones, it used to be straight forward. You just create folders/sub-folders and dump the music files there. The phone also carries the same concept of folder that we have on the PC. Once I add music to phone I can delete from my PC. I can delete music from my mobile whenever I wanted to do it.
When I came to iphone+itunes, its a new world for me. First of all there is no concept of folder in iphone and for that matter an ipod also. Apple might have thought that all its users are dumb asses who do not understand the concept of a folder. Next thing is the synching part. First you have to add it into itunes, organize in it and then sync it to the iphone/ipod. If there are music files in iphone and they are not present in itunes list, they will get deleted from iphone on sync. All the music files should have proper ID3 tags to be arranged according to albums. I can keep talking about many such nuances. In short, I hate itunes.
While I was looking for alternatives, I came across Sharepod. It is an alternative to the iTunes to load music files into iphone/ipod. Yes, you can put music into iphone also. Though it does not solve all the problems that I was talking about, it alleviates some of the problems. It has some nice features like dragging files from explorer and put in iphone, add and remove music from iphone etc.
But do not jump out of your chair yet. It has some problems too. First of all it does not have all the functionality of itunes. Say for e.g. podcast synching. So, if you are the type of person who want both music and podcasts, I guess sharepod is not for you. The problem is that if you add music with sharepod and try to synch podcasts with itunes, itunes will delete the files added from sharepod because the music is not in itunes list. I am a victim to this problem myself. I do not know a solution to this. Any help is appreciated.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Step-by-step guide to iphone 3G unlocking (link)
iphonehacks is running a nice tutorial on step-by-step guide to unlock 3G iphones. I find it very neat and elaborate. It explains the known conditions under which the unlock does not work. It also has the precautions to be taken before unlocking.
One more nice tutorial from iclarified.
[Off Topic]
There are some requests for link to unlocking 2G phones having 2.2 firmware. Here it is.
One more nice tutorial from iclarified.
[Off Topic]
There are some requests for link to unlocking 2G phones having 2.2 firmware. Here it is.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Installing Windows XP on Acer Aspire 4530
We recently bought a Acer aspire 4530 without any pre-installed OS. On top of linux, we decided to go for Windows XP as it is fairly stable and less resource hungry compared to Vista. When we tried to install Windows XP, we consistently encountered a failure with the fatal blue screen. Before the blue screen, the installation complains that it couldnt find disk drives. After googling around a bit, I realized that this is a standard problem. The main reason is that the Windows XP installation CD does not have native support for SATA hard disks with AHCI interface. So, the same problem can happen on any machine which has SATA hard disk. The following is the solution for the above problem...
There are two options.
1. Simplest method: Changing the BIOS setting
2. Advanced method: Adding SATA drivers to Windows XP installation CD.
Option 1:
In case of Acer, the BIOS settings allow you to change the SATA mode. It can be found in the "Main" section. By default it will be in AHCI mode. Change it to IDE mode. This makes your SATA disk behave like an IDE disk. Once you change to IDE mode, you are ready to go ahead with the installation of Windows XP as usual. This is the simplest solution.
There are couple of reasons why you might not prefer this solution over the next one. First, your BIOS settings might not allow you to change the SATA mode. In that case, you do not have an alternative other than to go for the next option. Secondly, you will not reap the full benefit of your SATA harddrive. SATA's AHCI interface gives better throughput compared to IDE in most of the situations. If you are more interested in this topic search for "Native Comamnd Queuing(NCQ)". This is a very nice article comparing AHCI vs IDE.
There is a way to change the mode to AHCI after installing the XP in IDE mode. I personally did not try this method but this article explains how to do this on machines with intel chipsets. Note that this method should not be followed if your chipset is AMD. I will update this article If I find a way to do this for AMD platforms.
Option 2:
This is a little complicated option in the sense that you have to create a new XP installation CD with SATA AHCI drivers included in it. This technique is called "Slipstreaming". Follow the "Internet and CD burner method" section in this article.
There are two options.
1. Simplest method: Changing the BIOS setting
2. Advanced method: Adding SATA drivers to Windows XP installation CD.
Option 1:
In case of Acer, the BIOS settings allow you to change the SATA mode. It can be found in the "Main" section. By default it will be in AHCI mode. Change it to IDE mode. This makes your SATA disk behave like an IDE disk. Once you change to IDE mode, you are ready to go ahead with the installation of Windows XP as usual. This is the simplest solution.
There are couple of reasons why you might not prefer this solution over the next one. First, your BIOS settings might not allow you to change the SATA mode. In that case, you do not have an alternative other than to go for the next option. Secondly, you will not reap the full benefit of your SATA harddrive. SATA's AHCI interface gives better throughput compared to IDE in most of the situations. If you are more interested in this topic search for "Native Comamnd Queuing(NCQ)". This is a very nice article comparing AHCI vs IDE.
There is a way to change the mode to AHCI after installing the XP in IDE mode. I personally did not try this method but this article explains how to do this on machines with intel chipsets. Note that this method should not be followed if your chipset is AMD. I will update this article If I find a way to do this for AMD platforms.
Option 2:
This is a little complicated option in the sense that you have to create a new XP installation CD with SATA AHCI drivers included in it. This technique is called "Slipstreaming". Follow the "Internet and CD burner method" section in this article.
Friday, December 19, 2008
New year gift: Software unlock for 3G
Iphone-dev team has an exciting new year gift. Its going to release software unlock method for 3G iphone on new year eve. They had been working hard on this project under the codename 'yellowsn0w'. It is in the final phases of packing in a user friendly user interface. They are going to release a video demo of the same on around Christmas time. See their blog about this update. There are a two pre-conditions on which you can unlock your phone. It should have a baseband of version 2.11.07 or prior. It should be jailbroken. Jailbroken phone is a requirement because the 3G unlock software is distributed using the cydia installer which is available only on jailbroken phones.
Happy Christmas and New Year
Friday, December 12, 2008
iphone screen output on TV
iphonehacks is running an article where it pointed out that the famous developer Erica Sadun has discovered that the recently released iphone firmware2.2 SDK offers an option to export video-out live to a connected TV screen. This is an undocumented feature in the SDK.
There is already a working prototype to prove that this thing works in real. See this video where the live camera is projected on a TV screen.
It does not stop here. Greg Hartstein developed an impressive prototype with on-screen controls where he can extend the iphone desktop to the tv screen. i.e you can use the tv-screen as additional space of your iphone. This is like extending the display of computer output to more than one monitors. Laptop users with windows operating system might be familiar how to extend their laptop screen to a standalone monitor. See this video which demonstrates the feature that I am talking about. Please be patient, it comes towards the end after showing some other interesting possibilites.
There is already a working prototype to prove that this thing works in real. See this video where the live camera is projected on a TV screen.
It does not stop here. Greg Hartstein developed an impressive prototype with on-screen controls where he can extend the iphone desktop to the tv screen. i.e you can use the tv-screen as additional space of your iphone. This is like extending the display of computer output to more than one monitors. Laptop users with windows operating system might be familiar how to extend their laptop screen to a standalone monitor. See this video which demonstrates the feature that I am talking about. Please be patient, it comes towards the end after showing some other interesting possibilites.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Linux on iphone
Like iphone ? Love linux ? Want both of them together ? Then your answer is here. A new project named "iphoneLinux" is going to achieve this. The project is in very infant stage right now. Currently, it provides only a command line interface to interact with the iphone sub-system. You can connect to a terminal over USB connection. The best part of this project is that your iphone becomes a dual boot system (like having windows and linux on the same system). At the boot time you can choose which OS you want to boot into.
For me, the enormous potential in this project is obvious. Speaking at a technical level, currently they have support for access to screen, serial driver, serial over USB driver, Interrupts, MMU, clocks etc. But all the special features of iphone are yet to be brought under the hood. Currently there is no support for wireless networking, touchscreen, sound, accelerometer, baseband etc. Do no slam it down saying that this is useless. It is just about matter of time when they will be supported.
BTW, they are recruiting people for the project. If you are good at kernel hacking and type of guy who figures out things on you own, you can put your head in it. Keep track of their informal blog to get updates about the project.
See this video which shows the boot options and commands in linux terminal.
iPhone Linux Demonstration Video from planetbeing on Vimeo.
For me, the enormous potential in this project is obvious. Speaking at a technical level, currently they have support for access to screen, serial driver, serial over USB driver, Interrupts, MMU, clocks etc. But all the special features of iphone are yet to be brought under the hood. Currently there is no support for wireless networking, touchscreen, sound, accelerometer, baseband etc. Do no slam it down saying that this is useless. It is just about matter of time when they will be supported.
BTW, they are recruiting people for the project. If you are good at kernel hacking and type of guy who figures out things on you own, you can put your head in it. Keep track of their informal blog to get updates about the project.
See this video which shows the boot options and commands in linux terminal.
iPhone Linux Demonstration Video from planetbeing on Vimeo.
Vietnamese hacker unlocks 3G iphone using hardware method
A quick round up before going into the details. There is no software method to unlock the 3G iphone yet. The iphone-dev team is working hard and getting closer day-by-day. They were successful in replacing the baseband on the 3G iphones, but it seems that the procedure had some problems. They want to release a robust solution as a software method to unlock 3G iphones. See their team blog for updates.
There is a SIM-based solution also to unlock the 3G iphone. Many people call this hardware method, but I would like to call it SIM-based solution as this approach does not involve opening the iphone and playing with the chips/circuits. This is first done by Brazilian hackers. It involves a wafer-thin card that piggybacks on your SIM and fooling the iphone into thinking that it is a test SIM thereby allowing any carrier. But they are selling this solution at a very premium price of $250-$350.
Coming to the main topic of this post, iphonehacks is running an article which says that a vietnamese hacker is able to unlock 3G iphones using a pure hardware method. It involves removing the baseband chip from the motherboard, reading the contents of it, reprogramming the chip with modified data, and then putting it back on the motherboard. Sounds exciting, isn't it ? I feel that he is generous because he charge only $80 for the whole process which takes about an hour.
The above two solutions (SIM-based and hardware method) does not work with the 2.2 firmware on 3G iphones because the firmware upgrades the baseband. This creates one more challenge to the hackers and puts apple ahead in the cat-and-mouse game. The upgrade of baseband with the 2.2 firmware happens only on 3G iphones. I seems that there is no way to downgrade the baseband once it gets upgraded. So, think twice before upgrading your 3G iphones to the latest 2.2 firmware.
There is a SIM-based solution also to unlock the 3G iphone. Many people call this hardware method, but I would like to call it SIM-based solution as this approach does not involve opening the iphone and playing with the chips/circuits. This is first done by Brazilian hackers. It involves a wafer-thin card that piggybacks on your SIM and fooling the iphone into thinking that it is a test SIM thereby allowing any carrier. But they are selling this solution at a very premium price of $250-$350.
Coming to the main topic of this post, iphonehacks is running an article which says that a vietnamese hacker is able to unlock 3G iphones using a pure hardware method. It involves removing the baseband chip from the motherboard, reading the contents of it, reprogramming the chip with modified data, and then putting it back on the motherboard. Sounds exciting, isn't it ? I feel that he is generous because he charge only $80 for the whole process which takes about an hour.
The above two solutions (SIM-based and hardware method) does not work with the 2.2 firmware on 3G iphones because the firmware upgrades the baseband. This creates one more challenge to the hackers and puts apple ahead in the cat-and-mouse game. The upgrade of baseband with the 2.2 firmware happens only on 3G iphones. I seems that there is no way to downgrade the baseband once it gets upgraded. So, think twice before upgrading your 3G iphones to the latest 2.2 firmware.
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