Tag: iPhone

  • How Apple spends $100 million… on a faulty product.

    Here at Hijinks Inc. we tout ourselves as being ‘a technology blog focusing on reviews and tutorials,’ and I’ve yet to post anything really technology related. Sure, I cover the entertainment stuff, so that’s kind of a built in excuse, but when given the chance, I like to get in with the tech-y stuff as well.

    This is making the rounds in the blogosphere today, and I found it interesting. These are some pictures of Apple’s $100 million iPhone testing facility, all for a product that gets released with flaws, you think they would’ve noticed the phone not working. Here’s the statement Apple released with these images:

    Apple never releases a product without thoroughly testing it first. To do this, we built our multimillion-dollar antenna design and test labs. These labs feature 17 different antenna characterization chambers (or anechoic chambers) designed to accurately measure antenna and wireless performance.

    Our anechoic chambers are connected to sophisticated equipment that simulates cellular base stations, Wi-Fi networks, Bluetooth devices — even GPS satellites. These chambers measure performance in free space, in the presence of materials simulating human tissue (“phantom” heads and hands, for example), and in use by human subjects. Over a one- to two-year development cycle, Apple engineers spend thousands of hours performing antenna and wireless testing in the lab.

    Apple engineers tested iPhone 4 in a variety of scenarios, environments, and conditions in order to gauge performance. They spent thousands of hours in cities in the U.S. and throughout the world testing iPhone 4 call quality, dropped-call performance, call origination and termination, and in-service time. They tested iPhone 4 while stationary, at high and low speeds, and in urban, dense urban, and highway environments. In low-coverage areas and good-coverage areas, during peak and off-peak hours — iPhone 4 was field-tested in nearly every possible coverage scenario across different vendor and carrier equipment all over the world.

    You can see the rest of the images after the jump. (more…)

  • Why your iPod won’t charge (and what to do about it)

    Why your iPod won’t charge (and what to do about it)

    Show of hands if you’ve seen this message on your iPhone or iPod touch:

    “Charging is not supported with this accessory”

    Why not?  The music and video still works… why wouldn’t charging be supported?  It upset me too.  I tried connecting it to an older Alpine stereo and it flashed me the error.

    The short and sweet of it?  Previous to the 3G iPhone and 2G iPod touch, the pin-out configuration of the connection used a FireWire standard for the location of the charging pin.  The newest generation switched to using a USB pin-out standard, and low and behold, the charging pin is different!

    Enter the Scosche passPORT charging adapter.  The $20 adapter (Apple actually sells it, as well as many other retailers) switches the charging pin-out, but allows the rest of the data stream to pass-through.  However, there are limitations… this from Scosche’s website:

    “The charging adapter is specifically designed to fix the charging error associated with several iPod and iPhone accessories. If the accessory you are intending to use does not initially support the audio or video functionality of the iPod or iPhone , the charging adapter will not enable these features.”

    What bothers me is there had to be some poor tech from Scosche who took this call:

    Customer: “Hi, I’ve got a problem.”

    Tech: “What can I help you with?”

    Customer: “Well, I bought your charging adapter for my iPod touch, but I can’t see the video on my TV!”

    Tech: “Are you connecting your iPod to your home theater system?”

    Customer: “No, I’ve got it connected to a wall-mount charging adapter.”

    Tech: “Great, now we need a disclaimer…”

  • Video: Using an iPad 3G’s Micro SIM in an iPhone

    For those of you who don’t believe that this works or don’t care to try it for yourself, here’s a video of an iPad 3G Micro SIM card being used in my stock iPhone 3G running iPhone OS 3.1.3.

    You can of course try this yourself by following the instructions outlined in my previous post.

  • How To Run Cracked .IPA Files

    Yes, this is blatantly illegal, proceed at your own risk.

    The App Store is missing one feature which I deem key, and that is the ability to try applications before you buy. While some apps offer “Lite” versions which accomplish the same thing, I’d like something a little more consistent.

    Enter the jailbroken iPhone solution.

    Requirements: A jailbroken iPhone / iPod touch running 2.0.2 or 2.1

    Stage 1:
    Open Cydia.
    Install Open SSH.
    Restart.

    Stage 2:
    SSH into your device. Default username is root, default password is alpine
    Then navigate to the following directory: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileInstallation.framework
    Make a backup of the MobileInstallation file from the directory above.
    Download the patched version of the file here for 2.0.2 or here for 2.1 (the 2.0.2 file might come up as a .dylib, if it does make sure and remove the .dylib extension after you copy it to your device)
    Copy the patched MobileInstallation file into the /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileInstallation.framework
    Set the permissions for MobileInstallation to 775
    Navigate to /private/var/mobile/
    Set permissions for the Applications directory to 777. Make sure reclusive is checked.
    Navigate into the /private/var/mobile/applications/ directory.
    Create a new folder named Documents in the /private/var/mobile/applications/ directory.
    Set permissions to 777.
    Navigate to the root level.
    Open the Applications folder.
    Create a Documents folder here as well. Set permission to 777.

    Restart the iPhone/iPod.

    Download an application from the app store (one of the free ones will work just fine)

    Now you’re free to download and install cracked IPA’s! Obviously for legal reasons I can’t link straight to a source for cracked IPA files, but they’re pretty easy to find, just do some searching.

  • Hello iPhone

    A few days after the iPhone 3G was announced I sold my first gen iPhone for much more than it was worth, the best part is I sold it with my contract… Now I have no plan to return to AT&T as their service is crap and they have no coverage in Nebraska, but I do miss having an iPhone or an iPod touch.

    I’ve been considering getting an iPod touch for the past few weeks, but have been holding off. Well today I found a first gen 8GB iPhone available for $100, dang sweet deal! I’m hopefully gonna take a look at it tomorrow and if it’s in good condition I’ll purchase it.

    Now I can spend all the money I saved on apps in the App Store.