For the spillover
February 4th, 2008 — mac
The latest version of iPod Access—a $20 program that lets you easily copy music from an iPod to a computer or external HD—adds support for the iPod touch, a new engine for the iPhone as well, and better playlist copying. [Findley Designs via iLounge]
January 19th, 2008 — iPhone
Well, that was quick. It appears firmware 1.1.3 has already been Jailbroken. The solution is not available to the mainstream yet, as both teams are holding back until the iPhone SDK launches in April. Nevertheless, there is video proof; jump to catch some shaky evidence of installer.app playing nice with 1.1.3.
January 16th, 2008 — iPhone
The iPhone 1.1.3 firmware update added some great stuff, including Safari WebClips. I’ve literally added a dozen or more to my home screen in the last 12 hours or so. But the icons for the clips leave something to be desired. Even though I’ve done my best to zoom in as tightly as I can on any logo on any site (like Flickr for example), it can still be difficult to decipher one icon from the other. And some sites just look bad at 57×57. Of course you could read the names of each icon, but what’s the fun in that? I want nice, clean, simple icons on my home screen to help keep it, well, pretty.
Thankfully, Apple has given web developers a way to create custom home screen icons. Basically all you have to do is create a custom 57×57 PNG, name it “apple-touch-icon.pngâ€, drop it into the root of your web content on your server, and link to it in the head of your content. The iPhone (or iPod Touch) will automatically add the “glassy†overlay to your icon, and pop will pop up when someone adds your site to their home screen.
You can check it out more in depth on the iPhone Dev Center (look at “Create a WebClip Bookmark Iconâ€) or Dan Dickinson’s site. A little thanks goes to Daring Fireball for the initial point to Dan’s site.
Check ‘em out and help keep our home screens looking sexy!
Update: Some folks are reporting that icons sized to 57×57 are looking “blurry†on the home screen. It seems that 60×60 is working the best for everyone, though your results may vary.
Tags: Commentary, Development, iphone, ipod-touch, safari, Tips, webclip
November 11th, 2007 — iPhone
An iPhone hacker, known as Core, has managed to finalize an AppleTalk Filing Protocol hack that enables full read/write access to either an iPhone, or iPod touch, via Finder. Unfortunately, the work has just been completed, and as yet, it is not available via Installer.app. If you fancy trying it manually, you can find the complete instructions after the jump, courtesy of the great guys at TUAW.
To install by hand, use sftp to copy the tar file into /opt/iphone. Extract the archive on your iPhone or touch–the tar archive program is part of the BSD program; use tar xvf name-of-archive.tar–and run /opt/iphone/afp/startserver.sh &. The ampersand lets the program run in the background. (You will need to restart it after reboots.)
Once installed and running, go to Finder. Choose Go > Connect To Server, and enter the afp address for your iPhone, in my case afp://192.168.0.111. Just use the afp:// prefix with the local IP address of your iPhone. Enter your user id (root) and password (alpine) and your iPhone or iPod appears in the sources list for your Finder windows… To add new applications, just drop them into the Applications folder. To back-up your personal data, just copy /var/root/Library
To get cracking, hit the link to download the necessary file. Be sure to opt for the newer package, named afpd.with.registered.users.tgz. If you are not willing to get messing all up inside your iPhone or touch, wait a little while longer, as this awesomeness is bound to appear in Installer.app in the not too distant future. If you do give it a try, be sure to let us know how you get on. [Wickedpsyched via TUAW]
November 2nd, 2007 — iPhone
FireFly Media Server, a third-party app for the iPhone/iTouch, allows you to directly stream music from your handheld to any iTunes computer. In fact, since it acts like a shared library on the network, you can actually stream music to two different computers at once without any sort of problems. It’s of limited use in a home environment unless you have a fancy music rig set up, but it’s definitely cool when you can hold an impromptu robot dance party at Lifehacker’s office with your own music. [TUAW via Lifehacker]