The first has to do with double tapping the home button twice to how background apps while the phone is in a landscape mode:

Hmm, shouldn’t they had at least rotated the icons 90 degrees? This makes me dizzy.

Now, let’s use the new lock-orientation feature, again, while being in the landscape mode:

Ouch, it turns the screen to the portrait mode BEFORE locking the orientation. Now I have to do bed-typing on the small keyboard presented in the portrait mode.

Lets’ see if Apple catches this before the upcoming iOS 4.0.1 that is supposed to bring everybody’s reception bar indicator down “to reflect AT&T’s suggested formula”. I acutally like the bars as they are now – they are very granular in the lower signal strength spectrum, where the reception quality actually matters, and are simply 5 bars when the reception is in the good quality range.

As far as the antenna issue is concerned, no, changing how the bars are displayed is not going to fix it. And yes, I fixed it by having the case (actually a thin protective film) that covers the gap so I do not accidentally bridge it. And yes, iPhone 4 reception is slightly better on their on compared to the iPhone 3G.

PS Man, the screenshots are big. I guess the awesome “retina” thing has it’s side-effects too

Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.4 Linux is out.

I’ve got it installed on all my boxes, except may be a shoe box. I am thoroughly thrilled about its looks, apps, performance, features and stability. After testing it for some time (ever since alpha 1 version was out), installing and reinstalling it numerous times I  have to say – it’s a great operating system! All the devices worked out of the box on all the computers, even the brand new, fresh smelling Radeon HD 5830. It boots in an instant, it has all the apps you’ll ever want (for free) and, with the Compiz eye candy, it looks even better than OS X. In fact it was the OS I was waiting for, from the times I’ve first installed Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) on my laptop back in, well, 2008.10. Yes, Jaunty 9.4 and Karmik 9.10 offered a great ride, but they are not the LTS.

Lucid Lynx is a long term support release (LTS) that means that the Ubuntu folks spent lots of hours working out kinks and quirks of the previous release (9.10). They’ve fixed [most of] the problems and will provide fixes in a future for 3 more years.

Is it for an average user? I think so. The install process is trivial (pop the cd in, run the installer) and quick. The user base and the all the forum/wiki support that comes with it is enormous. In fact it is so big that when I need to google a linux related topic, it get more relevant results by using the work “ubuntu” instead of “linux”.

So, if you are still thinking about Windows 7, stop. Start thinking about a better alternative, that will cost you $0.

Here I will describe how to do some of this deliciousness in the latest Ubuntu 10.4 LTS – the Lusty Lemur Lucid Lynx:

Teethering

First, make sure you have the teethering option enabled by your carrier by looking for Settings->General->Network->Internet Tethering. Chances are, though, you are a an AT&T slave user and do not have it. This means you have to jailbreak, if you have not done so yet. Go ahead and do it. Done? Good. Now you have two paths. Either patch up your CommCenter file with the DevTeam patch, or use the MyWi app:

The CommCenter route:

1. Get the patch from the DevTeam.
2. Link the iPhone filesystem at the root (for details see the latter section)
3. Backup the /System/ Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreTelephony.framework/Support/CommCenter
4. Patch it up by running bspatch CommCenter CommCenter-new CommCenter.patch
5. Replace the original CommCenter with CommCenter-new and reboot the device. (if you did everything via ifuse your CommCenter shall retain it’s executable attribute ‘x’. You can verify it by looking at the file from iPhone’s MobileTerminal (ls -al then chmod +x as needed). The attribute is required, otherwise you’ll have do a restore to the phone as it will not boot the next time)
6. Now, update the mobile config by browsing from your iPhone using Safari either to “http://www.benm.at/help/help.php” or to “http://m.peacefulinsanity.com/Tether.mobileconfig”

The MyWi route (this sucks as it requires a third party app,  but it works when CommCenter fails):

1. Get MyWi from Cydia. Get a RockID and register the app.
2. The internet setting will now show up.
3. In case you are wondering – the app works by injecting /Library/RockExtensions/DynamicLibraries/MyWi.dylib code into /System/Libarary/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.MobileInternetSharing.plist and modding preferences on the fly

Once you got your tethering setting figured out, you’ve got two paths again. Either get the necessary software for Ubuntu Tethering and build it yourself, or get it the easy way, via apt-get (thanks, Tom F!):

The easy path:

1. Inhale:
   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pmcenery/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gvfs ipheth-utils

2. Exhale

The custom built route:

1. Aptget the essentials: sudo apt-get install build-essential ifuse git-core libimobiledevice-dev
2. Get the code: git clone git://github.com/dgiagio/ipheth.git
3. Make it:cd ipheth-pair
make
sudo make install
cd ../ipheth-driver
make
sudo insmod ipheth.ko
4. Now enable tethering on the phone and connect it. Run dmesg to verify that everything is ok (you’ll get a blue “tethering” header on the phone too)
5. If/when everything works, finish it up by making the module permanent

sudo make install
sudo cp ipheth-modprobe.conf /etc/modprobe.d/
sudo depmod

Make sure that ipheth-modprobe.conf does not contain ipheth-pair (the pairing is done though a udev call)

Mounting iPhones file system

1. Make sure you have ifuse: sudo apt-get install ifuse fuse-utils
2. Create a mount folder. I suggest creating a subfolder in the /media folder, otherwise a system indexer (updatedb/beagle/nepomuk) may get a little too friendly with it.mkdir ~/mountfolder
3. Mount the phone’s filesystem:
   • If you want to mount “mobile” user folder: ifuse /mountfolder
   • If you want to mount iphone’s root /: ifuse --root /mountfolder You need a jailbroken phone for this to work. You might also need to install afc2add app from Cydia if you got your jailbreak through Blackra1n or Spirit, not PwnageTool (thanks, Tom F!)
4. To unmount run: fusermount -u ~/mountfolder

Synching iPhone music with Amarok

1. Start kTunesAmarok
2. Connect your iPhone.
3. That is it. It is that easy

Other stuff

sudo apt-get install libimobiledevice-utils

Now you can do

1. ideviceinfo – various device data
2. idevice_id get the device id – UUID
3. idevicesyslog – view the syslog
4. idevicebackup – to back it up

To prove it, here is the list of services (ps -ef) iPhone runs simultaneously at any given time.

What the media perceives as a lack of multitasking is the fact that the iPhone’s application launcher (SpringBoard) forces an app to exit before showing an home screen where you can launch another app. In doing so it merely makes sure that the apps do not eat up your battery like termites, while not interacting with the user.

So, ignore all the fuss and just know that iPhone OS 4.0 will not force an app to exit before lauching another one. That is it.

The secret recipe that makes Opera blazingly fast are the Opera’s mini servers. Opera on the iPhone relays all its traffic through the mini servers. The servers proxy and cache all the requests, translate webpages, css and javascript into a more compact format and downsize images. They also use SOCKS protocol for maintaining a connection with the iPhone. That allows them to provide push updates to the iPhone and  helps to do away with all the HTTP/REST overhead while keeping connection handshake/teardown to a minimum.

PS. Yes, there is a catch. The mini servers terminate SSL before it reaches the phone in order to cache and downsize encrypted pages. Why they made that sacrifice is beyond me, but this means that there is no end-to-end encryption in the Opera Mini browser. So, if you plan to do banking on your iPhone and are slightly paranoid you might what to stick to Safari. Just remember, it is still going through AT&T’s mobile data network.