According to Mac4Ever (french) the Snow Leopard 10A432 version seems to be the Gold Master (GM) release, meaning this is the final release-to-manufactoring (RTM) version. Although latest rumors (german Golem.de) say Snow Leo might be released in late August, newest information tell release is in September.
The “little Palm Apple battle” goes into its next round. A week ago Apple released iTunes 8.2.1. This update blocked Palm Pre users from synchronizing music and movies with iTunes. We reported about this update and the technical implications of the sync feature here.
Palm has now released a firmware update (webOS 1.1.0) for the Palm Pre. According to Palm’s blog entry this update contains the following features:
Got issues with the Update?
Our fellow Heise.de News (german only) recommend not to update your Palm Pre while it is connected to iTunes. In case you did that and your Palm Pre does not interact on USB anymore, do a hard reset with unplugging the battery.
With the latest update of iTunes 8.2.1 Apple eventually blocks Palm Pre users from syncing with iTunes. It seems Palm knew very carefully how to emulate the iPod verification protocol of iTunes. How comes?
Some major Palm Guys are former major Apple Guys
One could ask Palm’s CEO Jon Rubinstein, or Palm’s SVP of Product Development Mike Bell, or Palm’s spokeswoman Lynn Fox. As all of these three guys are former Apple guys. Rubinstein was Apple’s architect of the iTunes-iPod concept, Mike Bell was the Vice President of the Mac Hardware Division, and Lynn Fox was Head of PR at Apple.
Anyway Apple now decided to fix this issue and bar Palm Pre users from using iTunes for syncing. But what looks like a simple update in the first place may be viewed as a strategic answer to Palm’s boldness to make the Pre pretend being an iPod for iTunes.
Some Technical Aspects
According to DVD Jon the iPod emulation was not too complicated. Palm needed to emulate
But the the root USB node (IOUSBDevice) still identified the emulated iPod as a Palm Pre (find more details here).
David vs. Goliath
Does Apple fear Palm here? It seems like Palm is putting Apple under some pressure here. The Palm Pre is widely considered as the only real iPhone competitor and allowing it to sync with iTunes would make it more favourable for users who don’t like the proprietory iPhone concept. On the other hand Apple’s step to block it from iTunes again makes the iPhone and iPods the only choice for iTunes users. Anyway it shows obviously that a little fight is going on between Apple and Palm. This topic is under hot discussion on the PreCentral site.
Palm’s spokeswoman Lynn Fox just responded to Apple’s step “Palm’s media sync works with iTunes 8.2. If Apple chooses to disable media sync in iTunes, it will be a direct blow to their users who will be deprived of a seamless synchronization experience. However, people will have options. They can stay with the iTunes version that works to sync their music on their Pre, they can transfer the music via USB, and there are other third-party applications we can consider.”
This might not be the news for many of you. Some will already know, others will most likely not even know who Fravia was. Anyway, this news is sad. Fravia has been one of the most outstanding intellectual reverse engineering gurus since the middle of the 1990’s. He seems to be the only one who ever managed to get into direct contact to the mysterious +ORC (Old Red Cracker), who edited the main reverse engineering tutorials during that time.
Fravia anyhow passed away in May, after a long fight against cancer. He has become 56 years only. Our hearts will be with you. Rest in Peace, bro’. You won’t be forgotten.
Abstract
Do you ever wanted to download some of the YouTube videos, simply to have them available when being on the road? Or say: you wanna archive them, because as we’ve seen in the past with several major media services: there will be a time when they don’t exist anymore.
But YouTube does not support downloading their videos anymore.
MacTubes’ Features
This is where MacTubes by mametunes comes into place. MacTubes is an open source project that is freely downloadable. Besides downloading MacTubes also supports just playing YouTube videos. You also can make custom playlists without having a YouTube account.
Tips and Tricks
MacTubes is straightforward, as most of those nice freeware Mac applications are.
The only hint we can give: don’t wonder if errors occur when trying to download HD videos. This is normal. Although YouTube may show that you are playing the video in HD quality, this is not true in all cases. You can see this quite obviously when comparing the video resolutions between the normal video and the HD video just with your eyes.
Links
» MacTubes Download…
Screenshot
Famous DJ Food have released a new Maxi. We feel it is definitely worth to listen into:
As always the Bleep.com player allows only 30secs pre-listening. Click the play button again for listening to the next 30secs parts. Enjoy.
You like Dub? You like Mr. Rodney Smith aka Roots Manuva. Then you gotta listen to this track: I definitely love it. Just buy it and “Do not bother me” with questions were to get it: just check here…
The embedded Bleep.com player allows pre-listening of 30secs parts. Means: after 30secs you need to click the play button again to listen to the next 30secs…
There have been rumors in the last weeks which carrier which offer the Palm Pre in European countries. As of today we know the rumors were true. In Germany, Great Britain, Ireland O2 will be the exclusive distributor of Palm’s new flagship, in Spain the iPhone competitor will be offered by Movistar.
As of now other European carriers seem to be in negotiations with Palm for exclusive distribution. There are no information yet about subscription prices. According to the O2’s german Preregistration site introduction to the german market is planned for october 2009.
Abtract
Have you also been trying to find a really nice screensaver for your Windows machine. There are so many nice screensavers for the Mac, but for the Windows world you can’t find them.
What we found
While searching for nice screensavers we came accross this collection of free of charge and open source screensavers called “Really Slick Screensavers”. Check them out. The screensavers included are named:
Download
By the way: some of the screensavers have also been ported to Mac OS and Linux.
Demo Videos
NOTE: This walkthrough is for iPhone OS 3.0 only!
For MMS on iPhone 2G with firmware 3.1, buy SwirlyMMS on Cydia Store
I. Abstract
Many iPhone 2G users are not very amused about Apple’s update policy. As of iPhone OS 3.0, owners can eventually use MMS on their iPhones. All owners? No, not the ones who have iPhones from the very beginning.
The MMS feature is not officially available on the iPhone 2G, although there is no technical reason for the limitation – as we’ve seen with SwirlyMMS.
This seems to be one of Apple’s ways to tell you you need to get a new iPhone at least every two years. Quite expensive you think? Right, but get used to it as this seems to be Apple’s business strategy of lifecycles with many products.
Anyway, Apple provides one of the best user experiences for their products and that’s the point why you are here reading these lines.
To make things short. There is a way to make MMS work on the iPhone 2G with firmware 3.0. Kudos fly out to Geniusan for the ActivateMMS2G patch, and to Craig_16 (this walkthrough is based on his findings!).
II. Requirements
You need to have the following configuration:
Of course you’ve done a backup of your contacts, your calendar, and your photos, didn’t you?
And you need to have your carrier settings available (!!!!). Search MMS settings here before you proceed! In the following example we’re going to use a reseller of the german T-Mobile network called Callmobile. Callmobile got these settings:
| Internet / Wap | Callmobile Germany |
| APN | internet.t-mobile |
| Username | tm |
| Password | tm |
| Visual Voicemail (not available!) | |
| APN | |
| Username | |
| Password |
| MMS settings | |
| APN | mms.t-d1.de |
| Username | t-mobile |
| Password | mms |
| MMSC | http://mms.t-mobile.de/servlets/mms |
| Proxy | 172.28.23.131:8008 |
blank
III. Preparations
The preparation steps are intended for user who already have tempered to make MMS running but failed. Those steps help restoring the iPhone to a status where we can eventually enable the MMS feature. Our recommendation: if you didnot try to make MMS running yet, you may want to read these steps anyway and apply most of the steps as available.
Pre.Step 1: Resetting Cellular Data Profiles
If you already tempered with the network settings to make MMS work, you first need to reset the settings. On your iPhone go to
Settings » General » Network » Cellular Data NetworkReset Settings
Reset button
Network button to leave the settings menu andReboot your iPhonePre.Step 2: Removing Cellular Profiles
On your iPhone go to
Settings » General » Profile
Remove
Remove
Reboot your iPhone nowPre.Step 3: Uninstalling ActivateMMS2G
On your iPhone go to
Cydia (available on jailbroken iPhones only! Wanna do a jailbreak now? Go here.) andManage
Packages
ActivateMMS2G
Modify
Remove
Confirm
Reboot Device
IV. The Walkthrough
After having applied all the preparations we now have the situation that all of us should have almost the same conditions with the cellular network settings. This is an important condition.
Step 1. Installing ActivateMMS2G
On your iPhone go to
Cydia (available on jailbroken iPhones only! Wanna do a jailbreak now? Go here.)
Search,
Enter manually ActivateMMS2G, and when found:ActivateMMS2G
Install and Confirm
Reboot Device
Step 2. Installing A Custom Profile
On your iPhone go to
Safari and open this website: http://help.benm.at (kudos!)Mobilconfigs create
enter in all fields the required mms settings, got it? According to our example for Callmobile we enter this:
Enable ThetheringGenerateInstall
Install Now
Donequit SafariReboot nowStep 3. Adding Appropriate Cellular Settings
On your iPhone go to:
Settings » General » Network » Cellular Data Network
don't touch or edit the following entries: MMS/APN, MMS/Username, and MMS/Password. Once edited manually they will be lost and missing, because they will not get saved after leaving the menu. You would then have to start over above with point III. Preparations. You got me, right?MMSC and MMS Proxy first.MMSC is http://mms.t-mobile.de/servlets/mms andMMS Proxy is 172.28.23.131:8008
Network button to leave the settings menu andReboot now to make sure the iPhone has loaded the new MMS settingsStep 4. Sending two Test MMS’
What we here basically do is, we’re gonna send the MMS to us. This allows us to check if receiving works and this also auto-enables the MMS feature on many carriers worldwide (not with AT&T in the U.S., sorry). After sending the first MMS you may receive an SMS instead that tells you you can watch the MMS on the internet. This is because the carrier has not updated your MMS capability yet. Now wait about five minutes and send another MMS to your own iPhone. This time you should receive it.
This is how we do it. On your iPhone go to:
MessagesNew Message icon (also note that a camera icon will be left to the text field)
your own iPhone cell number
camera icon and take a photo
Send button
If anything does not work: we recommend to check the internet for your carrier specific settings. In 99% of the cases it is not related to the iPhone, but due to wrong carrier settings. Or your carrier simply has deactivated the MMS feature for your subscription (i.e. AT&T)!
Step 5. Editing the EDGE/GPRS Internet Settings
Again on your iPhone ;-) go to:
Settings » General » Network » Cellular Data NetworkCellular Data fieldsAPN is internet.t-mobileUsername is tmPassword is tm
Network button to leave the settings menu andReboot your iPhoneV. Final words
You should check if your EDGE/GPRS settings work by deactivating your Wi-Fi and go online via GPRS/EDGE only. People reported it may be slower than before. We cannot confirm this. EDGE/GPRS is slow like hell anyway. If you are running a subscription that supports Visual Voicemail you can also enter the appropriate information after reboot and test if it works.
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