The | Apple iPhone | Thread

[SRASC]

Ok, I know, its not iPhone related (directly anyway) but the final specs for USB 3.0 are out.

The USB 3.0 Promoter Group today announced the completion of the USB 3.0 specification, the technical map for device manufacturers to deliver SuperSpeed USB technology to the market.

SuperSpeed USB brings significant power and performance enhancements to the popular USB standard while offering backward compatibility with billions of USB-enabled PCs and peripheral devices currently in use by consumers. Delivering data transfer rates up to ten times faster than Hi-Speed USB (USB 2.0) with optimized power efficiency, SuperSpeed USB is the next step in the continued evolution of USB technology.

“SuperSpeed USB is the next advancement in ubiquitous technology,” said Jeff Ravencraft, USB-IF president and chairman. “Today’s consumers are using rich media and large digital files that need to be easily and quickly transferred from PCs to devices and vice versa. SuperSpeed USB meets the needs of everyone from the tech-savvy executive to the average home user.”

The USB 3.0 Promoter Group, comprised of Hewlett-Packard Company, Intel
Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, NEC Corporation, ST-NXP Wireless and Texas Instruments, developed the USB 3.0 specification. The group now has transitioned the specification’s management to the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), the managing body of USB specifications. The USB 3.0 Promoter Group is now accepting adopters of the USB 3.0 specification, which has been finalized at the 1.0 level. To download both the specification and adopter agreement, visit http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/.

It is anticipated that initial SuperSpeed USB discrete controllers will appear in the second half of 2009 and consumer products will appear in 2010, with adoption continuing throughout 2010. The first SuperSpeed USB devices will likely include data-storage devices such as flash drives, external hard drives, digital music players and digital cameras.

The USB 3.0 specification debuted today in conjunction with the first SuperSpeed USB
Developers Conference in San Jose, California. The conference provides attendees the first opportunity to hear directly from the creators of the USB 3.0 specification; keynote speakers will address advancements offered by the new technology. In addition to technical sessions, an exhibit area will showcase the latest developments and early designs featuring SuperSpeed USB technology. Attendees will obtain information on the best practices for incorporating SuperSpeed USB into their product roadmaps.

The USB 3.0 specification includes many advancements for both consumers and
adopters, including higher speeds and enhanced power efficiency. For more information about the USB 3.0 specification, visit http://www.usb.org/developers.

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This is iPhone related however.

Adobe Systems and ARM today announced a technology collaboration that is designed to optimize and enable Adobe Flash Player 10 and Adobe AIR for ARM Powered devices like (but not necessarily including) the Apple iPhone.

ARM Powered devices range from from mobile phones to set-top boxes, mobile Internet devices, televisions, automotive platforms, personal media players and other mobile computing devices. The collaboration is expected to accelerate mobile graphics and video capabilities on ARM platforms to bring rich Internet applications and Web services to mobile devices and consumer electronics worldwide.

The joint technology optimization is targeted for the ARMv6 and ARMv7architectures used in the ARM11 family and the Cortex-A series of processors and is expected to be available in the second half of 2009. The partnership stems from the Open Screen Project, a broad Adobe sponsored initiative of industry leaders - including ARM - to deliver a consistent runtime environment across multiple devices by taking advantage of Adobe Flash Player and, in the future, Adobe AIR.

To beat a long-dead horse, Flash performance and usage is abysmal on current mobile devices that support playback. Mobile device processors — including the iPhone’s — simply aren’t fast enough to handle most Flash-laden sites. Flash Lite, the scaled down standard designed specifically for mobile devices, is even too much for most devices, and isn’t widely used.

In mid-June, Adobe’s CEO said that company already has Flash running on an iPhone emulator (presumably the same emulator included with Apple’s iPhone SDK).

However, at an Apple shareholder meeting in March, CEO Steve Jobs said that Flash won’t be coming to the iPhone anytime soon. Jobs said — echoing our sentment — that the full-blown version of Flash would perform poorly on the iPhone, and Flash Lite isn’t the spirit of the iPhone’s full internet experience.

[Freelander]

SRASC, does the turbo sim work properly in trini? i ordered one claiming to work for data, voice and sms.

[SRASC]

[GorgonZuki]

[GorgonZuki]

[Freelander]

[Hidden]

[tr1ad]

to outlook

[SRASC]

Apple is in talks with three of the "big four" record labels about offering music tracks through iTunes that would be made available in MP3 AAC format without copy protection measures, a move that could further distance the digital download service from its rivals.

Citing "two music industry sources," CNet News.com claims the talks with Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony BMG are still in the preliminary stages with nothing finalized, though one label is reportedly leaning towards an agreement.

EMI, the other member of the "big four," has been offering its entire catalog to iTunes users free of copy protection measures since April of 2007, however its tracks are being served up in AAC -- a format designed to be the successor to MP3.

In addition to achieving better sound quality at certain bit rates, AAC allows Apple include custom iTunes information such as album artwork and purchase information within the same file that contains the audio track.

A switch to MP3s would rival a move on the part of Amazon.com, which launched an MP3 download service last fall and eventually gained the support of all four major record labels. The retailer has since chipped away at share of the digital audio download market, but not necessarily at Apple's expense.

Should Apple and the record labels ultimately forge a deal, the vast majority of songs purchased from iTunes would no longer be restricted for use solely on Apple's handheld products such as the iPod and iPhone. It would also serve as a serious setback to rivals such as Amazon, who would then need to devise a new way to differentiate their service offerings from the already ubiquitous iTunes.

Amid public scrutiny over the limitations of copy protected songs, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs in February of 2007 called upon the "big four" music companies to drop their anti-piracy restrictions and allow digital music tracks to be sold openly on the Internet for any brand of digital music player.

Frustrated with inflexible pricing on the iTunes Store, record labels outside of EMI have refused to cooperate with the iPod maker. They've instead signed deals with many of the company's rivals in an effort to gauge whether they can reduce Cupertino-based company's influence on digital music sales.

Meanwhile, it's reported that Universal Music is expected to join EMI and Warner in licensing their catalogs to Microsoft in MP3s for sale on the Zune Marketplace -- the software giant's answer to Apple's digital download service.

Update: CNet has since changed its story to omit mention of MP3 as the format in which the new unrestricted tracks would be sold. The author responded to a comment on the matter by saying "I don't know whether my sources were just throwing out MP3 as a way to describe unprotected music." It's likely Apple would make the tracks available in unprotected 256 kbps AAC format as it does with those from EMI.

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Uh well um. Better extremely late than never? The lack off MMS has been one of the biggest complaints about the iPhone since day one way back in 2007. Who is going to bring MMS to the masses? Swirly MMS 1.2 already has via Cydia but what about all those poor fools that haven't jailbroken yet? While Apple is leaving its users hanging in the wind Mobispine is working hard to create a MMS app that Apple will allow out the door.

The other day the rumor initially broke on MacWorld that Swedish-Finnish carrier Telia is on the verge (read with in the next two months) of pushing their MMS app out the door and into the eager hands of people subscribed to their cellular network. That's all well and good that someone is getting MMS without jailbreaking but leaves most the world with out.

An update hit Engadget today that gives those not on Telia some hope! It turns out the MMS app that was originally reported to be developed by Telia is actually being developed by a third party developer called Mobispine. Mobispine has plans for MMS on a much broader scope. According to their press release Mobispine CEO Dusyant Patel says that “Mobispine continues its strong track record of innovation and is proud to unveil the first true MMS service for iPhones. We are confident that global operators will find Mobispine’s MMS service for iPhone easy-to-use and profitable.”

MMS users can only hope that Mobispine's dream of carrier backed MMS on iPhone's everywhere will come true and make it through Apple's approval process - it's pretty evident that Apple isn't going to create MMS on the iPhone themselves.

[SRASC]

Apple has conceptualized a means of displaying icon-like status indicators on the iPhone's displays even when the handset is locked and the backlight turned off, a new company filing shows.

The Cupertino-based electronics maker notes that a traditional way of conserving energy on handheld devices is to turn off a display when the user does not need or want to view media. However, this approach may make it difficult or impossible for a user to determine the status of the device or identify any pending notifications without first having to turn the unit on.

To address the problem, Apple proposes the implementation of a dual backlight system, where a secondary, low-power backlight system would be positioned behind the primary backlight system. The always-on light provided by the secondary backlight system could then be projected through one or more transparent or semitransparent regions of the primary backlight system to reach the display even when the primary backlight is turned off.

"The primary backlight system may block light from the secondary backlight system except for those one or more regions," the filing explains. "Thus, the size and shape of the status indicator may be set by sizing and shaping the transparent or semitransparent regions of the primary backlight system. In addition to setting the size and shape of the icon, the color of the icon may also be set by adjusting the color of the light provided by the secondary backlight system."

By this method, Apple could provide iPhone users with any number of colored status icons to represent anything from a new text message or email, to missed calls or a low battery warning. The light source within the secondary backlight system could also be turned on and off to create a blinking effect, or the intensity of the light may be varied through pulse-width-modulation.

Click for full-size.

Therefore, users would be able to determine whether they missed a call or communication without touching their iPhone, which may be positioned on a table or other surface that's within sight but not necessarily in a user's hand. Users would also be able to simply glance at their iPhone when out and about to check its status without having to switch on the LCD display.

Apple explains that in some implementations, multiple status indicator icons may be displayed at substantially the same location on the display. To vary the shape or size of each indicator, the shape and size of the color filters may be varied rather than the shape and size of the transparent or semitransparent regions of the primary backlight system. This could be accomplished by taking color filters of different shapes and with different properties and superimposing them on each other. Thus, the shape of an icon on the display would depend on the color of light provided by the secondary backlight -- a technique that may also be used for icons that are displayed side-by-side.

Click for full-size.

In terms of blinking or pulsating icons, each status indicator provided by the iPhone, whether located at different locations on a display or at substantially the same location, may be associated with light having particular properties.

"For example, each indicator may have a particular color, blinking speed, or light intensity. These properties may be programmed into the electronic device by the user, or may be hard-coded or hard-wired into the system," Apple said. "Thus, when the secondary backlight is turned on, the properties of the light provided by the secondary backlight system may depend on the status of the device. Also, if the status of the electronic device changes while the secondary backlight is on, the properties of the light provided by the secondary backlight system may change to reflect the new status."

The 24-page filing, published for the first time this week by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, is credited to Apple engineer Michael Rosenblatt.

[SRASC]

MMS Finally on an iPhone but there's a catch...

Swedish iPhone owners will soon have something they can hold over the heads of most other users of the touchscreen handset: an Apple-sanctioned way of sending and receiving picture and video messages.

According to a report published by Macworld Sweden, Apple has given the go-ahead to its regional wireless partner Telia to develop its own MMS application for the iPhone.

MMS (or Multimedia Messaging Service) functionality has stood out among a short list of glaring omissions from the otherwise cutting-edge handset. The cellular standard, which can be found on a wide variety of mobile phones, offers a simple means of sending multi-media messages that include images, audio, video and rich text.

Out of the box, iPhones only support SMS (or Short Message Service), which limits transmissions to short text-based message. This had lead some users to hack their iPhones in order to gain MMS capabilities, or attempt to emulate multimedia messaging through the use of special email address and the handset's built-in Mail application.

It's reported that Telia will be ready to push their MMS application into users' hands within the next couple of months. So far there's no word that Apple has approved similar applications for iPhone users in other regions.

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Meninos has created an iPhone icon coaster set for those looking for a good holiday gift idea.

The coaster set includes the 16 basic iPhone icons and costs $60 US. It is available from the Meninos site here

[mitch]

[SRASC]

^^^ beaten to it...oh well lol. Download iTunes 8.0.2 at http://apple.com/itunes/download

[SRASC]

Apple on Thursday (last night) released iTunes 8.0.2, the latest maintenance update for its digital media software that addresses a couple of minor issues and improves accessibility for users with impaired vision.

Specifically, the new version is said to address a quality issue when creating MP3s on some computers and fix a connectivity issue with the iTunes Store when using some Internet proxies with Mac OS X.

iTunes 8.0.2 also improves accessibility with VoiceOver, an Apple-developed technology that aids visually impaired users by reading aloud the contents of files while providing a rich set of keyboard commands for navigation and comprehensive audible descriptions of the present workspace.

The 60.3MB update, which is available through Apple’s iTunes site or via software update, arrives amid mounting evidence that Apple could be preparing to release the next software update for the iPhone — version 2.2 — as early as tomorrow. (today)

& in fact it is available now.

The newest version of firmware is now available in iTunes, version 2.2. We’re installing now on a test phone and will be providing screen shots and a direct link as soon as possible. Looks like big features are Google Street View, over the air downloads for Podcasts, Pressing home from any home screen takes you to the first home screen.

This update contains many bug fixes and improvements, including the following:
• Enhancements to Maps
- Google Street View
- public transit and walking directions
- display address of dropped pins
- share location via email
• Enhancements to Mail
- resolved isolated issues with scheduled fetching
of email
- improved formatting of wide HTML email
• Improved stability and performance of Safari
• Podcasts are now available for download in iTunes
application (over Wi-Fi and cellular network)
• Decrease in call set-up failures and call drops
• Improved sound quality of visual voicemail messages
• Pressing the Home button from any Home screen takes
you to the first Home screen
• Preference to turn on/off auto-correction in Keyboard
Settings

Products compatible with this software update:
• iPhone
• iPhone 3G




*UPDATE* Initial reports are that 1st Gen iPhones retain their software unlocks. (yay!)
*UPDATE 2* More reports of unlock not being effected, jailbreak is removed and you will lose all jailbroken apps and hacks. (I knew it was too good to be true)
*UPDATE 5* Can now see thumbnails of screenshots I’ve taken in Windows when browsing the iPhone drive, before they were blank.
*UPDATE 6* Podcasts in iTunes
*UPDATE 7* Safari, address bar and search bar now side by side

[SRASC]

Reports are now coming out that either upgrading to 2.2 does:

-brick your unlocked/jailbroken iPhone (2G)
-renders unlock methods like TurboSIMs useless (3G)
-retains the unlock but looses the jailbreak (2G)

Below is an what the Dev Team has to say about firmware 2.2.

“So, as anticipated our friends the misfits have recently released the long awaited 2.2 update. We can confirm that this update SHOULD NOT be applied using iTunes if you want the chance of a soft-unlock in the near future.

If you want to keep that option of a ‘soft-unlock in the near future’ available but you want the new features of 2.2, you will be able to update to 2.2 using a PwnageTool created custom ipsw file that disables the baseband update. You will be able to do this using an updated version of PwnageTool that will be released sometime soon.

• The 2.2 firmware for 3G contains a baseband update for the 3G iPhone
• The 2.2 firmware for 2G (1st gen iPhones) doesn’t contain a baseband update and the baseband is still at 04.05.04
• We believe that our Pwnage technique (and therefore the Jailbreak) isn’t affected, but PwnageTool and QuickPwn do not support this release as yet, so DO NOT install 2.2 using iTunes as you will lose your jailbreak
• If you apply this update and you previously relied on PwnageTool or QuickPwn to activate your phone, it may become temporarily deactivated and unusable (until we release the new version of PwnageTool or QuickPwn).
• PwnageTool and QuickPwn updates will be released as soon as possible that will allow a safe update path to 2.2 the release of these updates is inevitable but not imminent, we are creating the modifications right now and we need to put the new software through the usual testing process.
• If you apply this update and you have third-party (non AppStore) applications that you rely on they will stop working.
• 2G (1st gen) iPhone users who cannot wait for the new PwnageTool or QuickPwn can safely “Update” to 2.2 using iTunes, this will preserve the existing activation. However “restoring” to 2.2 using iTunes will return the iPhone to the unactivated state. If you are in any doubt just wait. NB: This works for 2G ONLY.
• The use of SIM-Proxies (small circuit boards/chips that sit underneath the SIM card) to provide GSM/UMTS service on your locked iPhone 3G is a method that we have always advised against. Early reports suggest that the 2.2 update disables the functionality of these devices. The techniques used were always unreliable and we are surprised that they have lasted this long.
• We are not working on the 2nd generation iPod touch at the moment, so we cannot comment on what the the 2.2 software update may do to this specific model

So, as always, if you are in any doubt whatsoever please delay the install of this firmware on any of your devices until we have investigated the release in more detail. Watch this space ”

[SRASC]

Apple released iPhone firmware 2.2 last night which includes many improvements and also a lot of bug fixes.

However, some users who have updated their iPhones with the latest iPhone firmware are reporting problems running some iPhone apps, internet connection issues etc.

Problems with iPhone apps:

Users are reporting issue with some third-party iPhone apps due to API changes and other modifications in iPhone firmware 2.2. To fix this issue, iPhone developers will need to update their iPhone apps. It appears applications using CoreAudio are affected.

In some cases where there is no API change, uninstalling and reinstalling the iPhone app could solve the problem.

“Could not connect to internet” error:

Some iPhone users are reporting that they are getting the “Could not connect to internet” error after upgrading to iPhone firmware 2.2.

One of the workarounds to fix this problem is to switch from 3G to EDGE.

App Store extremely slow:

Some iPhone users are reporting issues with the App Store, complaining that it is very slow. However this does not seem to be an issue due to the firmware update but a server side issue due to high load which Apple should fix shortly.

“SIM card not inserted” error:

Some users are receiving an error message indicating that the SIM card is not inserted, or that a PIN lock is in place when none should exist.

You can sometimes get resolved by removing the iPhone’s SIM card, then connecting it to your computer and restoring. iTunes may then reload the iPhone software successfully, after which you can re-insert the SIM card and attempt synchronization with iTunes.

Kilometers instead of miles in Google Maps

It appears that Google Maps for the iPhone now displays kilometers instead of miles for various countries after upgrading to iPhone firmware 2.2. You can temporarily resolve the issue by selecting ‘USA’ in International settings, though this might result in other problems for iPhone users outside the U.S.

Update:

As per this Apple forums discussion thread, a number of GMail users are reporting problems sending mail from the iPhone via GMail’s SMTP servers, with a “Sender Not Allowed” response. This is not a problem specific to iPhone firmware 2.2, as iPhone users who have not upgraded to the latest firmware are also observing this problem. The problem seems to be on GMail’s end rather than a problem with the iPhone or iPhone firmware 2.2. The workaround for this issue is to turn off Gmail as your SMTP server (until the issue is not resolved) and configure an alternate outbound SMTP server in your iPhone’s Mail settings.

Are you facing any other problem after upgrading to iPhone firmware 2.2? Tell us in the comments.

[SRASC]

any 2.2 upgraders having issues with caller id? Also any new alternatives for setting up free iTunes accounts?

[mitch]

^yeah i'm having issues with caller id. hopefully there's a fix for it soon

[SRASC]

I actually downgraded to 2.1 because of that.

[Freelander]

srasc can i get a copy of 2.1 firmware please