Jon Holato

iPhone Firmware 2.1 On Its Way Shortly

July 25, 2008 – 1:11 am

Yesterday Apple began providing developers access to the next major iPhone update — version 2.1. (I say major update because it’s rumored that Apple and AT&T are already working on a minor update — version 2.0.1 — which will address a number of bug fixes.) The two biggest features of the new 2.1 iPhone firmware are enhanced location-finding and background push notification.

The enhanced location-finding feature involves iPhone being able to determine cardinal direction and velocity, both of which are necessary for implementing the turn-by-turn direction functionality requested by many iPhone users (myself included).

Meanwhile, the background push notification will actually be a service that addresses a key limitation of Apple’s iPhone SDK: the inability to run apps in the background (i.e. have AIM running while sending an email or watching YouTube videos, etc). As it stands, in order to use a program like AIM you must keep it running in the foreground. As soon as you exit the program to do something else, the connection is lost in that you will no longer receive IMs instantly. However, once the background push notification service is up and running, new IMs will be sent as notification messages (similar to when you receive a new text message) and you’ll know to go back into AIM if you want to respond.

Currently there’s no official release date for iPhone 2.1, but Apple has mentioned previously that the background push notification service would be launching in September so it shouldn’t be too bad of a wait. I don’t suppose there’s anyway we could maybe get some data tethering is there Steve?

By Jon Holato | Posted in | Tagged Apple, iPhone, Software | Comments (0)

Now Running Wordpress 2.6

July 24, 2008 – 12:27 am

Loyal readers will notice a pretty drastic change around here as I just upgraded to Wordpress 2.6 and pretty much everything from my old Wordpress install became null and void (minus the content, thankfully). Why would I do that, knowing full well that the existing blog as it was would get wiped. Quite simple really, the Wordpress iPhone app is only compatible with version 2.5+ and I was running the ancient 2.1.4, which is so old that Googlebot probably stopped crawling it altogether.

So bare with me a short while as I settle on a new theme and get it customized with a few pieces of Jennifer Aniston’s flair. In the meantime here’s a cookie:

chocolate chip cookie

By Jon Holato | Posted in | Tagged Wordpress | Comments (1)

Survey Says: iPhone 2.0 Firmware Is Dee-Zuhl

July 10, 2008 – 2:59 pm

It certainly has been a quick minute since my last post, huh? But let’s not get caught up in the mundane details of my blogging absence. Anyone who knows me knows that if there’s one thing that could ever break the blogging abstinence it’s the 3G iPhone. Although it doesn’t come out until tomorrow, I was able to get my hands on the new iPhone firmware version 2.0 and take it for a little test drive.

The install went fine after two crashes/restores (note to iPhone owners: make sure to upgrade to iTunes 7.7 before upgrading to iPhone 2.0). The App Store is lovely and there are a little over 500 applications to start — some free, some not so much.

I’m sure everyone and their mother knows the details so I will spare you, but in the meantime here are some screen shots of the new 2.0 iPhone firmware :

(Note: the 2.0 specific icons are App Store, AIM, Remote, and Facebook)

By Jon Holato | Posted in , , | Tagged Apple, iPhone, Software | Comments (3)

3G iPhone Coming In “Months” Says AT&T Mobility CEO

April 2, 2008 – 10:18 pm

The technology sector of the Web has been rampant with 3G iPhone rumors lately, with many analysts predicting a 3G iPhone in the May-June time frame, and others calling for a late summer, September-ish release. Today the debate got even hotter, with AT&T Mobility’s CEO Ralph de la Vega saying that he expected all of their smart integrated devices to be 3G within the next few months.

Naturally, someone (Sascha Segan from PC Mag) asked Mr. Vega if this included the uber-popular iPhone. Vega’s response:

“Let me repeat what I said: I think that you’re going to see our integrated devices be 3G devices in the not-too-distant future, and I mean months. That should be clear enough.”

You can take that for what it’s worth, but it should be clearly evident that those calling for the May-June time frame are pretty much on the mark. One expects — and has expected — Steve Jobs to announce a 3G iPhone at Apple’s annual WWDC in June, and Vega’s projected time frame would coincide nicely with that.

So we still sit and wait, but now a bit more optimistically…

By Jon Holato | Posted in , , | Comments (0)

MacBook Air Unboxing And First Impressions

March 29, 2008 – 1:04 am

With Easter weekend last week and my hectic travel schedule I haven’t had time to write about it yet, but yes, I picked up one of Apple’s new MacBook Air laptops (are you honestly surprised? ). I’ll spare you the rundown of the feature set this ultraportable laptop comes packing with — since posts on this topic are literally a dime a dozen — and relay some of my first impressions and some unboxing photos.

First impression, obviously, the weight. There isn’t anything like it — even non-geeks are WOWed. Secondly, the keyboard, ever since I got my first MacBook last year I’ve always been envious of the MacBook Pro’s backlight keyboard, now I too can enjoy.

I went with the lower end model, the 1.6 Ghz processor with an 80 GB hard drive. Although to be fair this machine is by no means a low-end laptop, even given its hardware limitations. Of course I would have liked the solid-state disk 64 GB hard drive, but I simply could not justify spending an extra $1000 on something that will be obsolete in the not too distant future. My plan is to wait until SSD storage capacity increases and price decreases, at which point I’ll pick one up and swap it out myself.

The only real annoyance I’ve experienced so far is some trouble with getting remote disk to work. Since I’ll be using this as a traveling laptop for work I am unfortunately stuck with having to run Windows applications on it. When I purchased the MacBook Air I also bought VMware Fusion alongside it in addition to the Ethernet dongle (which I have yet to use this first week).

I tried installing VMware over remote disc in the hotel this week but with no luck. I figured there were just complications using remote disc on a Wi-Fi network with hundreds of people on it, come to find out the hotel was having wireless switch issues, so who knows. What I do know, though, is that I could not get it to work on a Windows XP laptop this morning back at home. I decided to give it a whirl on the MacBook, and after a little tinkering and rebooting I was finally able to install VMware on the MacBook Air via remote disc (review to come in a future post).

Once VMware was on there it was a breeze to install Windows XP SP 2 — from the .iso disk image — as well as Office 2003 and Visio. It’s certainly not as fast as a MacBook Pro, but that’s not the purpose of this machine.

You can definitely expect some follow-up posts on this, time permitting of course. In the meantime feel free to drop me any questions you may have about it in the comments, and here are some unboxing photos for your enjoyment.

1) Unopened

2) top cover off

3) ultra thin

4) accessories

5) pre-first boot

6) bienvenue

7) migration assistant

For the record I have yet to try out the Migration Assistant feature. I opted to forego it during setup and haven’t had a chance to use it to transfer all my iPhone stuff over to the MacBook Air, will let you know how it goes. And finally, last thing I promise….the wireless is fassst!

By Jon Holato | Posted in , | Comments (0)

iPhone Acting Up When Playing Music? Check The Headphones

March 18, 2008 – 11:05 pm

A few weeks ago I finally started getting back into the gym on a regular basis. Of course, a necessity for any trip to the gym is an iPod, or iPhone in my situation. To make a long story shorter, after about 18-20 minutes on the treadmill my iPhone would start to act up, randomly skipping around tracks, pausing and playing at will. At first I attributed this to either continued bouncing up and down in my pocket (to preempt what some of my friends may comment that is NOT what she said), however today at work something very strange happened.

As soon as I started listening to music on my iPhone today at work the same type of activity occurred, even when the iPhone was laying still and flat on my desk. Tracks were jumping around spontaneously and pausing and playing at will. I swapped out the headphones in favor of a brand new pair and as Steve would say, boom! Everything worked like a charm.

To be fair, my old set of headphones had been slowly falling apart and I’d ordered a new pair for when they finally gave out. I just didn’t expect the headphones to cause the iPhone music player to act so erractically.

Here is a pic of my old iPhone headphones (notice the jack falling apart):

And here are the new iPhone headphones:

Update 3/19/2008: While running today at the gym the track skipping and play/pausing occurred again, despite me using the brand new iPhone headphones. Will have to bring this up with the geniuses at the Apple store next time I visit…

By Jon Holato | Posted in , , | Comments (2)

Apple Releases iPhone SDK, Announces iPhone Firmware 2.0 And Enterprise Features

March 6, 2008 – 7:54 pm

Today was a wonderful day to be an iPhone owner. At a special press event today on their Cupertino campus, Apple announced some new features to be available as part of an upcoming firmware version 2.0. Additionally, Apple execs discussed some of new enterprise features (FINALLY), and a beta version of the SDK was finally released.

Let’s start with the iPhone enterprise features because I’ve been eagerly awaiting these since last June. The new enterprise features include the following:

Push email
Push calendar
Push contacts
Global address list
Cisco IPsec VPN
Certificates and Identities
Support for WPA2 / 802.1x
Enforced security policies
Device configuration
Remote wipe
Active Sync and Microsoft Exchange Support

Can we pause briefly to say: YES! Since June I’ve been carrying around two phones, one for personal use (iPhone), and one for business (Windows Mobile), and it will be awesome to be able to consolidate down to a single device. Additionally, the iPhone will support multiple calendaring systems so those of you like me who sync to a Mac but will use corporate email will be to sync both iCal and Outlook. Nifty.

The bad news, unfortunately, is that this functionality is currently limited to a beta program of five users per company, and full roll-out won’t be coming until some time in June (why must Jobs continue to torture us?).

As mentioned above, Apple also released a beta version of the much anticipated SDK (software development kit). The iPhone SDK is essentially a comprehensive set of developer tools based on existing Mac OS X technologies that will allow for development of native iPhone applications. The SDK is broken down as follows:

Cocoa Touch - Multi-touch events, Multi-touch controls, Acceleromter, View Hierarchy, Localization, Alerts, Web View, People Picker, Image Picker, Camera
Media - Core Audio, OpenAL, Audio Mixing, Audio Recording, Video Playback, JPG, PNG, TIFF, PDS Quartz, Core Animation, Embedded OpenGL
Core Services - Collections, Address Book, Networking, File access, SQLite, Core Location, Net Services Threading, Preferences, URL utilities
Core OS - OS X Kernel, BSD TCP/IP, Sockets, Power Management, Keychain, Certificates, File System, Lib System, Security, Bonjour

Additionally, there is an iPhone emulator for Leopard 10.5.2+ to assist with development.

At the press event today Apple demoed a few native iPhone applications built by companies that received an early copy of the SDK. The following apps got demoed:

Epocrates
Salesforce.com
AIM
Super Monkey Ball (game from SEGA)

iPhone apps — as speculated — will be distributed through iTunes, however they can also be downloaded wirelessly (EDGE or WiFi) directly from the iPhone. The App Store will feature both paid and free software, depending on the wishes of the developer. For paid software, there will be a one-time $99 digital certificate fee to get your software listed in the iTunes App Store, but again this is a one-time fee and does not apply to each submission to the store.

The beta version of the SDK can be downloaded here.

Now for some screen shots.

Enterprise features:

SDK:

AIM:

Again, as I alluded to earlier, don’t get your hopes up, because these features aren’t going to be fully rolled-out until some time in June. In the meantime, however, developers are free to start working on some apps. I fully intend to download the SDK and play around a bit, so expect some more posts on this if anything comes to fruition.

A final note, Apple said today that it will NOT restrict VoIP applications that utilize WiFi, so there’s some serious promise in that space. Also, iPod Touch users will have access to these same new additions, however they — unlike iPhone owners — will be forced to pay a “nominal” fee.

Any questions feel free to hit me up in the comments. (A big thank you to Engadget for the pics)

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Drew Barrymore To Donate $1 Million USD To World Food Program

March 3, 2008 – 10:51 pm

Actress Drew Barrymore said today on The Oprah Winfrey Show that she is donating $1 million USD to the United Nations (UN) World Food Program to help fight hunger worldwide. The World Food Program delivers millions of tons of food aid to over 70 million people in 80 countries.

It’s nice to see an actress (or actor) using their personal fortune for something other than the latest Prada bag or BMW. These people often have boatloads of money — more than they could likely spend in a lifetime — yet never put it to any good use. I applaud Barrymore for parting with such a massive chunk of money in order to help others.

If only more people in Hollywood shared Barrymore’s compassion and sense of human decency, the world could be a much better place…

By Jon Holato | Posted in , | Comments (0)

3G iPhone To Launch Mid-2008 Says UBS

February 28, 2008 – 7:26 pm

Another day, another round of Apple speculation. Investment bank UBS said in a research note to clients today that Apple will launch a next-generation 3G iPhone sometime during mid-year 2008. The new 3G iPhone HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) platform will include a “new systems solution” from German chipmaker Infineon, including a digital baseband controller, power management unit (PMU), and radio frequency (RF) module.

Hopefully we’ll get some more information about this next week at the iPhone SDK event on March 6th, but it’s likely we might not hear anything until Apple’s annual WWDC (Worldwide Developer’s Conference) in early June. One thing’s for sure, the hype around an upcoming 3G iPhone is likely to fire up excitement around the iPhone as much as the initial launch did last summer.

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Apple Hosting iPhone SDK Event March 6th

February 27, 2008 – 11:47 pm

It looks as though Mr. Jobs is seeking to give Apple’s shareholders a much needed boost in their stock valuation, because Apple has certainly been on a roll this week. Yesterday Apple released iPhone/iPod Touch firmware version 1.1.4, and today Apple has announced a special “iPhone software roadmap” event for next Thursday March 6th. Which means that we will FINALLY have some details available regarding the SDK.

Also, and this excites me about as much as the SDK, Apple is expected to announce “some exciting new enterprise features,” which to me means corporate e-mail support via Microsoft Exchange syncing — the one feature I’ve been longing for since June.