iPhone OS 3.1: What’s all the hubbub, bub?

22. September 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: Apple, iPhone · Tags: ,

Last week I upgrade my iPhone to OS 3.1 using the iPhone Dev Team’s Pwnage Tool. As I don’t care about unlocking (Rogers is the only GSM/3G carrier in Canada, aside from Fido which is owned by Rogers), I was only interested in the jailbreak.

A few things to note: I initally made the mistake of trying to restore the custom .ipsw file in DFU mode, which gave me the dreaded 1600 and 1604 error codes. Easy enough to fix – just downgraded to the official 3.0 OS (ignoring error messages), jailbroke with Redsn0w, and then did a proper shift-restore with the pwned 3.1 .ipsw (yes, the pwnage tool only runs on OS X, but you can transfer the pwned .ipsw it creates to a PC and use the shift-restore method to jailbreak, instead of waiting for a new Redsn0w).

After the restore was done, I synced my contacts, favorites, music, etc… and reinstalled my favorite apps through Cydia without any issues. So far I’ve noticed that my battery life has improved (something rare, apparently – it probably helps that I never do a Restore From Backup), apps run and launch a lot faster, and best of all, Mobile Safari hasn’t crashed on me yet!

So far, 3.1 has been the best update yet from Apple for the iPhone – it’ll certainly be my fall-back-point if future updates aren’t as smooth.

Short: Another From the Search Results

17. September 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: Apple, iPhone, Short · Tags: , ,

To the person who found my blog using the search term ‘iphone exchange “missing emails”‘, it’s an easy answer:

When the iPhone’s Mail.app is setup to use Exchange, it has an initial limit to the number of messages it will grab from the server — the default is the 50 most recent messages. This can be increased to 200.

The key word here is recent – by default, the first 50 recent messages you load will be displayed. Want to see anything other than that? Sorry, you gotta use Outlook Web Access. That’s just how it was designed.

Entourage 2008 and Exchange: What were they thinking?

27. August 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: "It's a Feature", Apple, Microsoft, OS X, Rants, Software · Tags: , , ,

I recently purchased an iMac at work for a project that I was working on. The first thing I did was use Bootcamp so I could dual-boot with Windows 7, and for the most part never touched OS X. Then I ended up with a copy of Office 2008, and figured, “Let’s see what all the fuss is about”. I wiped my Windows partition, installed Office 2008, and told myself I’d try to go a full month with just OS X.

It’s been just over two weeks, and I’m finished with it. I’m going to install Vista on a VirtualBox VM and load up Office 2007.

The deal breaker? Entourage 2008. Why? Well, lots of reasons, actually.

To start off with, unless you install the Web Services Edition Update, say ‘bye-bye!’ to things like your To Do list and easy calendar syncing. Do you use Distributions Lists that are stored on your Exchange Server? Too bad! Entourage can’t sync them, so you’ll have to recreate them all by hand on your local system! Want a different signature for your email replies? Tough luck!

Aside from the lack of support for basic functions that Outlook has had for ages, there are also a plethora of usability issues. Randomly, Entourage will decide that dragging-and-dropping isn’t hip anymore and won’t let me move emails around unless I reboot the computer. A simple close/reopen isn’t good enough it seems. If I try to add an appointment to my Calender on the Exchange Server, there’s a 50/50 chance of it actually showing up after saving it.

The MythBusters may have proved that you can polish shit, but in the end, it’s still shit. Hopefully the announced Outlook 2010 for Mac will be a near-clone of the Windows version and the Mac BU at Microsoft burns the Entourage source code at the release party.

You can polish shit...

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