IKnowRusty.com » iPhone

Siri Has an Attitude (and knows the answer to ultimate question of life)

RustyG — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:29:28 +0000

Well it seems as the iPhone 4S starts to trickle down to the rest of us over the next 24 hours, (or later) there are others who are already having some hands on time with the SIRI beta inside the iPhone 4s. I saw an article yesterday in which Jason Snell of MacWorld.com got to play with the SIRI beta in about an 11 minute video. If you go to about 5:18 in the video, you will see a funny reference to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy book/movie.

Continue to watch, because just after that, it seems the SIRI programmers have added some quick wit to the digital assist as well. It’s a pretty funny little bit to watch. It’s pretty cool to watch exactly what SIRI can do on the iPhone 4S, and because it is still in Beta, there is a lot to be done. I do think, on a side note, that SIRI will come to the iPhone 4, eventually. Either way, as more and more people get their hands on the iPhone 4S, they are all trying out the new digital assistant to see what all it can do. There is even a few videos out there showing us what happens if you tell SIRI “I love you“. So as the days come and some of you start messing with it, let me know what you come up with. In the mean time, I think that this is the best one yet, and it happened just before iFixit started to do the teardown of the phone.

iFixit: “Siri, may we disassemble you for all to see?”

iPhone 4S (Siri): “42″

iFixit: “I didn’t ask for the meaning of life, Siri…”

iPhone 4S (Siri): “42 is the number of seconds you have left until I initiate the self-destruct sequence…”

iFixit: “Message received.”

-Rusty G

Stop Cluttering my Screen with CRAP Apple!

RustyG — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 19:00:51 +0000

Maybe I am the only one seeing this, as the iOS gets updated EVERY year, but I am seriously getting ticked at the amount of icons that I have to have on the home screen. Remember iOS 1? Those were the simple times. Look at this, my iPhone from stock now has to have 2 home screens to fit everything on it!

What?!?! If you saw my post earlier, you saw I already don’t like the idea of Music and Video being separated into two different apps. They are doing the same function. Playing media, you know what else USED to do that? the iPod app. I don’t want my iPhone looking like an iPod Touch. It looks tacky. The bad part is, even apple groups together the crap you don’t use, under utilities. Voice Memos, which seemed to have turned blue? Did I miss that? Contacts? Why did we ever pull that out of the phone app? That is duplicating what you already have. I guess there was such an outcry to have a one click access to it? Who really uses the compass? The only utility I use is the calculator. I don’t use Weather or Stocks and I hardly use the notes app. Oh wait, we added a ‘new’ app. Reminders. I guess this adds a checklist or some other feature to reminders that are already in the calendar. I just won’t really ever use it. Also, why can’t the iTunes and App store be one icon? When I click on the iTunes store on the PC or Mac, it’s one place, why not on the phone too? I don’t need all this crap filling up my screen before I even get started. I LOVED the folders when they finally implemented it in iOS 4, and I think it was a GREAT design choice. Less clutter is better! Oh, Newsstand and Gamecenter, I don’t like you much either. I use the feature of gamecenter RARELY to find people to play with, but I never actually click on the icon. I don’t think I will ever use Newsstand either. The phone just has too small of a screen to read anything on. ALTHOUGH, the new reader feature in Safari is great! (Another GREAT design choice!) Why can’t I pick a custom install where I get to choose what shows up? Just like iBooks, I don’t have to install it, but if I want to, it is a free download away. Please work on this in the future. Maybe iOS 5.1? Here’s to dreaming.

Oh COME ON!

RustyG — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 16:12:29 +0000

In a follow up to my previous post about Apple copying Samsung, I came across this story about a new phone that Samsung just released in the UK on Vodaphone. It is the Galaxy S II carrying the android gingerbread OS. When I saw the announcement on Engadget Mobile, I had to laugh again. Mainly, because if the rumors are true, it seems it is only half true. They just have the who is copying who backwards. If the next iPhone is suppose to be the mockup that MacRumors is showing off, man do these phones look awfully close. Again, I submit for your consideration the evidence:

click for larger image

-Rusty G

Apple inundated news?

RustyG — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 03:02:38 +0000

Sorry that I am on this Apple kick, but it is really driving me nuts here lately. I spoke a little about this in my previous post about the Samsung vs Apple quarrel that is going on. It’s like every time I open my news here lately, it is nothing but apple. You people realize there are other companies out there right now? I will say they seem to be one of the most valuable companies in the world, but MAN, this is ridiculous. (to be honest, I am not helping by griping about it either…) I am so sick of hearing about iPhone 5 rumors and parts being leaked. It’s like we have seen all of the parts, but no whole phone yet. Go over to AppleInsider or MacRumors and look up iPhone parts. The latest? We have a FCC ID #! Who freaking cares?

Did you know that IFA 2011 is going on right now over in Germany? Heck, Samsung, Toshiba & LG are all announcing some pretty cool stuff at IFA. But when I open up my news this morning, I get iOS beta 7 expires in October! WHO FREAKING CARES?!?! I guess this further cements the fact that all the parts are coming together and they have their FCC approval and that we should see an iPhone refresh here in the first week of October.

I mean it is to the point that we are putting up their building issues in London because of the size of their retail store plans. Also, we are watching glass getting put up? Why not watch grass grow? Are we so worried about what Apple is doing that we have to know EVERYTHING about them? Oh, wait, here’s another. Apple has their own police force running around and impersonating officers. Isn’t that a crime punishable by jail time? I know if I did that, I would be in jail. Is it because they have so much money, if they have a problem, they can just pay off the police?

It just goes to show you the power that Apple has on it’s name. You can almost post anything and say Apple did it, and you get 200,000+ views. Even the bad stuff. For instance, I like this one: a guy is complaining about the Sears goofup they did a few months back on the iPad and priced it at $69. Sears wasn’t going to honor it, so what did he do? He emailed all of the tech blogs! Who thought that was a good idea? Apparently he did. Hey, here’s a story, I’ll sell it to you for an iPad 2 w/Wifi! Of course though, you can always email Steve Jobs, I mean Tim Cook. They always seem to answer to customer emails.

-Rusty G

Apple copying Samung or Samsung still copying Apple? Who knows? Who Cares?

RustyG — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 15:56:32 +0000

Looking at a post by MacRumors this morning almost had me laughing. I have been watching the IFA in Germany through many of the tech blog websites and seeing all of these cool new gadgets being announced. As I was watching the Samsung announcement, I was looking at their new GIANT Galaxy Note phone coming with a 5.3″ screen. WOW. What I had interest in was the overall design of the phone. I thought the phone had looked kind of familiar. I went back to look at the rumored iPhone design from Macrumors. Then I went back to the announcement of the new Samsung Phone. Wait a minute! See if you see what I see:

Wait a tick, if I move the camera over to the other side, and I make the button longer.. I would swear they are the same phone. Now this is a little early to tell. Especially since all the parts (parts, and more parts) are still leaking. So until the phone actually gets here we can’t say. I am having a hard time believing the phone will be different, especially since the one of the newest “leaks” show the same front face again! Even the same metal band that goes around the current iPhone 4, CDMA and GSM. The other rumor that seems be popping up is that there will be an 8GB cheaper version sold of the iPhone 4 or 4S due to the iCloud upgrade that is coming. This does make some sort of sense, so you can get more people on the iPhone and make more money. Why have huge memory when everything comes from the iCloud? All of this is pure speculation and rumor at this point, but we shall see in the coming months. I will say though, if they do go with the bigger screen and bigger home button, it looks a lot like Apple copied Samsung.
-Rusty G

White Unicorn iPhone is OFFICIAL

RustyG — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:56:53 +0000

Even though Sony seems to be having issues with the PSN, and losing members credit cards, Apple seems to be having a BIG day; two major announcments from the big ‘A’. They finally made the official announcement that our iPhones are not tracking us, but that they are tracking local wifi and cell tower spots, to help improve and possibly bring future features via a “crowed-sourced traffic database”. (Sources:Apple Insider, Boy Genius Report, CNET, Engadget, TechCrunch,ArsTechnica & GigaOm)
As I said before, I don’t really care about the issue, but a lot of people do, so if you want, you can read all of the articles that said something about it, and form your own opinion.

The other BIG announcement from Apple was the WHITE iPhone!!!!!!!!!!! It’s been almost a year since the original announcement of the iPhone 4, being both in black and white, but we never saw the white iPhone materialize, but after a few days of rumors and retail store inventory screenshots, it is finally Official from Apple. We have a set date of April 28th (ArsTechnica, CrucnGear, Engadget, Boy Genius Report & CNET)!!So whip out your debit/credit card and head to the store. Now the issue I see for tomorrow is long lines and those who pre-ordered last June (2010). Will this cause a bottleneck limited supply issue? I would say yes, but only those in the tech world are really paying attention to this, and well, maybe those that pre-ordered it. My question is, will they get priority on the supply? I would think so. So I don’t have to be into work until 9AM tomorrow, so if any store is opening early for this launch, I will go. If not, I’ll just order one, or stop by a store here locally. I don’t think my town will have a huge supply of them here, so I may have to go with ordering one. I would keep watching these sites for further information, as AT&T may do an opening or Apple may open early. So go get your white unicorn iPhone!!

iOS 4.3.1 Data issues and strange uploads – Phoning Home?

RustyG — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 04:40:12 +0000

Ok, so I have a really weird data leak and I need help with it, as it seems I am not getting any help from AT&T or Apple. AT&T can’t tell me where my data is going, and Apple hasn’t heard of this issue as of yet, which I guess is fine, since it is only a 10 day old issue. I’ll see if anyone else has this and can help, or maybe an Apple Rep can help.

Lost yet? I’ll give you the background. I have had an iPhone 4 (GSM) on iOS 4.1 for the longest time because of the jailbreaks not being untethered until recently. I don’t upgrade my phones software unless the jailbreak is untethered and confirmed for Windows (either redsn0w or greenp0ison). I saw this tweet from the iPhone Dev Team saying that iOS 4.3.1 was jailbroken untethered, and jumped in! I skipped iOS 4.2, 4.2.1 & 4.3 because of jailbreaks that were tethered, and were lost once you rebooted the phone. Well let’s just say EVERYTHING was fine and dandy on 4.1.. but then I upgraded to 4.3.1.

For the Find my iPhone that was added in 4.2, and the personal hotspot that was added in 4.3.

So I updated and started having issues. With my themes, the background for the Lock Screen and Home Screen had gone missing in my themes. When I tried to apply a different theme, I kept getting a black background with a square and blue question mark. So it looked like from 4.1 to 4.3.1, Apple has changed the location of the home screen and lock screen wallpaper locations. No problem, I just moved the wallpaper to the locations that the themes were looking for them, instead of trying to find where Apple had moved the new ones, or possibly renamed them, to make them harder to fine. Stupid Apple.

Ok, so I kind of did a work around to make my theme work, but I used to be able to change my background in the settings on the phone, now I will have to use iFile or SSH into the phone from my laptop to change my wallpaper. Stupid Apple.

Then I came across this little gem today… My iPhone is apparently sending CRAP loads of data either late late at night or early in the morning, at the cost of 300+MB a pop! It’s a good thing I have the “Unlimited” 5GB of data. So let’s start a timeline here so you get an idea where I am going with this.

April 4th 2011 – roughly around 10:30PM I backup 4.1, before I update to 4.3.1 as you see below.

Just for reference I started my new career as a Tier 1 Tech Support on Tuesday 4/5/11 the next morning at 8am.

So the first full week goes by of me being at my job, and we finally got desks, workstations and laptops on Friday 4/8/11.

Then yesterday, Wednesday the 13th, for the first time in a long time, I booted up Pandora (over 3G) just after getting to work at 8am. I let it run pretty much all day, except for my 1 hour lunch break and left to go home at 5pm. So we can say roughly 8 hours out of the day, I ran Pandora. Then today (4/14) I did the same, booted up Pandora and for say maybe 7 hours of the day, because I paused it a lot more because of meetings and conversations I was having in the office. So we have a total of 15 hours of Pandora being used in a two day period. That’s it.(They have a 40 hour cutoff for free accounts)

So I went to check my usage on my account since I have a 5GB cap. Wow was I surprised! I went to investigate and found a few little instances where my Phone was spitting out some serious amounts of data, and at times I wasn’t even awake!! The worst part, is that it was doing it over 3G and not my wireless connection. So let’s see those “issues”:

See that? What happened here? I have a lot of data being used across my phone. And I don’t know how either. So I looked into it, and it seems that I have had over 2.5GB used in the past 10 days, which is what the at&t account page lets me see. So let me put this in a table like view, so it’s all grouped together.

364,139KB (355.6MB) 04/05/11 11:47pm (im in bed asleep by 10 or 10:30pm)
322,353KB (314.8MB) 04/06/11 11:12pm (asleep)
138,392KB (135.15MB) 04/10/11 07:46pm (I was up, but watching netflix on my xbox)
359,160KB (350.74MB) 04/10/11 11:13pm (asleep, but later that night)
448,801KB (438.28MB) 04/11/11 10:56pm (asleep, the next day)
675,764KB (659.93MB) 04/13/11 06:49am (i don’t wake up till 7am)

The thing that gets me, is this is all since I update to 4.3.1 on the 4th. Now I think someone will say that it is because I have a jailbroken phone, but you can’t say that, because I have had a jailbroken phone since iPhone 2G. I always jailbreak them. I also noticed that I was having battery issues as well, and my battery was getting worse than before. See below:

So then I thought, let’s go back to the previous months to see what my data use was. AT&T has a data calculator to show you what you have used historically so you can make decisions on changing packages. So let’s see what that looks like.

Wow. Nowhere close. Except for Christmas, because I was out of town and using tethering on my iPhone for my laptop when I couldn’t get a good landline cable or DSL connection. Nothing over .5GB at all. That seems to be my normal usage (skipping December) for the last 6 months, well 5. So you see what I mean? I think I need to go back to 4.1. The only problem is, I will lose Photoshop Express because they quit supporting 4.1 and I can’t have the latest version of the app if I go back. Boo..

I need help. Any others with this problem? Can you help? Leave comments below or check out the two threads I have joined on the Apple forums.

4.3.1 bug by Judyabro

or the one I started (with the exact same question)

Magical Overnight Data Uploads or just plainly data loss

I’ll link back to this page as well.

Could Siri Assitant be the backbone for iOS 5 update?

RustyG — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 19:00:47 +0000

Well it seems since Apple purchased Siri last April (2010), this new update to the iOS in June may be the reasoning for that purchase. There are rumors flying around that the voice recognition that is currently in the iPhone will be deeply integrated into the next iOS update. Siri originally won the 2010 Most Innovative Web Technology award at SXSW. The app helps you with voice activated commands and searches instead of having to type into the app. It’s great because you can do voice commands like “I need a taxi.” or “Where is the closest grocery store?”. There was supposedly at one time a command to call people inside the app, but I don’t see it the latest update to the app. It just leaves a text confirmation that it isn’t there yet, but coming soon. So is that a pre-cursor to validate that this rumor could be true? I don’t know, but it will be revealed soon.

The iPhone currently already does some of these voice commands like Call Jeff or Play Breaking Benjamin, but it maybe that this new update could bring more commands to the already popular iPhone.

via [Digg] via [Edible Apple]

Last.FM drops free support for iOS devices

RustyG — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 02:31:02 +0000

Well Pandora will definitely gain a new user after this new announcement from yesterday. It seems that Last.FM, which is a competing streaming radio service, will halt all of their free streaming service to all iOS devices on February 15th. This will not include Xbox Live, Windows Phone 7, the Last.FM desktop client and the website as well. WOW. That makes it sound like that they are trying to die on purpose. It seems to me they got a large amount of users on the iOS devices, and it may be bogging down their service, and they want to kill it off. ARE YOU RETARDED????!!!! Let me show you the email I received from them as well:

The only good part, is that I will get a free 3-month subscription from them? Really? I don’t even want that one since Pandora still runs it free. The company’s claim is that the ad-supported model is not working for them, and don’t want to continue down that road. Well it seems that either Pandora is killing them, and no one knows about Last.FM, or they just want to find a better way to monetize their efforts. Whatever the reasoning is, Goodbye Last.fm. Well, partially, I still love your scrobbling client that allows me to see how many times I listen to certain artists and introduce me to new music. If Pandora has some sort of this style of client, I may switch completely.

Check me out on Last.fm

At&t adds 2GB wifi hotspot option for $20

RustyG — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 07:38:22 +0000

Well with no attendance of Apple at MacWorld for the last 2 years, it seems there isn’t any Apple news coming out at all, except for this little nugget. It seems the Wifi hotspot feature that is going to be standard on the Verizon iPhone, will soon be standard as well on the AT&T iPhone as well. The developers have seen the beta version of iOS 4.3, and it seems to be good. With this update, the software does allow for the iPhone to become a hotspot, but that doesn’t mean anything on the carrier side. So one half of the idea is soon to be. It sounds like Apple will be releasing the 4.3 update on Valentines Day. The good thing is, it seems that AT&T agreed to add this option to the iPhone and well, all other smartphones that support it. In a press release from last week, it seems that date will be February 13th that this goes live. The package will be an extra 2GB for $20/month. So it seems that the 14th release date of the 4.3 seems to be right in line with the new option. So this seems to be getting more expensive to have an iPhone and have it run its full capacity.

$39.99/month minimum Voice Plan

$25/month for 2GB of Data

$15/month for 200MB of Data

$30/month for ‘unlimited’ (for original customers who are grandfathered in, or those who lost it and get it back)

Then there is texting:

$20 for unlimited

Then however you want to connect to your iPhone and share the data:

$20/month for tethering

$20/month for wifi hotspot

CRAP!

via [Engadget]