That's better.....

Great Forum!! I'm Cesar and I'm new here, just browsing for some good stuff and informative posts..

Incidentally, the Frotz developer posted on his Google Code page that Apple rejected his 1.3 update because the ability to download games from the IFDB violates the App Store TOS. It's completely baffling because it's been able to do this since 1.0, but they've just now decided it's a problem. He's resubmitted the update with the download ability removed and all compatible games in the IFDB with a three-star or greater rating are now bundled with the app.

This is an indicator of a problem endemic to the App Store: Apple's wildly inconsistent approval standards. Also, the approval queues for new apps and updates has gotten ridiculously long, to the tune of 3+ weeks, and shows no signs of getting shorter, so it'll be a while before we see the update. Hopefully Apple gives the App Store and the infrastructure behind it a major overhaul in the future, although since they have no real competition, meaningful change is unlikely.

Well, in a way... aren't we all?

The weather icon looks like the poor little dude is getting radiated by a sun gone nova.


THE
HERON HILL
AARDVARKH

I had to make the icons for Caltrops, TwitterFon, Facebook and At Bat 2009.

I also had to pick an icon for text messages, up in the upper-left hand corner. I thought the "Ladykiller" perk would be nicely ironic sad face.

It's a bit sad that it took me six months to get into my phone, and have it register as a proper extension to my PC. But I did, and that allowed me to make some changes.

Here's a screenshot of how it looks now:

There was a pretty nasty bug in the iPhone's code, pre-3.0.1. It would allow hackers to take control of your phone if they sent you a specific SMS.

I would have run 2.2.1 for the rest of my life. I was that happy with it. But because of this, I had to upgrade.

I went into iTunes and had it put 3.0.1 on my system. I then wanted to jailbreak my phone again.

I had to use a program called "redsn0w". I used "quickpwn" before. I guess quickpwn isn't making any more releases, and yes, the names of these things are just as stupid as they look on the screen.

I wasn't having any luck getting redsn0w to work, but it occurred to me that I had my phone plugged into a USB hub. After three failures, I plugged the phone's cable directly into my PC and that did the trick.

joltcountry wrote:The iTunes marketplace, when accessed through the actual phone, is a complete piece of shit.

Really? That's awful, and <i>so surprising from Apple</i>.

The G1's marketplace is great. It's just like a folder you go to and you're one click away from descriptions and comments and one more click away from either automatically installling or reading more comments. Crisp and clear and seamless. I haven't paid for anything yet so don't know how easily they take money away from me yet.

The iTunes marketplace, when accessed through the actual phone, is a complete piece of shit. Apple's desire to not clog up the screen is killing them here.

What it gives you is the ability to sort as follows:

- New apps, free and pay-for lumped together
- "What's Hot", free and pay-for lumped together
- "Top 25" paid and free, separate
- Then, in categories... top paid, top free, and release date.

Release date can't be separated by paid and free.

It's shit! It's complete shit. You can't just fuckin' browse the thing in a reasonable manner.

The non-iTunes way to get shit onto your phone (Cydia) is worse. It's always, ALWAYS having to download a bunch of shit when I start, and whoever is doing categories there needs to get their head in the game.

co wrote: The ugly:
- Battery life

Every day as I leave work at lunchtime or after work there are these street marketers out front from places like Greenpeace or ACLU or feed the children or whatever. I never give anything or sign anything except a petition even though these kids try hard.

If they were instead collecting donations for better battery technology, I'd sign up and donate today. So would you and most people. This really sucks, I can listen to a streamed African hip hop station while riding to work on the bus but a 30 minute ride takes 3/4 of the battery power of my G1. Ok, I had the brightness up and kept fiddling with it but this is awful. I don't know why the G1 uses such a small battery, it's like the size of the one in my old RAZR phone. I'll manage but this does kinda suck.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:I am looking forward to seeing how it is for you.

The great:
- I love this thing, Android is great. Everything works easily enough and the app marketplace is great. I'm sure the iTunes marketplace has like a gazillion more applications but fuck - I don't even have time to get through these. I love how easy it is to "mount" the sd card and it's instantly ready to be managed like any other removable drive on your computer. The OS seems buttoned down enough to work right but still enough of a computer that you can have fun playing around to the point of fucking up and requiring a reset and starting over.
- 3G reception, fuck yeah! I don't know who complains about Tmobile's coverage but they must not live in a major metro center, I'm really happy.

The sad:
- Tmobile apparently sends customer support calls to India a lot in the afternoons pacific time, I've never before talked to people that were less competent at taking numbers from me. I couldn't help being condecending to them.

The ugly:
- Battery life does indeed appear as atrocious as I've read. I can already tell that I'm going to have to be plugging this thing in any chance I get if I'm going to be having the fun I deserve to be having with it. Luckily I have a wall charger, a usb to computer charger, and a car charger so I'm good. I have an extra battery I could swap but I already feel like the back case is going to snap in half next time I take it off (now I understand why so many for sale have "small cracks" in the back case).

Excellent - congrats. I'll be more or less away from the Internet until next week, but I am looking forward to seeing how it is for you.

First impressions with the G1, I love it. Lots of free applications and games easily download from the marketplace. It's great to be done with the Treo's way of downloading apps which included downloading to my desktop computer and then adding to the phone with palm desktop, ugg. The on screen keyboard is not great but the real one is nice and easy to use. Best thing is not having to deal with itunes to add music.

I got myself a shiny almost new Tmobile G1!

My Treo 650 was fine for a first smartphone but it always seemed like a phone version of my first pc, a 386sx with windows 3.0. Just like that first computer, I have spent loads of time rebooting the Treo and waiting for pages to load.

So I got myself a black G1 from some poor guy in Auburn (like Albion to you Rochester folks or any part of Pennsylvania for worm) who was struggling to make his $695 rent for a "white projects" type of apartment set in the midst of trailer parks. I love that Craigslist allows me to profit or at least get good deals from people who need to hock their shit for rent. I paid $250 which was an would have been just an ok price except it includes 2 sim cards (1gb and 10gb), car and wall chargers, 2 cases, headphones, and 2 batteries.

I could have gotten an iphone but chose not to because the G1 doesn't have to be unlocked for my carrier and also Steve Jobs makes me want to puke.

It was seriously easy to jailbreak! I'm quite jail-broken. I uploaded a pic of my phone to Facebook, but I'll try to put one up here when I create Fallout-style icons for Caltrops, MLB Extra Innings, Facebook and TwitterFon.

Here are some jailbreak apps I installed, through the magic of jailbreak. Er, and Cydia:

ClearCam. This is apparently a better camera. It takes, um, six photos of something and lets you select the sharpest? Something like that.

Dtunes. iTunes replacement. Haven't run it yet.

Terminal. I haven't had to use it yet, but it seems to use the "Mysterious Stranger" from Fallout 3 as an icon, har har har.

(Oh, and the "Contacts" Fallout-style icon is the Vaultboy DRILLIN A CHICK)

iBlackList. I was going to do a WEEK OF FURY for the bloggy part of this site, but I never got round to doing it. One of the things that was scheduled to be in the WEEK OF FURY was the never-ending war between me and the University of Phoenix. I called them for info once. Once! And literally seven or eight years later they call every other day. They need to contact me so they can close their file, they say. Which is bullshit, so I intentionally don't pick up. Now I've got the iBlackList set to answer and immediately hang up. ha haha!

PdaNet. This apparently allows tethering.

MIM. Lets me set the banner and carrier text.

xGPS. If you've ever wanted turn by turn directions spoken by the most robotic voice in the fuckin' galaxy, well, this is the app for you. I would not be surprised if anyone who hears this thing's fractured text-to-speech turns immediately into a Cylon. (NOTE: I love robots and consider the voice pack a feature.)

MySMS seems to be a program that, er, keeps telling me how much more awesome my life will be if I pay for the retail version of MySMS. It let me erase a couple humiliating texts without clearing an entire conversation that I sent out a couple months ago, so for that I will always be in its debt. Oh! And for not having paid them any money for anything I'll always be in its debt.

If you need any help, holla. I jailbroke (jailbreaked?) mine before I put a single song on it. I've got programs to sync and update pictures and tags and can pretty much do everything without iTunes.

I had a terrible experience with iTunes. I grabbed some music from my phone which was at first cool.

I was out jogging, and a song I cribbed from, ahhh, let's just say the net, was incomplete. So I reduced myself to a brisk walk and wirelessly bought the song from iTunes. It was awesome. Like living a hundred years in the future.

I brought my phone inside and tried to synch it with my home PC. I messed something up, and the song got deleted.

Oh no! Well SURELY iTunes is like Steam, where it knows what you do and don't have access to, right? Fuck no. Apple's policy, if you mess up like this, is to write them and go begging for your songs back.

So I did that, and I did get the song re-authorized. But Jesus Christ! That's bullshit. Do they have any idea how easy it is to steal music? Any idea at all? Look, I want to give money to the acts who make songs that I like. I am highly motivated to do this. But Christ, if I buy a song from iTunes, I ought to be able to download it a million times.

So, I was highly motivated to "jailbreak" my phone.

What finally got me into doing it was this screenshot:



Oh! If I jailbreak my phone, I can make it look like that? Sold! I'm currently in the process of doing it.

(The software that handles this process is amazing, but of course, there's zero documentation packaged with it.)

Christ, it didn't even occur to me that this stupid new iPod shuffle can't be operated at all if you're not using the headphones. . . like plugged into your car. Idiots.

cnet wrote:Frankly, $30 seems like a lot of dough to throw at an iPod that costs $80 . . if you need a way to adapt the thing for your car stereo's aux input, the TapStick's relatively large buttons and snap-on design should do the trick.