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Jailbreaking How-To: Enable Multitasking (and More) On iPhone 3G or iPod touch 2G

Alex Layne — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 14:27:34 +0000

So, you want to enable multitasking and other iOS 4 features on your iPhone 3G or iPod touch 2G? Well then let’s get to it!

You’ll need an iPhone 3G or iPod touch 2nd-gen, as well as the redsn0w jailbreak, which you can download from here. Now you’re set to do the real work, but first a disclaimer: the procedure is rather simple, but be warned that you could easily brick your device if you’re not careful. Also, jailbreaking will void your warranty, so be smart and restore your device with iTunes before you take it down to the Genius Bar.

Got it? Great.

If your device is still running on iOS 3.x, you’ll need to upgrade to 4.0 before you proceed. Just go into iTunes, click on your device in the sidebar, and check for updates.

The Nitty Gritty

1. When you start-up redsn0w, you’ll need to point it to the iOS 4 IPSW, which, if you’ve already installed iOS 4 on your device, should be at ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates/ and will be named something like iPhone1,2_4.0 for the iPhone and iPod2,1_4.0 for the iPod.

2. If you’re using an iPod, redsn0w will ask you to clarify whether it’s one of the newer models that start with “MC.” You can check this by going to General -> About on your iPod and scrolling down to “Model.”

3. Now you can decide what features you want redsn0w to enable. You can choose to install Cydia (which is like an unwalled version of the App Store), Verbose boot (which gives you every detail of what’s going on while your device boots), Custom boot logo, and Custom recovery logo. That’s nice, but you can also enable multitasking, home screen wallpapers, and the battery percentage indicator, which are the really great benefits from doing this.

4. Connect your device to your Mac and turn it off by holding down the lock button until a red slider appears, which you should then slide. Make sure your device is completely off before you continue, meaning there should be no spinning progress indicator, or anything, on the screen.

5. Be prepared for this part, because redsn0w will start on this step immediately once you click “Next.” You’ll need to put your device into Device Firmware Update (DFU) mode. redsn0w will walk you through it, but you’ll need to be quick. The process basically goes like this:

Hold down the lock button for 3 seconds
Without releasing the lock button, hold down the home button for 10 seconds
Without releasing the home button, let go of the lock button and continue holding the home button for 30 seconds, though redsn0w should start doing its thing before the 30 seconds are up. Once you see a grey background on your screen, you can let go of the home button.

6. Watch while redsn0w jailbreaks your device and enables all the features that Apple left out. Do not yank the device of the cord, no matter what happens. That’s a recipe for bricking your device. Just relax and go get some coffee, or drool over the new Mac mini. When you come back, your device will be running with all the features you envied the 3GS for. Tip: You can enable the battery percentage indicator by going into Settings -> General -> Usage and turning it on.

How does the old hardware handle multitasking?

4.0 was already sluggish for me without multitasking. Rest assured, your performance won’t improve if it was already sluggish. But it hasn’t gotten worse, at least on my device, and if you’re going to use a sluggish OS, you may as well have all the features enabled, right?

Is your device running faster after the 4.0 update? Slower? Tell us about your experience in the comments.

Comcast Trials Broadband Meter in Portland

Stacey Higginbotham — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:18:40 +0000

Comcast today kicked off a trial of a broadband meter that will measure how much data a household consumes over its cable modem, something we’ve been asking for ever since Comcast announced it would implement a 250 GB-per-month cap on data downloads. Comcast had originally said It was rumored that the meter would be available in January 2009, but Comcast was unable to meet that timeline.

Customers in Portland, Ore., will start receiving emails today and throughout the next few weeks telling them they can check out the meter as part of the trial program. Charlie Douglas, a Comcast spokesman, says that he doesn’t know how long the trial period will last, nor when the ISP will be able to roll it out nationwide basis. In the meantime, here are the details:

It’s software that‘s pushed to the cable modem sits at the cable plant and sends the data to a database that is accessed via the web
Customers don’t have to pay anything for the meter
To see the consumption, users just log into their Comcast Center portal
The meter measures consumption by the calendar month, rather than based on the monthly billing cycle
It also measures consumption at the modem so the meter can track usage by all devices using the home network, which is key for folks running Roku boxes and other WiFi-enabled devices
Comcast certified the accuracy of the meter through a firm called NetForecast, which has published a report with all the technical details.

I have to say that while I’m not excited about the cap in place here, Comcast’s efforts to deliver a meter that has been certified by an independent company are a step in the right direction, as is its transparency around the report issued by NetForecast. Plus, it’s also managed to finally get a consumer-facing meter out in the market, which at least gives consumers a way to see how close they may be to hitting that cap.

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Comcast's Wireless Plans Don't Include TV on Phones

Stacey Higginbotham — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:18:32 +0000

“Comcast Plans to Bring TV Shows to Your Phone,” a Reuters story trumpeted yesterday, which had many of us here at GigaOM really excited — me especially, since this is exactly the sort of thing that I’ve said the cable guys should be doing if they want to launch wireless products. However, a quick look at the transcript of the executive comments that prompted the Reuters story shows that Comcast isn’t bringing TV to wireless phones anytime soon. Nor is voice of interest when it comes to the cable provider’s wireless efforts, as the Reuters story also stated. So far Comcast’s wireless plans are centered around delivering data, mostly to mobile computers.

According to a transcript of Comcast Chief Financial Officer Michael Angelakis speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communicopia conference, he said:

As you know, we are launching — we are testing today a service called On Demand Online. I can envision some point in the future that having a wireless component. And there has been lots of discussion about voice clients at some point and I don’t want to say much more than that, but I think that data is really an important product for us to lead in the wireless side.

The Reuters’ article turned that answer into:

Leading U.S. cable operator Comcast Corp. said on Wednesday it plans to offer subscribers the option to watch their favorite TV shows on mobile devices through its new wireless Internet service. The company is also exploring adding a voice option to the wireless package that would put it in more direct competition with mobile phone providers like AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc.

Angelakis talked a lot about the cable operator’s investment with Clearwire and its wireless product, which is based on the WiMAX network Clearwire is launching in the U.S., but his comments focused primarily on providing mobile broadband to laptops and notebooks for folks on the go. That offering is proving to be a popular one, as 30-35 percent of people signing up in the two markets that Comcast has launched in are new customers.

As for voice and the obvious vehicle for it — phones — Angelakis said:

We are a holder of some AWS spectrum, so we could actually build a network. The conclusion was we have 20 megahertz of spectrum, clearly not enough to do what we really want to do. We don’t want to be the seventh competitor in a market that we think is mature from the voice side and it’s a huge economic investment which we are uncomfortable there is a real return for…The other option is do you want to purchase a company? And I didn’t think we have any desire to purchase a wireless company.

So clearly phones and voice aren’t in the cards, which means delivering TV to phones as part of a Comcast-specific wireless effort isn’t happening anytime soon. Delivering TV to computers connected to the Clearwire network seems like a possibility, but there are licensing, authentication and other issues to work out — not that Comcast isn’t tackling those. As for the latter part of Angelakis’ comments, the unwillingness of Comcast to buy a wireless company is a real shame given that we think it should buy Sprint.

Bonus Link: The transcript of the Angelakis talk.

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Comcast Launches 100Mbps Business Service to Take on Telcos

Stacey Higginbotham — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 22:00:41 +0000

Comcast today said it would launch 100Mbps broadband service for business customers for a whopping fee of $369.95 per month. The commercial tier will launch first in the Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., region, and will offer 100Mbps down and 15Mbps upstream. As cable firms roll out faster broadband backed by DOCSIS 3.0, they now can offer high-speed data and voice options that appeal to business customers. Business customers won’t have the 250GB per month cap that residential consumers have. The offering is part of a larger push by cable companies into the small to medium business market dominated by telecommunications companies and dedicated T1 and voice lines.

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Comcast Lawsuit Questions FCC Right to Enforce Net Neutrality

Jordan Golson & Stacey Higginbotham — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:33:52 +0000

[qi:105] Comcast has filed its appeal of an FCC decision issued last August that censured the cable company for blocking P2P files, arguing that the commission doesn’t have the authority to impose the broadband principles that define network neutrality in the U.S. absent a federal law or a full public hearing to make those principles binding as regulatory policy. Indeed, Comcast’s appeal will test the FCC’s ability to enforce network neutrality without either of those things.

Comcast’s intent to appeal the FCC’s ruling was announced last September, but initial briefs, which it filed July 27, are just now hitting the courts. Comcast initially got into trouble in October 2007, after an Associated Press investigation revealed the company was forging packets that would cause BitTorrent connections of some users to drop and failing to inform them of the practice — a serious net neutrality no-no.

After multiple hearings and the filing of more than 6,500 public comments, the FCC in August of 2008 gave Comcast a stern talking-to and ordered it to change its network management practice, but stopped short of issuing a fine. It also declined to make a formal rule regarding this sort of action, saying instead that it will continue to examine net neutrality issues on a case-by-case basis. So as per the FCC’s order, Comcast implemented a type of network management plan that temporarily slows connections for heavy bandwidth users when the network gets crowded. The management affects uploads and downloads and is protocol-agnostic. A Comcast spokeswoman said today that regardless of the success of Comcast’s appeal, its network management procedures will stay the same.

Comcast is seeking an appeal of the FCC decision based largely on its belief that the FCC’s order is unlawful. It argues that in an FCC proceeding, a law “must be either a statutory provision or an agency rule or precedent” and that the Internet Policy Statement adopted by the FCC in 2005 is neither, making it “unenforceable as a matter of law.” It goes on to allege that in censuring it, the FCC violated its own due process, essentially making up policies as it goes along, and that the commission has no authority to rule on this matter anyway because the subject falls far outside of its “statutorily mandated responsibilities.”

The FCC has until Sept. 21 to respond. Final documents must be in by Nov. 23, more than two years after the original AP report of BitTorrent throttling. Oral arguments likely won’t be scheduled until the spring of 2010. Justice, as always, moves slowly.

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Comcast Wireless Puts the Pressure on Carriers

Stacey Higginbotham — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:33:49 +0000

[qi:___wimax] If recent comments from a Comcast executive are any indication, the push that cable companies are making into the wireless space could help spark a price war for mobile broadband. Comcast in July launched two new service bundles that provide wired and wireless broadband in Portland, Ore., and Atlanta at prices lower than comparable offers from carriers. Steve Burke, Comcast’s COO, noted on the cable company’s second-quarter earnings call yesterday that margins on combined wired and wireless broadband packages reach in excess of 40 percent once introductory prices are phased out, which means Comcast has plenty of room to respond if carriers try to lower their prices below those offered by the company. And that, in turn, means consumers may see lower mobile broadband rates in the coming years — at least in areas where WiMAX service is deployed.

Comcast is offering two combo plans: a metro service that combines home broadband and WiMAX mobile broadband for $49.99 for 12 months (after which the price jumps to $72.95), and a nationwide service that combines cable broadband with WiMAX and Sprint’s 3G network for $69.99 for the first year (it then jumps to $92.95). Clearwire, which Comcast has an investment in, is providing the WiMAX service. Considering that Sprint charges people $60 a month for mobile broadband and Comcast charges about $42 a month for its lowest tier, this second option is a great deal for the first year, and still offers savings over the long term. Think of the fast WiMAX speeds for local mobile broadband as a nice bonus.

AT&T has a similar style of plan it calls Internet At Home and On the Go that charges users $60 a month for the minimum broadband connection and 200 MB of 3G service and $80 for the 5GB of 3G access with DSL access. Compare Comcast’s 12 Mbps download speeds at home with AT&T’s 1.5 Mbps speeds on its low-end DSL line, and the comparison favors Comcast even after the introductory price rises. Of course, some folks may decide to dump Comcast’s wired broadband line altogether and go with Clearwire’s $80-per-month plan for nationwide mobile broadband.

But subscribers are apparently seeing the value in Comcast’s service as Burke said that 40 percent of those signing up for it in Portland are new Comcast customers leaving DSL connections. Looks like WiMAX may help challenge the lock on mobile broadband pricing after all — at least in markets where consumers can buy it.

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Free Stuff App Hits the iPhone

James Kendrick — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:07:01 +0000

Some folks spend a lot of time looking for free stuff — those contests and surveys that have a payoff at the end of a little bit of effort. It’s a bigger trend than you might think. I recently saw a news program devoted to explaining how some folks get thousands of dollars of free goods, and even cash, by tracking these offers down and participating in a lot of them. Those efforts may get a little easier with the release of the Free Stuff App for the iPhone, which promises to bring these offers right to your hand.

What kind of free stuff does the app track?

Free Stuff
Free Money
Contests for Free Stuff
Surveys for Free Stuff
Free Shipping Offers

We don’t know how good these are, but the app is free, as is the stuff, so let us know if you try it.

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This Week at Mobile Tech Manor #43: Pre-mania, Got a New Voice

James Kendrick — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:10:01 +0000

It is Friday, the day when we get to chat about what happened at Mobile Tech Manor over the past week. It was the week of the Palm Pre, I still had UMPCs scattered everywhere and I finally got into the Google Voice beta program. Come on in and share my week, we’ll have fun, I promise.

The Pre Launches, It’s a Go

The Palm Pre hit the ground running and based on reports the launch went pretty much as expected. I’ve seen that Palm and Sprint sold anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 units, which is pretty good for them, although nowhere near the volume of the iPhone at launch. It’s only human nature to compare the Pre launch to that of the iPhone as the two phones are viewed as going head-to-head for the most part.

The Pre has been well-received by most if accounts on the web are any gauge and I have been happy with mine. I did get in line on launch day but only for about 45 minutes. I was thoroughly impressed with how organized Sprint had everything at the store; they were well-coached, no doubt. The whole process only took me about 30 minutes once inside the store and my hat is off to the Sprint employees. I picked up the Pre, the cool Touchstone charger and the Palm leather belt holster. All accessories were discounted 25 percent when purchased with the Pre, so I bit.

The Pre holster is an interesting piece of kit. It’s made of hard leather that is molded perfectly to fit the small, thin form of the Pre. This holster is so small and thin that I’ve been told by several people who normally detest belt holsters that this doesn’t look geeky at all. The Pre fits in the holster so perfectly you’d think that it would be hard to grab the Pre to answer a call, but Palm thought about that. When the flap with the magnetic closure is opened a leather tab in a half-moon shape is exposed. You grab that tab and pull up and the Pre is lifted up out of the case. The tab is attached to a wide silk ribbon that pulls tight and thus pulls the Pre out. When you put the Pre into the holster it pushes the ribbon down out of the way until the next time the tab is pulled. It is a masterful design and I’m impressed with how well it works. The belt clip does not swivel; it’s a wide metal clip covered in the same leather as the holster and it attaches snugly to the belt. This holster is $40 so it’s not cheap, but I’m happy I got one.

I have covered the Pre a lot on the site so I won’t review it here again but I did use it as my main phone this week. It has worked well and I’m happy I have it. I’m particularly impressed with how well it works with the Bluetooth stereo headset I use. Listening to Pandora on the headphones is wonderful and when a call comes in it auto-switches to headset mode instantly and flawlessly. This is something I missed using the iPhone and Palm has done this right with the Pre.

Speaking of the iPhone, the next model was announced this week. The iPhone 3G S will be out shortly and it’s as expected, with a faster processor and more memory. Photos I’ve seen show it looks just like the older iPhone 3G, which I have. I’ll upgrade my current iPhone to 3.0 when it’s available on June 17 and will see then how well the older model works with it compared to the new.

Picking up the Pre insured that phones were on my mind all week as it made for the fourth smartphone I have. I got into the Google Voice beta program and so far it has worked flawlessly for me. I no longer worry about missing phone calls or text messages that might be sent to one of the phones I’m not using at that moment. Google Voice gets hold of me no matter which of the four phones I’m carrying. I especially like how calls get announced on the phone; the caller announces themselves to me so I can decide whether to answer or not. It’s a great service so far.

The lack of a native Pre version of eReader Pro led to me picking the HTC Advantage back up for reading books. I have been impressed once again with how great an e-book reader the Advantage is, with its 5-inch screen and impressive battery life. I’ll be happy when the Pre has its own version of eReader but in the meantime I’m using the Advantage quite nicely.

I still have the three Viliv UMPCs in hand and have used them a lot this week. I tested the two 3G-enabled models and they worked well on the AT&T network. It was pretty cool to have connectivity everywhere but frankly with the Verizon MiFi I don’t need integrated 3G into devices I use. The MiFi makes more sense as it’s not tied to any given device and I have used the heck out of it. I still consider it one of the best purchases I’ve made it quite some time.

Errata

Today is Black Friday — at least that’s what the local news anchors are calling it, as it’s the day that the switch to digital TV takes place. What amazes me is that last night it was reported that officials estimate that more than 3 million people in the greater Houston area do not have cable TV service and have not picked up a digital conversion box yet. If that’s accurate then I wouldn’t go into an electronics store today, as there will surely be a lot of folks in a panic trying to keep TV working in their homes.

I love hamburgers. I don’t know what it is about them; maybe it has something to do with my obsession with handheld devices. There’s just something about having nearly all of the food groups present in one thing in the hand. Plus they taste so darn good. Of course, they’re not very healthy, so I don’t get to eat them much anymore. But I still do occasionally.

It has become a treat so when I do get to eat a burger I now want to make sure I get a good one. No typical fast-food burgers for me. The desire to get a good burger has, on occasion, led me to search for the best ones in my area, so for those of you who are in the same area of Northwest Houston, I’ll share what I’ve found.

First up is Little Red Barn Burgers in Cypress. This is a charming place built to look like a red barn and while the burgers are cheap, they are very good. You can get a double burger (they’re small), onion rings and a drink for about $7. Highly recommended.

Next up is Burger Tex. This is a family-owned chain and there are two locations near me. The burgers are cheap and fast yet very, very good. They have a fixings bar so you can build your burger as you like it. Also highly recommended. The second location is a new one on Barkers Cypress near Cy-Fair College.

E-books of the Week

This week was a Darrell Bain week, not surprising to those who follow this column. “Alien Infection” is one of my favorite types of science fiction, stories that take place in the present time. The “infection” is one that cures any disease in the infected and makes them live a very long time. Those it doesn’t quickly kill, anyway. It is a typically good Bain story.

I also picked up “The Williard Brothers Collection” which is the entire four-book series in one. These books share the madcap adventures of the three Williard brothers. The first book, “Medics Wild,” is a MASH-like story of the Vietnam war. I am in the middle of “BigFoot Crazy” now, which picks up with the brothers having left the military and returning to the States to do other crazy things. It has been thoroughly entertaining so far and I am enjoying the heck out of it. It is based on Darrell Bain’s own experiences in Vietnam, which makes it ring true.

That’s it

That wraps up my week, it was a busy and enjoyable one. I hope you consider it time well spent and that you drop by next week. Take care of yourself.

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DOCSIS 3.0: Coming Soon to a Cableco Near You

Stacey Higginbotham — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:26:28 +0000

I hope broadband competition in the New York City area is the wave of the future. The region, which is densely populated, has three Internet service providers vying for customers. And since Time Warner Cable announced yesterday that it will deploy DOCSIS 3.0 to the city, the area also will soon have competing super-fast broadband offerings from all three providers. Verizon touts its FiOS service there, and Cablevision already offers DOCSIS 3.0 and just launched speeds of 101 Mbps to Long Island residents.

A lot has been written about the merits of Verizon’s fiber to the home vs. AT&T’s fiber to the node and U-verse services, but we haven’t spent a lot of time on DOCSIS 3.0 deployments. Sure, it will provide ultrafast broadband, such as the 101 Mbps services that Cablevision is offering or the 50 Mbps that Comcast boasts. But for providers, the upgrade makes a tremendous amount of sense for business reasons beyond happy customers — so much so, that 45 percent of the country will have access to D3 rollouts by the end of this year, according to data from research firm Pike & Fisher. (See chart for provider details.)

Given that the average residential customer doesn’t currently need 50 Mbps down, and likely won’t spend $140 a month to get it, why are cable companies doing it? First off, the rollouts are cheap. Cablevision has said it costs it about $70 per home to deploy DOCSIS 3.0. Tim McElgunn, chief analyst at Pike & Fisher, estimated that it generally costs about $100 per home to deploy, or a few billion to upgrade across a cable company. Verizon is spending $23 billion to deploy FiOS, and general estimates are that it costs about $1,000 per home to deploy.

For a relatively small investment, cable providers get upgraded to a faster service that has benefits such as IPv6 addressing capabilities. They also can offer fiber-like speeds to business customers without spending more money to deploy fiber. Cable providers have seen growth in residential services stay relatively flat, so they’re looking to business access and interactive advertising to grow. D3 doesn’t really affect advertising, but it is an attractive offer to dangle in front of corporate users.

Chart courtesy of Pike & Fisher.

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Apple Stays the Course With New “Get a Mac” Ads

Darrell Etherington — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:14:54 +0000

Not one to be baited into a direct reprisal of Microsoft’s latest “laptop hunter” series of commercials, Apple is firing back in their own way with the release of four new installments of their “Get a Mac” ads. The Get a Mac ads, in case you haven’t seen them (how’s life under that rock, by the way?), star John Hodgman and Justin Long as human representations of a PC and a Mac, respectively. The four new installments are the first to be released since Christmas, when animated versions meant to resemble Rankin/Bass classics like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” came out.

“Biohazard Suit” features Hodgman wearing just that, and Justin Long asking why. The ad targets the vulnerability of Windows systems to viral attack, and though it doesn’t mention it by name, conjures up the recent “Conficker” worm that has infected over 3 million PCs and whose ultimate purpose is not yet clear. Apple is playing it very smart by just repeating in televised form the same arguments Mac users have been using to convince their PC friends to convert for years.

“Legal Copy” has PC claiming to be easy to use, which causes a growing amount of legal copy to appear across the bottom of the screen with each similar additional claim he makes. This one again mentions the virus susceptibility of Windows, and seems to sort of be a response to Microsoft’s recent “I’m a PC and I’m 4 and 1/2″ ad, since it rebuts claims of simplicity.

“Stacks” deals not with the OS X Leopard feature as you might expect from the name, but with PC searching through huge stacks of photos one by one for pictures of his friend, at which point Mac tells him about iPhoto’s new facial recognition features. Personally, I think this is one of the best ads in this series so far, because it emphasizes a positive point about OS X instead of just noting what you won’t get by avoiding Windows. iPhoto’s Faces technology is just the kind of thing that would appeal to most computer users but that people who aren’t regular Apple customers might now know about.

Finally, “Time Traveler” presents a glimpse of Windows’ future. PC travels through time to the year 2150 to see if PCs have finally become as stable and hassle-free as Macs. This causes future PC to freeze, answering the question. This one seems more forward-looking than most, and might be a subtle advance jab against Windows 7.

Honestly, I found this batch fell kind of flat compared with previous episodes in the same series, but at least they’re not just plain misleading like the latest from Redmond.

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