Tag Archives: News

How-to: Hack the Apple Smart Sign

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My friend Amit and I set all of the Smart Signs to GMG!

If you were recently at an Apple Store, you may have noticed their new “Smart Signs.” These are iPads that have information about the Apple product you’re looking at, however these iPads are locked in the smart sign mode. The iPad’s physical buttons are embedded into the plastic stand, and the home button has been disabled.

Sources say that there is a “secret gesture” that gets the iPads out of this mode, but after a ton of online research and asking many different Apple store employees, I still couldn’t figure it out.

So I went the easier way – I had to figure out a way to push the buttons.

I pushed as hard as I could on the edge of the iPad’s bezel, and this activated the lock button in the top right and locked the iPad. The plastic of the stand pushed against the button, so I wouldn’t be damaging any of the inside contents.

After I successfully locked the smart sign, I turned it back on and I was greeted with the lock screen. However, after unlocking the iPad I was returned to the same Smart Sign mode. Darn.

So instead of just locking it, this time I held down the bezel and got the “Slide to Power Off” slider. I swiped across, let it shut down, then held down the bezel to reboot it. (Check out the video at the end of the post for more detailed instructions.)

Tada! The iPad booted into its normal mode, and I was able to open the default applications and such. Unfortunately, the Home button is still disabled – so if you open an app, you won’t be able to get out of it without rebooting the iPad.

While we were at it, my friend/helper Amit decided to help me out and assisted me in setting every smart sign in the Apple Store to Good Morning Geek. Because the home button was disabled, the customers either had to browse my site or scroll up and find the URL bar. Also, the screens are set to never turn off – also handy!

By the time we were done, an Apple Store employee came up to us and nicely said “Would you guys please stop messing around with the smart signs?”

In the end, it was really fun. I tried to jailbreak it with jailbreakme.com, but that site is blocked – :(.

So if you’re ever in an Apple Store and want to either a. Annoy the employees or b. Show your friends a cool trick, this is a pretty fun and easy hack.

I hope to eventually find out the actual gesture, and after trying everything I could possibly think of, it must be fairly complicated.

RIP Steve Jobs

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Yes folks, the long feared day has finally come.

Steve Jobs, Founder and CEO of Apple Inc, is dead.

He’s been very sick for a long time, and recently also stepped down from his position at Apple. He was able to turn a couple of guys in a Palo Alto Garage into the worlds largest company, with funds clocking in over the US Government’s.

Steve Jobs was a truly revolutionary man who will be remembered in the endless world of technology forever.

For this event, Apple has changed their homepage to a tribute that looks something like this.

Upon clicking the homepage you get this:

RIP Steve Jobs.

Apple Announces iPhone 4S – Where’s the innovation?

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Look familiar?

Today, Apple announced the iPhone 4S. It’s so simple I can say it in a single sentence.

The iPhone 4S features a better camera, A5 processor, Sprint support, another antenna, and a voice assistant. 

That’s it.

The better camera is 8 megapixels which is capable of recording 1080p video, and the other aspect of the new camera is an additional lens and a wider aperture.

The A5 processor is dual-core and can run things quite a bit faster.

Apple decided that the iPhone needs two antennas to make calls – one to transmit and one to receive. After all, one antenna just doesn’t seem to do quite well on other phones…?

Last but not least there’s Siri. Apple bought this company a while back to create a fancy digital assistant, and my have they succeeded. Siri can understand what you say and create reminders, events, schedule meetings, move meetings, reply to text messages, find restaurants, and more with just your voice. I think it looks pretty cool – but there’s one question that I can’t seem to find the answer to: will it be available on the iPhone 4? If they only have it on the 4S it will really just be a letdown. After all, the iPhone 4’s hardware is definitely capable of handling that kind of processing pressure, and I don’t think Apple should use its software as an incentive to get the hardware.

This leads me to my next point – where’s the innovation?

With the last iOS announcement being the iPad 2, this leaves me wondering what Apple is thinking. The iPhone 4 was completely revolutionary compared to it’s predecessor. The iPad was completely revolutionary compared to it’s predecessor as well (there was no predecessor). But with the iPhone 4S and the iPad 2, I feel like Apple is having a hard time thinking of something revolutionary to release.

 

Apple Board Member Confirms new iPhone in October – That’s plural

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Everyone has been waiting for the new iPhone for quite a while now. But at the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit today, Apple board member Al Gore said that the new iPhones come out in a month.

Oddly, this all makes sense. Would Apple really skip their usual Summer update to bring us just a performance bump?

This is what I think – there is going to be a model of iPhone with a performance bump, however there will also be a new iPhone 5 that is a complete do-over. 

The performance bumped iPhone 4 would most likely be called the iPhone 4S, and would sell for cheap – $99-$150 ish. Then, there would be the long-anticipated iPhone 5 for the usual price of $199-$299 with the complete reinvention thing going on.

That’s the interpretive, bright side of this quote.

However, we don’t really know Al Gore’s actual perspective. It’s possible that he could have accidentally added an S to the end of iPhone, and/or it was just amplified by the sound system. It’s also possible that he meant next iPhones as there will be one model of new iPhone, but MANY will be sold.

The one thing that couldn’t have been a mistake is the fact that he said “next month.” That means October – So for those of you who have been waiting months and months for the next iPhone, it will be coming next month – whether it has an extra model or not.

Goodbye, Steve.

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Today, Wednesday August 24th 2011, marks an important day in hi-tech history.

Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, the most valuable company in the world, has officially resigned.

” I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know,” Steve Jobs said in his resignation letter. “Unfortunately, that day has come.”

The exact reason for Steve’s resignation has not been published. Steve has been on many medical leaves recently, and this day was unfortunately expected.

The new CEO of Apple will be Tim Cook, the current COO of Apple. During Steve’s medical leaves, Tim Cook has taken over – so we won’t be stranded with someone who’s new to the job.

Steve Jobs has made many contributions to this world, and nothing would quite be the same without him. He’s the mind that was able to build the worlds most valuable company, with more money than the US Government, from a garage in Palo Alto, CA.

Steve will be taking place as “Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee,” as stated in his resignation letter.

“I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.”

HP TouchPad Discontinues, Disappears

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The HP TouchPad has had terrible sales, and as a result it was discontinued by HP and put on a sale of $99. Within hours, the HP online store was sold out, and every store that carries them in the bay area was out of stock within 3 hours of opening.

At $99, I wanted one. Last night I called best buy and they said that they would start the sale this morning. This morning I call 10 minutes after opening and they tell me they’re out of stock. I call every Walmart, Best Buy, Costco, Office Max, Office Depot, Staples, and Radio Shack in the area – all out of stock.

Now it’s 11:00. Nobody has them anymore, and it’s as if they never existed.

It’s amazing how an unwanted product can sell out at the right price. Every product is a features:price ratio. If you have terrible features (HP TouchPad) and a low price ($99) you will get good sales (out of stock in 3 hours).

If your’e looking for a Touchpad, you’re probably out of luck. The 32GB version is still available on the HP online store for $150, but I think that’s a little bit of a ripoff.

Goodbye, Old Twitter

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Image Credit: Mashable

A little while back, Twitter started to slowly roll out a new version of the Twitter web interface to their users. Reactions were mixed; some loved it, some hated it, and some really just didn’t care.

For the haters out there, there was an option to switch back to the old version. However, Twitter is going to be removing the old version of the twitter web interface over the course of the next week – not that many users will notice the change, as the majority of twitter users have already switched over.

Personally, I am indifferent to the new Twitter web interface; it’s pretty and all, has some cool effects, and nicer fonts and rounder edges. The previous Twitter interface was simply getting old, and I believed it needed a revamp – which is exactly what we got.

Users of “old Twitter” will get a message saying that they are soon going to automatically upgraded to the new version of twitter, and twitter also announced this publicly on their twitter page. It was bound to happen eventually, and I guess the day (or week) has arrived.

Goodbye, White MacBook!

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Apple recently announced a refresh to the MacBook Air line which includes a much faster processor, bringing it up to par with other more-powerful machines. I didn’t think of it as much – MacBook Air is less slow and more go. This means that instead of being a shiny piece of cutlery, it can now actually be used for real life applications.

But what Apple didn’t make obvious is that they have completely eliminated the white MacBook from the line of their computers. Completely.

It’s gone.

Not a trace of polycarbonate shells anywhere.

This means that the MacBook Air is now the entry-level MacBook, and it features a faster processor and better graphics card while only taking up half of the space – for the same price. Sounds pretty good, right?

However there’s a downside: for the entry-level Macbook Air, you only get half as much storage as you would for the now eliminated entry-level white MacBook. The entry-level white MacBook came with a 160GB internal HDD standard, but the identically-priced entry-level MacBook Air comes with a mere 64GB of Solid State Storage. Solid State does have a benefit over normal HDDs in that they boast much faster read and write speeds, however media junkies will have to pay a bit more to get the space that their data craves in the MacBook Air.

I’m afraid this marks the end of the MacBook in general. Now there are only two notebook lines from Apple, both of which have a three letter word stuck to the end (Pro and Air). This also means that we are unibody-only; you will now be seeing VERY little plastic in the Apple stores in general (including the fake ones in china).

The MacBook had a great run and attracted TONS of sales – but with everyone investing their money in more updated and capable aluminum MacBooks, the original MacBook simply had to go.

Google+ for iOS released, Welcome to Crash Central

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Google+ is Google’s stab at facebook that has some great new features that really puts it in the competition (read more here). The Android app was available immediately; the iOS app was supposed to come a few weeks after.

Well, it’s here. Unfortunately, it’s not worth getting.

You are greeted with a front page where you can view your stream, profile, huddles, circles, etc. Everything works until you hit stream; that’s where it crashes. It will give you a spinner saying that it’s loading… then it will keep spinning… and spinning… and spinning… and when you’re sick and tired of it, you just hit the grid to go back to the home screen. But it doesn’t go. So you hit it again. Same result. So you start frantically hitting buttons, but it’s not going to respond. Then, there’s the crash.

For now, this is all you’ll get. Jailbroken or not, iOS 5 or 4. The app is just a crasher.

Mac OS X Lion: Coming Tomorrow!

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During an earnings call with Apple, the CFO nonchalantly announced that Lion is being released tomorrow.

Lion is the “big cat” name for Mac OS X 10.7, the next operating system for Mac Computers. It was announced a little while ago, and was said to be announced in “July.” Lion brings some new features in Exposé and Spaces, fullscreen apps, and an iOS-like homescreen called Launchpad.

The update will be available in the Mac App Store for $30, and there’s no more discs available.

If you have a Mac, I recommend that you read this post to make sure your mac is ready for Lion.

After using Lion for a little while, I will write a post describing the good and bad of the new features.

Goodbye Blogger, Picasa

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Yes, google is retiring the Blogger and Picasa brands over the next 6 weeks, in a push to Google+.

Picasa is already integrated into Google+, and will probably end up as solely part of Google+ instead of a separate service.

But I don’t know what they plan to do with Blogger. It could possibly be integrated to Google Sites in some way, or it could just be called Google Blogs, or maybe they are going to also integrate it in some way with Google+.

Blogger was a wonderful name: founded a few years ago, then purchased by Google, then substantial growth since then. This very blog started on blogger until I moved to WordPress.

Not to be mean or anything, but I never liked Picasa. It was a clunky, badly integrated service that only made a little bit of sense. When I saw that Picasa was integrated into Google+ as the photo sharing service, I hit my head against the wall a few times. Although I love Google’s photo sharing efforts, I’m not too sad to see Picasa go.

As I said, the retirement will happen over the next 6 weeks. It will be interesting to see exactly how they plan on doing this.

Facebook announces video integration with Skype

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During a live facebook event that took place today, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook has partnered with skype to provide one click video chatting to users.

It is referred to as a “mini skype client” by the CEO of Skype, and installs with a simple download of a java applet.

Zuckerberg claimed that there are no financial agreements with Skype, which is interesting to try and figure out who is benefiting from this. Skype CEO Tony Bates said that “We are planning to add paid skype over time as well.” This means that if you have a skype premium plan, you might be able to group video chat – but that’s just an assumption.

Speaking of group video chat, Facebook doesn’t have it! With Google Hangouts, Google’s chat service that allows up to 10 person video calling, may have an advantage over facebook. However, facebook has 750+ Million users – that’s a lot of people that are one click away from a video chat.

Video chat is available now to the public, just click here to get started.