Tag Archives: iTunes

[Pre] Merry Me again: Update Reunites Palm Pre with iTunes

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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:

  • Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) (including remote wipe, PIN/password requirements, inactivity timeout, improved certificate handling and more)
  • support for emoticons in the messaging app
  • person reminders (“Next time you get a message or phone call from that person, a message pops up showing you a reminder to ask them about their vacation in Maui” ct. Palmblog)
  • and Palm webOS 1.1 re-enables Palm media sync with music, photos and videos with the current version of iTunes (8.2.1).

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.

[News] Apple Bar Palm Pre from Syncing with iTunes

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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

  • the USB interface so that it responds with Apple’s Vendor ID and an iPod Product ID
  • the structure of an iPod filesystem
  • some XML info about the iPod device using a custom Apple USB command

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.”

[Pre] Palm Pre to Sync with iTunes

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In the beginning there were only rumors, now it’s a fact. The upcoming iPhone competitor “Palm Pre” will allow seamingless integration into iTunes. Thus making synchronization between photos, DRM free music and contacts almost hassle free.

Moreover the “Palm Pre” will be organized as a mass storage device. Which means you can also just copy and paste your data to the Pre from the device tree in Windows’ “Explorer” or the Mac’s “Finder”.

The Palm Pre will be released on June 6th, 2009 in the U.S. of A. Sadly, there is still no release date available for Europe.

This video is courtesy of AllThingsD by the Wall Street Journal:

[MacOS] BluRay eventually coming to the Mac?

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Together with the newly seeded iPhone OS 3.0 a new iTunes 8.2 has been seeded to developers aswell. MacRumors now posted a screenshot that includes reference to BluRay support.

As Apple currently does not support BluRay this step is overdue anyway as Microsoft Windows user can play BluRay movies on their computers for the last three years.

If this is true this is good news. We dual booters won’t need to start Windows when willing to play an HD movie.

The picture is courtesy of MacRumors…

itunes_bluray.png

[News] iTunes Gift Card Algorithm Cracked

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On auction sites worldwide chinese faked iTunes gift card serials are getting sold for a lot less money than their iTunes value. Currently 200US$ gift cards cost about 3-5US$ in China. In Europe prices vary between 40-60€ per 200US$ gift card.

This issue reveals that Apple seems to have at least one problem: either they don’t have a database of valid gift card keys at all, but is only using checksum algorithms to test for validity of these cards – or their database of valid gift cards has backdoors that have been found by some chinese guys. Although – as always – Apple did not comment on this yet, they are most likely working on this problem.

We strongly recommend to not buy iTunes gift cards currently via auction sites. It is fraud and by knowingly buying those faked codes you are accountable. Moreover technically will Apple block these codes.

Always remember: if it’s too cheap to be true, it is fake.

[iPhone] PwnPlayer for Beta Testers

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What it is

Eric Castro released a beta version of his All-In-One media player named “PwnPlayer” to chose beta testers. PwnPlayer is intended to be a replacement for the iPod player included with the iPhone or iPod Touch.

Features

PwnPlayer’s features as follows:

  • playback from file system – PwnPlayer reads any folder from the file system
  • copy files to the iPhone via FTP client, iTunes not required
  • Compatibility with iTunes music library
  • Search songs, artists, albums or files
  • Gesture controlling even on locked screens

For obvious reasons this app will not be available on Apple’s AppStore

Requirements

  • Jailbroken iPhone 2G or 3G
  • Jailbroken iPod Touch
  • Cydia Installer

More information

Interested in becoming beta tester of this amazing app? Simply donate Eric some money. He’ll contact you then.

» Visit Eric Castro’s PwnPlayer pages here…

[iPhone] Workarounds for Issues with PwnageTool/QuickPwn for Firmware 2.1

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We read all over the net and found some solutions to the most common issues that occurred. If you are kinda conservative user, we’d recommend not to update to firmware 2.1 and wait until a PwnageTool and QuickPwn update has been released. Since the iPhone Dev Team is reacting very fast, this should take only some days.

Known Workarounds:

Error 1600 and Error 6: restore with stock firmware 2.1, then QuickPwn (you may then put into restore mode and install custom IPSW, but it’s not necessary- credits to “HomeGrown”).

Error 1600: when Pwnage asks, if already pwned your device, answer NO, no matter if you pwned if before or not (credits to “Maurofoto”)

Error 1600: let iTunes download firmware 2.1 again (you may delete it from the local folder if you already downloaded it via iTunes. Folder on a Mac: ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Update/), then exit iTunes, prep a custom IPSW using Pwnage, delete the iTunes downloaded firmware from the above mentioned folder again and copy your custom IPSW to that folder, but name it exactly as the original firmware was named (credits to “Markat”)

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[iPhone] PwnageTool Release Candidate 3 and QuickPwn Beta updated

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Our beloved iPhone Dev Team yesterday released updated versions of QuickPwn for Microsoft Windows (now with improved Windows 64bit handling) and PwnageTool for MacOS X (fixes the permission issue, mentioned here). If you have PwnageTool installed yet, it should bravely auto-update.

We had no time yet to test neither the Windows version nor the Mac version. Firmware 2.0.2 is reported to be only a series of bugfixes. People report, their devices run a little smoother. If you don’t encounter problems running your current iPhone / iPod Touch firmware, we would not recommend to update right now. It is rumored Apple will the release stable firmware 2.1 in september.

» Windows QuickPwn RC3 Download here…
» MacOS X PwnageTool 2.0.3.1 Download here (mirror here)…

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[iPhone] PwnageTool Release Candidate and QuickPwn Beta available

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Our fellow iPhone Dev Team is unrestingly working for the entire iPhone/iPod Touch community. The team today released a release candidate of their well known PwnageTool (version 2.0.3), that now supports firmware 2.0.2 5C1. PwnageTool 2.0.3 is only available for MacOS X.

Moreover they released another Beta of the QuickPwn tool. In contrast to PwnageTool QuickPwn lets you simply update your iPhone using the internal updater of iTunes. After that QuickPwn helps you to activate, jailbreak and unlock (only for iPhone 2G). QuickPwn is available for Microsoft Windows only. It is not recommended to use it in a virtual machine, since USB ports may not be running in real time.

If you are using your iPhone not only as a gadget, but as a productive device: we recommend to not use either PwnageTool Release Candidate or QuickPwn Beta right now. You may stick to iPhone firmware 2.0 or 2.0.1 for another week. Once the final version of one of the tools is available we’re gonna release a simple step-by-step tutorial.

Big shouts from Germany ;-) fly out to the iPhone Dev Team.

»  iPhone Dev Team: QuickPwn for Windows and PwnageTool for Mac

[Update] In forums people report problems with the mail authentication (Mail.app) after running Pwnage 2.0.3 RC. Although a manual solution for this issue is simple (have SSH installed and chmod 0777 /var/Keychains Shouts to Nettwerk), we don’t recommend to update now.

[Windows] Safari available as recommended iTunes update

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english

Pay attention guys when updating iTunes on your Microsoft Windows machines. iTunes will list Safari as a recommended update to your iTunes installation, although you never installed Safari before – and of course: you’d better not install it, since Paypal is about to block it anyway. More details to be found on Golem.de (german only).

» Golem.de: Apple verteilt Safari weiterhin über iTunes-Update…
» Incomplete-News: Paypal about to block Safari Users…

deutsch

Vorsicht beim Update von iTunes auf Windows Maschinen. iTunes zeigt neuerdings Safari als ein empfohlenes Update für iTunes an – auch wenn man noch nie vorher Safari installiert hatte, weil man weiß, dass Paypal ohnehin drauf und dran ist, Safari-Browser den Zugang zu Paypal zu blockieren. Weitere Details hat Golem.de.

» Golem.de: Apple verteilt Safari weiterhin über iTunes-Update…
» Incomplete-News: Paypal about to block Safari Users…