Archive for the 'Tech' category

Apple Fail!? The iPhone 3GS on iOS 5

Oct 07 2011 Published by under Apple

I still use the oldest phone that Apple currently sells, the iPhone 3GS, but I’ve now upgraded to iOS 5 GM. To my surprise, the golden master runs much faster than previous beta versions of iOS 5.

Of course, speed is a relative thing — it’s possible that the phone is no faster than it was some months ago, and that I’m now just noticing the difference between last month’s beta version and this week’s golden master, but it certainly feels like the fastest 3GS I’ve ever used!

Sure, I won’t be getting Siri and the camera still takes ages to load up, but I’m suddenly finding myself rather content with my 2-year old phone.

One thing that’s been majorly improved is mobile Safari; it seems to run a whole lot faster these days. I’m actually using it again as my primary browser, at least when I’m on wifi.

Additionally, now that wireless syncing, cloud syncing and over-the-air updates are available, the phone has become effortless to manage.

What I’m trying to get at, is that this aging obsolete smartphone has just dramatically increased in value. This is totally unexpected considering the nature of the product and the fact that it is now two produce cycles behind the latest iPhone.

Apple is making me think twice about upgrading!

Apple Fail?!

8 responses so far

Bricked iPhone 3GS Reboot Loop After iOS 5 beta 7 OTA

Sep 01 2011 Published by under Apple

My aging iPhone 3GS — that has been firmware upgraded, jailbroken, and restored innumerable times throughout its 2 year life — was seemingly bricked this morning when I went to upgrade it to iOS 5 beta 7. (Yes, I have my phone’s UDID tied to some developer’s account. Thank you bitcoin!)

My iPhone would reboot constantly, showing the Apple logo, a black screen, a white screen and some vertical lines. I’d seen many botched firmware installs in the past, but this one was odd.

The thing that worried me the most was that I couldn’t even get it into DFU mode. I can’t remember that happening ever before with a botched upgrade or jailbreak.

Fortunately, I came across the Recovery Fix utility from the Tiny Umbrella website.

At first, Recovery Fix seemed to offer no hope, as I still needed to get into DFU mode. But after randomly trying for about 5 minutes, I guess I got lucky, because DFU engaged and it broke out of the loop!

At that point, the greenpois0n software tried a few things, but ultimately stalled. This was fine, because the phone was now fixed, and upon reboot was showing the connect to iTunes graphic.

I’m now attempting to re-install iOS 5 beta 7 via restore in iTunes. We’ll see if it has better results than the OTA update I tried this morning…

UPDATE: The restore worked! I’m now running beta 7 with the latest iTunes. Trying the OTA update was not a good idea — this was touched on in the release notes, and now I know why.

35 responses so far

The Magic Mouse Kind of Sucks Under OS X Lion

Jul 24 2011 Published by under Opinions, Tech

Magic Mouse OS X Lion Sucks


I love my Magic Mouse. The sleek pointer has served me well under Snow Leopard, so I was expecting that my experience with it under Lion would be just as smooth. Unfortunately, as others have been finding, the mouse is annoyingly limited in Apple’s latest OS X update. Continue Reading »

8 responses so far

Video DSLR vs Camcorder: How to Look Hollywood

Feb 04 2010 Published by under Tech

Do you want to shoot professional ‘Hollywood’ style video? Do you want your video creations to look more like real film and less like the digital eye-sores that are the status quo on YouTube and other video sharing sites?

Well there’s good news. We live in a time where affordable digital cameras are rivaling the equipment used by professional videographers. In fact, many of these pros are switching to the same consumer cameras that just about anyone can buy and learn to use, like the Panasonic GH2 and Canon 5D Mark II.

Video capable DSLR cameras are taking the video industry by storm. But many buyers of these cameras are non-professionals who just want an affordable way to shoot high quality video for friends and family. In short, they want their movies to really stand out from the noisy and muddy digital crap that populates much of the online video world.

VDSLR’s, when wielded correctly, can simulate a film-like look that is visually similar to what much higher cost cameras capture for professionally produced TV shows and movies. This filmic effect is highly regarded among buyers of VDSLR cameras, and allows them to escape the ‘home video’ look that most camcorders produce.

Let’s go over a few points on how DSLR’s shoot amazing looking video:
Continue Reading »

3 responses so far

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